The Siege of Hamas Is No War Crime – WSJ

Most victims of the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel weren t yet buried when some prominent international voices including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, and Josep Borell, the European Union s top diplomat suggested that Israel s first efforts to defend itself are war crimes. This raises an important question: Does international law require a nation to choose between committing war crimes and having war crimes committed against it?

The answer is no. One of the great tragedies of war is that civilians often become victims. That is why countries like Israel resort to war only as self-defense, which, according to the United Nations Charter, is every nation s inherent right. But if even unintentional harm to civilians constitutes illegal collective punishment, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called Israel s operations in Gaza, even defensive war is effectively precluded.

The law of war prohibits directly targeting civilians. Israel has made clear that its objectives are only military. The IDF will destroy Hamas, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Thursday, and we will hunt down every last man with the blood of our children on his hands.

But military targets can be attacked even when doing so may result in the loss of civilian life. International humanitarian law requires that civilian casualties from a particular action be balanced against anticipated military advantage, a rule known as proportionality. In practice, as this rule is understood by Western countries, even significant civilian casualties don t necessarily make strikes on legitimate targets illegal.

via www.wsj.com

Eugene Kontorovich