Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza

Any country can lawfully defend itself against terrorists who initiate wars, shield themselves among civilians, and ignore the rules governing armed combat—even the Jewish state of Israel. “A necessary book that addresses a moral and military question: What can a nation do to defend itself against terrorists who pay no mind to the laws of war? Must it value the lives of its enemies more than its own citizens?” – Jeb Bush, Two-term Governor of Florida and Presidential candidate Imagine a war without battlefields. There are no uniforms. Civilians and combatants are indistinguishable. Homes, schools, hospitals, and religious buildings are used as command and communication centers, and for the warehousing of weapons. Apartment rooftops are launching pads; the civilians who live inside…human shields. There are over 300 miles of reinforced tunnels, all outfitted with weapons and passageways for terrorists to take hostages and travel freely. Beyond Proportionality examines Israel’s battles against Hamas and Hezbollah under the laws of war and concludes that its wartime conduct was based on military necessity and fought justly. The targets are terrorists, weapons, and tunnels—not civilians. Israel relies upon verifiable intelligence, deploys precise weapons, and endangers its own soldiers in order to minimize civilian death. The bombings over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden, and the urban warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, produced large numbers of civilian dead that were not considered acts of genocide; the war in Gaza was no different.