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Is Israel really waging an immoral war against Hamas?
Mercator has commendably published six thoughtful articles on the Gaza War since its inception on October 7: Michael Cook’s Stop this madness. Declare a ceasefire (Oct 26); Hendrik van der Breggen’s In defence of Israel (Nov 1); Gabriel Andrade’s Invoking Dresden is not a good way to morally defend the Israeli offensive (Nov 27); Michael Cook’s When will the war in Gaza end? (Jan 23); Paul Malvern’s What Palestinians and Israelis think about the war in Gaza (Feb 5); and Michael Cook’s Is Israel waging a ‘just war’? (Jul 9). In addition, there was the historical perspective provided in Chantel Epie’s The war in Gaza has deep roots (Nov 14).
The number of killed, injured, and displaced people among the two million Gazans has been large and it is growing. I hope my words here will contribute to our conversation on assessing the morality of Israel’s actions.
The social teaching of the Catholic Church appeals to human reasoning not merely to the Bible. The 1983 tome Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses war and peace in these few words (omitting footnotes), only some of which was linked in Mr Cook’s July 9 piece:
2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one's own life; and the killing of the aggressor.... the one is intended, the other is not."
2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:
If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful.... Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one's own life than of another’s.
2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life. Preserving the common good requires rendering the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm. To this end, those holding legitimate authority have the right to repel by armed force aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their charge.
* * *
2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
-- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
-- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
-- there must be serious prospects of success;
-- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional [four] elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine.
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
2312 The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. “The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties.”
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2314 “Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.”
This document distinguishes, without using the words, between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The former deals with the right to go to war and the latter with how the war is conducted. There is some overlap between the two since there must be serious prospects of success and the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.
On October 7, Hamas broke a cease-fire that had been in place since 2014 by crossing the border from Gaza into Israel and killing 1,200 men, women and children, wounding 1,600, and taking about 250 hostages. (People say hostages, not prisoners. And people say killed but given the methods of killing, butchered would be more correct.)
Israel decided against a limited engagement of retaliation against Hamas which Israel had done in the years following Hamas’ 2007 takeover of Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021, and which it had done in response to numerous attacks in between those years. Instead, Israel would commence a war (initially termed “operations”) against Hamas with two goals: the destruction of Hamas and the return of all hostages. It purposefully chose not to employ overwhelming force in the initial stages.

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Applying the criteria for a just war
At the time Israel commenced its “operations,” did it have serious prospects of success in meeting its two goals? No one was sanguine about it. Much of the combat would be in an urban, densely populated setting. Second, Hamas had the support of the population of two million where its 25,000 non-uniformed fighters could blend in. Third, Hamas had between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels in a Gaza territory of 140 square miles, much of them under 700-plus schoolsand its 36 hospitals. That is, Hamas used schools and hospitals and homes as human shields contrary to the laws of war (at least between symmetric belligerents, as opposed to “asymmetric” ones like Israel and Hamas, by Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute of 1998).
On the other hand, Israel wanted to break the cycle of Hamas attack, Israeli retaliation, cease-fire, reconstruction, Hamas attack, Israel retaliation, cease-fire, reconstruction. Bear in mind that these Hamas attacks are directed to the civilian population and they include the taking of hostages and Israel wants to break the cycle of take hostages, negotiate release of Palestinian prisoners, take hostages, etc.
Not only had Hamas from its founding called for the destruction of Israel, in the days after October 7, its leaders said it would attack Israel “again and again and again” until Israel was eradicated. To counter this existential threat, Israel desired, in the words of the Catechism, to render the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm.
In doing so, Israel must have believed at the outset that it could meet another criteria for a moral war, namely, would the use of arms produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. This prudential judgment belonged to Israel, not to the United States or the world media. On the other hand, to the extent that the United States funds or arms Israel, the United States is its own moral agent and needs to make this judgment.
Now that Israel and Hamas are nine months into this war, Israel (and the United States) are able to reassess whether Israel has serious prospects for success, whether its use of arms [is] produc[ing] evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated, and whether there has been indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants. I will address lives and then physical destruction.
Civilian dead
Hamas alleges that there has been large number of deaths among Gazans, as many as almost 40,000, and almost 90,000 injured. Of course, Hamas has an incentive to provide numbers higher than the actual figures and, in any case, in the midst of war it is difficult to ascertain accurate figures. Israel says, in a July 16 report, that it has killed or captured more than 14,000 of Hamas’s estimated 25,000 fighters. It also says that it has eliminated half the leadership of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and that among those killed were 20 commanders of battalions, the largest grouping of Hamas’s forces, and 150 company commanders. So, it would seem that Israel has met more than half of its goal of destroying Hamas.
If we are to accept the Hamas figures of 40,000 Gazans killed, and deduct some 12,000 (because some of the 14,000 were captured) Hamas fighters, there were 28,000 Hamas civilians killed. Israel reported in the same July 16 report that “it had struck 37,000 targets in Gaza from the air and more than 25,000 sites that it described as terrorist infrastructure and launch sites during the war. That figure did not appear to equate to the number of airstrikes, since some targets have been struck multiple times.” Thus, it had hit 62,000 targets. While the number of civilian dead of 28,000 appears to the world as quite large, the arithmetic is one-half a civilian dead per target.
Moreover, many (we do not know how many) of the deceased civilians had been placed in harm’s way by Hamas. Here are two stark examples of Hamas putting Gazan civilians at risk:
- when IDF forces took Rantisi Hospital and killed Ahmed Siam, it “freed” 1,000 civilian patients used as human shields;
- when an Israeli army intelligence officer spoke by phone to a resident of Gaza pushing him to evacuate to the south, the Gazan declined, reporting, in a taped and publicly released call, that Hamas had placed cars to form roadblocks, sent people home, and shot at people trying to leave.
This last example shows Israel giving evacuation orders to civilians, making phone calls to ensure evacuation has taken place. It also drops leaflets and knocks on doors. In addition, it uses precision bombs.
Let me provide another example. On June 8, Israeli undercover operatives and commandos went into Nuseirat in broad daylight to two nearby locations in which four hostages were being held. After killing the captors, the Israelis sought to escape with the hostages. Given the crowded streets, Hamas fighters could have restrained themselves and let them leave. Instead, Hamas initiated the shootout, using gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. The Israeli response was overwhelming and resulted in many dead and wounded. According to Israel, 100 Palestinians were killed or injured, some of them by Hamas. According to Gazan authorities, it was 274 Palestinians dead and nearly 700 wounded. Under American civil law, “danger invites rescue” and those who put someone in danger are liable for injuries suffered by those who would attempt rescue.
Property damage
One can find online a large number of pictures of the destruction of property in Gaza and summaries of the number, or percentage, of homes, schools, hospitals, and other buildings either destroyed or rendered unusable. There are also stories on the number of tons of explosives used by Israel. Israel has not engaged in indiscriminate destruction of…vast areas but has focused on targets. Nonetheless, the effect on the population has been devastating.
Conclusion
Clearly there is grave difficulty in Israel’s right to render Hamas unable to inflict harm with its duty to limit destruction of human life and property. The international pressure, including from the United States, to force a cease-fire, other than very limited ones for the delivery of humanitarian aid, has killed Gazan civilians, and is contrary to American military strategy.
Ron Dermer, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said on Nov. 12, 2023, on Life, Liberty & Levin: “The key to helping those Palestinian civilians is to actually get rid of Hamas, to free Gaza from Hamas. That is how they can have a better future. Anyone who cares about them should be looking for Israel to win — win quickly and win decisively.” This is the phraseology of one part of the “Powell Doctrine,” named after then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell (1937-2021), namely, the morality of using “overwhelming” or “decisive” force:
Once a decision for military action has been made, half measures and confused objectives exact a severe price in the form of a protracted conflict which can cause needless waste of human lives and material resources, a divided nation at home, and defeat. Therefore one of the essential elements of our national military strategy is the ability to rapidly assemble the forces needed to win—the concept of applying decisive force to overwhelm our adversaries and thereby terminate conflicts swiftly with minimum loss of life.
This overwhelming use of force without delay was reflected in the Gulf War where the preparation (Operation Desert Shield) occurred from August 1990 to January 1991 and the military engagement began on January 17, 1991, and concluded with the liberation of Kuwait on February 28, 1991.
Israel must use overwhelming force without delay to liberate Gaza from Hamas. It harms Israel and Gaza not to do so.
Do you think that Israel's use of force is justified? Tell us in the comments.
James M. Thunder, a retired lawyer, has authored over 275 publications in law, public policy, history and religion, including two for Mercator. Among other things, he served as general counsel of Americans United for Life, a pro-life public interest law firm, and as grand knight of a Knights of Columbus council. He is the co-author of the compilation of biographies of 49 men and women who have served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, most notably Francis Scott Key, to be published by the Historical Society for the DC Circuit. He resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Image credits: Channel 4 News / grandmother with her grandchild, fleeing from Khan Younis
Have your say!
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Israel Kalman commented 2024-07-30 21:50:42 +1000James Thunder, thanks for this well-reasoned article.
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Kathy Ungar commented 2024-07-28 08:54:05 +1000Jurgen Siemer – Horrendous, and confirmed by IDF whistleblowers (check Middle East Eye, July 19, ‘Israeli soldiers tell story of savage cruelty’)
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Jürgen Siemer commented 2024-07-26 15:20:05 +1000There is a report on Zerohedge, in which Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish American physician, who has been in Gaza is referenced.
Dr Perlmutter appears to be shocked appears to be deeply shocked about the high number of precision rifle wounds on children.
Before our christian Zionists claims that this is all the work of Hamas, that Hamas had pushed children into the line of fire or that the children were actually Hamas fighters, I request that you reexamine the possibility that Israel’s strategy might just be genocide plus mass Palestinian Emigration to Antarctica.
This refers to jus in bellum.
Furthermore, I request that you consider what Israel has NOT done in the decades before this war: it has not engaged in a diplomatic initiative with the Palestinians with the goal to open a door for them to live peacefully side by side with Israel and not live in an open-air prison for ever.
This question refers to jus ad bellum. -
Trotsky Lives! commented 2024-07-24 16:42:30 +1000Let’s do a thought experiment. In the most recent North Korean elections, turnout was 99% — so everyone was fully aware of their choices. And 99.91% of the voters supported the candidates of the Workers Party of Korea.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korea-cites-rare-dissent-elections-even-99-back-candidates-2023-11-28/
Now the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is constantly threatening to rain destruction upon the South and its allies. So would mass slaughter of North Korean civilians be a justifiable response to aggression (ie, a just war)? Remember, they fully support Kim Jong Un. -
John Joseph commented 2024-07-24 16:00:01 +1000That’s all very well and fine, but neither the Israeli’s nor the Palestinians are Catholic. Neither is the UN, which has almost made a sport out of sanctioning Israel. We know definitively that Hamas and by extension most Palestinians want the destruction of the state of Israel. As a Catholic, using my God given rational faculties, I say Israel’s war is just and so too would be the obliteration of Hamas. I fully support Israel.
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James Dougall commented 2024-07-24 09:17:57 +1000There is a broader context to the issue which this piece does not include and should influence the decision to go to war with Hamas in the way Israel has decided. First, the Israel-Palestine conflict from 1948 (and before) onward. Second: what is the plan for peace between Israel and Palestine after the present conflagration?
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Kathy Ungar commented 2024-07-24 08:31:43 +1000Yet again, a piece which uncritically recycles the Israeli government’s self-serving narratives despite ever more appalling evidence to the contrary. There are many, many sources but just off the cuff, you might start with the Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem or news stories in Middle East Eye or evidence presented by e.g. Tembeka Ngcukaitobi to the International Court of Justice. Somehow every time a hospital, health centre, place of worship, aid organisation etc is attacked, a virtuous IDF (to hear them tell it) is exclusively targeting the bad guys. Perhaps we should listen instead to the international health care workers who return from Gaza with the most atrocious and gruesome stories of targeting of their hospitals. Hospital staff have been tortured and imprisoned by the IDF – along with other innocent people, some of whom die/are killed in captivity. Bound bodies have been found in mass graves, shot execution-style. People bulldozed while sheltering in a hospital. As regards warnings – we should all know by now that refugees are told to move from A to B, then bombed on the way or at B when they get there. They are bombed as they shelter in tents or try to get food. One expects propaganda from the Israeli government but please let’s stop recycling it ourselves.
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Peter Faehrmann commented 2024-07-24 00:51:13 +1000Is the International Court of Justice apprised of the principles enunciated in this article?
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Peter Faehrmann commented 2024-07-24 00:50:39 +1000Is the International Court of Justice apprised of the principles enunciated in this article?
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mrscracker commented 2024-07-24 00:06:15 +1000Thank you for sharing this.
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James M. Thunder published this page in The Latest 2024-07-23 13:02:20 +1000