Institutions in the West are waging ‘lawfare’ against the IDF. But it won’t change the course of this conflict
International law is being misrepresented, and even inverted, to attack the only democracy in the Middle East and to justify and defend Hamas’s terrorism.
This “lawfare” has focused on three aspects of Israel’s response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre – Israel’s proportionality, its siege of Gaza, and its efforts to distinguish between terrorists and civilians.
Proportionality under the law of armed conflict is not a comparison of the casualty figures on each side. Proportionality requires that the risk to civilians in any strike must not be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. This principle requires responsible armies to mitigate civilian casualties as far as possible.
The laws of war acknowledge that collateral damage is unavoidable in armed conflict. Indeed, according to UN statistics, the global average ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths is a disturbing 9:1. In Israel’s last operation in Gaza, in May this year, the IDF achieved a civilian-to-combatant ratio of 0.6:1. Hamas’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields consistently seeks to undermine Israel’s unparalleled efforts in this regard.
The IDF goes further than any army in the history of warfare to protect civilian lives. By giving advance notice of its military targets, the IDF provides civilians (and, of course, the terrorists) with opportunities to evacuate, often at the expense of achieving military objectives. By contrast, Hamas has used roadblocks to prevent civilians from evacuating, cynically increasing casualties in an effort to pile international pressure on the nation to cease its self-defence. Awful footage from Gaza shows Hamas gunning down its own people as they evacuate southwards.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza is a lawful response to Hamas’s well-documented use of Humanitarian supplies to support its terrorist activities. Water pipes are used to build rockets, ambulances to transport terrorists, and fuel stolen from hospitals and UNRWA compounds supplies 300 miles of Hamas terror tunnels.
There is no requirement in international law for any state to supply its enemies with electricity. Hamas has claimed for three weeks that hospitals in Gaza are running out of fuel. Since the October 7 attacks, 10,000 rockets have been fired on Israeli civilians, powered by resources intended for Gaza’s civilians.
In accordance with international humanitarian law, Israel distinguishes between Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians. This is a distinction that, unsurprisingly, the Hamas-run Gaza “Health Ministry” does not make when it announces casualty figures. Their figures – if they are to be believed at all – likely include many legitimate military targets. They also include civilians killed by the hundreds of Palestinian rockets that have fallen short in Gaza, such as the one that hit the Al-Ahli hospital car park, which was initially, without any evidential basis, blamed on Israel.
Distinguishing between civilians and legitimate military targets in Gaza is no easy task. Some of the 18,000 Gazan “civilians” with permits to work in Israel collected valuable intelligence for the Hamas attack on October 7, down to whether or not families had dogs, and how many children were in each household. CCTV footage and eye-witness accounts indicate that, after the initial wave of terrorists, ordinary Gazan “civilians” descended on the ruined southern Israeli communities to kill, kidnap, loot, and vandalise.
International humanitarian law was developed after the Second World War to prevent Nazi atrocities from being committed ever again. These same laws are now being abused in an attempt to discredit Israel’s legitimate response and prevent the only Jewish state from ensuring “never again”.
We are seeing the same “lawfare” conducted against Israel that we have seen in every conflict it has endured with Gaza. But this time, there is a crucial difference –this time, Israel will not succumb to international pressure. This time, it will eliminate Hamas.
Actually the international media has the whole situation upside down. The land is the land of the Jews, and currently the only people who are colonizing it or occupying it “illegally” are the Palestinians.
It was the land of the Jews centuries before Mohammed was born. The land of the Jews has been continuously colonized by non-Jewish people ever since the Roman holocaust of the Jews. But Jewish life continued, in ha’aretz, albeit with great difficulty, under a lot of other countries who colonized it.
Israel as a state since 1948 finally is owned by the Jews. I don’t know why the Palestinians think it is their state. It is called the Jewish State, the homeland of the Jewish people. The Palestinians are Arabs who refuse to leave even though it is not their land. They continue to try to commit genocide against the Jews and their one hope is to destroy all the Jews and take their land away from them.
The Palestinians are the illegal occupiers. The international community has gathered together to proclaim that the land belongs to both the Jews and the Palestinians when it doesn’t belong to the Palestinians. The international community has created a problem that never had to be a problem, but it is all about the longstanding nature of antisemitism that countries from around the world are eager to give the land of the Jews away to people who not only aren’t Jews but whose only goal is to destroy the Jews.
It is time for the international community to wake up. The wake up call started under President Trump, when it was clear that the Sunni states in the Middle east didn’t want to be held hostage by the Palestinians anymore. They want to move forward and make progress in their countries. They will bind together with Israel again even more so if Trump is re-elected.
The international community is a combination of Western countries with some degree of guilt about their colonial past and non-western countries who want to see western countries destroyed and Islam reign supreme. These two groups bind together and work to create a “Palestinian problem” that need not have existed.
It need not exist in the future if Israelis will recognize that they are not responsible for the lives of a group of people who want to kill them. The people that want them dead should either be in prison somewhere or deported our of Israel’s territory to take their hatred elsewhere.
It’s time for Israelis to take back their country and if the international community has a problem, show them the videos of what Hamas did, including the 10 year olds. Show those videos at the UN. Show those videos in the US Congress. Show those videos in the UK Parliament. Show the videos at the EU meetings.
They can’t tell Israel that they must live with the very people that want them all dead.
I think the Iranians have gotten the message: Don’t mess with the IDF.
https://tlgrm.eu/channels/@pilotblog
“McGurk requested an explanation as to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement that Israel would retain security control of Gaza following the war, and it was explained to him that such an arrangement would resemble the current state of affairs in Judea and Samaria. They emphasized that Israel has no intention of taking civil control of the Gaza Strip or creating Jewish towns within it.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/380416
Another major focus of Israel’s struggle with Hamas is the charge of “occupation”. It is said that Israel’s control of Gaza’s sea and air access prior to 10/7 amounted to occupation, and thus justified the savage attacks. “The Occupation” has been brought to the forefront as a major theme of the world-wide pro-palestinian demonstrations. Of course, the media and other institutions are promoting that theme as well.
From tel aviv again marchan.protest. There is no purpose to pretend that that trash belongs here. En guerra they make common ground with the enemy.
We need names… for a start, the names of faculty members, starting with Harvard, who are leading the charge against Jews.
We abide by the Rule of Law, but that Rule may, at this point, have to be administered by ourselves.
Time to fight back. The “academics” will be forced to keep looking over their shoulders…
Is there any Court outside of Israel that will even hear these arguments in the face of Arab pressure, bribery and extortion?