I was talking to a good friend recently about the war between Israel’s government and Hamas. We both agreed that Hamas is out to destroy Israel. (If you don’t agree with that, I’d like to see your comments about why. But even if you don’t agree, you might find the following discussion relevant.)
For that reason, my friend and I agreed that it’s legitimate for Israel’s government to fight Hamas.
I argued that it’s important that a war be fought justly. That’s the second of the three components of just war theory. (The three are Jus ad bellum, Jus in bello, and Jus post bellum.) Thus the title of this post. I’m focusing on the second part: fighting a war justly.
My friend argued that because Hamas is using innocent Gazans as human shields, it’s legitimate to kill those innocent people as a way of getting at the guilty. I, uncomfortably, agreed with him but wanted to find a limiting case. So I came up what I thought would be one.
“Suppose, ” I said, “that the only way to kill one Hamas fighter is to kill 10,000 innocent Gazans. Would you agree that that’s too many?”
His answered surprised me. “No,” he said, “if that’s the only way to kill that one Hamas person.”
I was momentarily speechless, which doesn’t happen to me often.
In defending his position, my friend went back to the Jus ad bellum point, the idea, which we both agreed on, that Israel’s government’s fight against Hamas is legitimate. For him, the fact that the fight was just was enough to justify killing tens of thousands of innocent people.
But, to be fair, I didn’t have a good idea of the right ratio. Is it 1 to 1, 10 to 1, 100 to 1, 1,000 to 1? I was pretty sure it was under 100 to 1, but I couldn’t say why.
So I talked to another friend who has been thinking about this. He gave me a way to think about it that was better than anything I had.
“Suppose,” he said, “that the Israeli government knows that beneath an apartment block containing 300 innocent people is a machine gun nest of 5 members of Hamas. If the government has a reasonable expectation that killing the 300 innocents along with the 5 guilty would prevent more than 300 innocent deaths that otherwise would have been carried out by the 5 guilty, then it’s legitimate.” But if it’s fewer, then it’s not.
Of course, it’s hard to know. But what probably isn’t hard to know is that those 5, if they survived, would not have killed 10,000 people each. Which would mean that my first friend’s 10,000 number was way too high.
That’s all I’ve got. What do you think?
ADDENDUM: I should add, in case there’s any doubt, that I think it’s wrong to use innocent people as human shields. That’s why the Israeli Supreme Court, in 2005, said that no longer could the Israeli military do so. There’s some evidence, though, that, even recently, the Israeli military has done so.
READER COMMENTS
William Connolley
Nov 16 2023 at 9:18am
If you look at the “rules of war”, e.g. something like https://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/proportionality/, then they lay great stress on “proportionality” (“Proportionality is one of the key principles that enables and fosters a concrete debate on the limitations of military action and on the space that must be left for humanitarian operations within situations of conflict… humanitarian law forbids suffering that is caused in no direct relation to a concrete military advantage and in disproportion with it” and so on).
But, it is veeery careful to offer no examples or limiting cases. I doubt anyone would consider 1-for-10,000 reasonable. I don’t think the “killing 300 would stop 5 killing another 300” is a limiting example; there’s nothing in the “proportionality” that limits in a 1-to-1 way.
The rules seem to me much closer to: “is this a genuine military objective, that will nonetheless foreseeably cause civilian casualties, in which case you must design your attack to cause as few as possible and use your best judgement as to whether the operation is still justified”. There’s no real quantification in there.
BTW, I think your “it’s legitimate to kill those innocent people as a way of getting at the guilty” is mis-phrased. You aren’t allowed to kill the innocent to get at the guilty. You are allowed to attempt to kill the guilty, in such a way as to risk killing innocents (yes, its all a bit weaselly). If there was a wall of innocents and you had to shoot them down one-by-one, and only after that were you able to shoot the guilty, I’m doubtful that would be legal (IANAL, obvs).
You’ve used the word “legitimate” rather than “moral” so I’m trying to talk from the rules-of-war perspective. I don’t think the moral view strongly diverges, though.
David Henderson
Nov 16 2023 at 9:25am
Thanks, William.
You write:
Yes, you’re right. That’s what I meant to say.
steve
Nov 16 2023 at 10:27am
People avoid setting ratios for a number of reasons. One of many is that the value of the target matters. If it’s killing 300 civilians to kill 5 Hamas members who are their cooks vs 5 Hamas actively making missiles the value changes. The circumstances of the fight matter. Finally, I dont think you could get people to agree anyway.
If you look at past Israeli responses it has generally been about 15 people killed for every Israeli killed. It’s hard to tell if that was the number needed to kill some Hamas or if that is the number that satisfies the need for revenge. Anyway, I dont have a number to offer either but would say if they are making a sincere effort to eradicate Hamas then higher ratios are acceptable. If this is mostly just killing enough people to feel like they got revenge then the ratios should be smaller. (Go back and look at the numbers from Fallujah. We paused the fight after killing a much lower ratio of civilians than we have ever seen in Gaza. I doubt our military has official ratios either but we are sensitive to the issue.)
Steve
Anonymous
Nov 16 2023 at 11:32am
“We paused the fight after killing a much lower ratio of civilians than we have ever seen in Gaza.”
What does this mean?
steve
Nov 16 2023 at 4:26pm
The estimates were that there were about 3 civilian casualties for every 1 insurgent death for the first battle. The numbers are hard to ascertain but the estimates I have seen for Gaza from people who might have some relevant experience and knowledge put it more like at least 5:1 and probably much higher.
Steve
David Seltzer
Nov 16 2023 at 11:51am
Circumstances matter. If Israel drops leaflets to Palestinian citizens to evacuate or offer safe harbor for information post the October 7th attack, there is an attempt to reduce collateral killing. But, Hamas is warned of further attacks. If a military wants to effect a surprise attack, I suspect no warning to civilians would be forthcoming. Did Churchill know Coventry was to be targeted by the Luftwaffe? The story; Churchill did not alert Coventry because it would have alerted Hitler that Nazi Enigma codes were decrypted.
Henri Hein
Nov 16 2023 at 12:06pm
I agree with Steve, I think who it is matters. If it was Al Qaeda, it might be worth risking 10,000 innocents to get Osama Bin Laden, but probably not if it was a regular non-leader militant.
Another consideration is, how complicit are the civilians? If Israel told the civilians to get out of the way and gave them time to do it before initiating the attack, but the civilians stayed, does that change the evaluation? Of course, it could be the case the civilians were not able to leave. If some of them stayed willfully to shield Hamas because they morally support them, does that change anything? (I’m not saying they did, but I consider it possible.)
I find it all disturbing and confounding. 10,000 seems way to high to me as well, but I don’t have another answer to what is justified.
Monte
Nov 16 2023 at 10:00pm
Jus ad bellum, Jus in bello, and Jus post bellum are all meaningless to Hamas. To them, the ends (the destruction of Israel) justify the means, no matter how cruel or inhumane. OTOH, we expect Israel to take the high road and conduct this campaign justly according to and in compliance with the Geneva Conventions and rules of engagement if they hope to achieve any kind of moral victory.
Regarding the so-called evidence of the IDF using Palestinian children as human shields, the Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) claims to be “an independent, local Palestinian child rights organization dedicated to defending and promoting the rights of children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” However, DCIP was designated a terrorist organization by Israel in October of 2021 contrary to the findings of Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch. How much truth there is to this claim is anybody’s guess.
David e Eisenberg
Nov 17 2023 at 4:01pm
There is a distinction between the question of Israelis using Arab youth as shields vs. Hamas using them. Hamas clearly uses its own children because it knows Israel will value Arab children, along with adult civilians. If Israel were to use Arab children as shields, it is because it hopes terrorists might value their own Arab children; Israel knows Hamas and others will not value Israeli children and it knows this based on incontrovertible evidence.
Hamas and others have not sent leaflets or text messages or phone calls before murdering.
johnson85
Nov 17 2023 at 5:18pm
I think there is a distinction between what is legitimate versus what is desirable.
I don’t think Israel is or should be required to value civilians in the Gaza strip more than Hamas does. There only obligation is to not target civilians and to have a legitimate military target. If Hamas manages to crowd 1,000,000 citizens into a hospital over their missile store, then it is legitimate for Israel to bomb it. I would hope they wouldn’t, but I don’t think it’d be illegitimate. Hamas is essentially the government of the Gaza strip and have declared they want to exterminate Israel. There is a high and unfair price to pay for being a civilian under a terrorist goverment.
If Cuba launched a nuclear missile at Jacksonville and then immediately moved all of their military assets into and immediately adjacent to hospitals, it would be legitimate for the US to destroy those assets, even if it resulted in the destruction of every hospital in Cuba and killed lots of civilian patients. It would be a horrible tragedy and the US might should refrain, but it wouldn’t be illegitimate.
The calculus is very different if you have a terrorist cell operating out of a country that truly doesn’t welcome or protect or even turn a blind eye to the terrorist cell.
David Henderson
Nov 18 2023 at 12:19pm
You write:
I don’t know how much Hamas values civilians, but assuming that they don’t value them much, as you seem to assume and I think likely, I don’t agree. It’s important not to let evil people set the value of innocent civilian lives.
LAG
Nov 18 2023 at 1:31pm
Agree. Might as well argue that rescuers should only value the kidnap victim as much as the kidnapper…which seems to apply pretty well in this case.
johnson85
Nov 20 2023 at 4:36pm
That may have been poorly worded, but I intended to focus on what is required of Israel (and any other similarly situated country), not the value of civilians. Maybe a better way to phrase it would be to identify who bears responsibility for the civilians deaths in Gaza. I would put the responsibility first and primarily upon Hamas. But if we want to look beyond Hamas, I would put the responsibility upon the citizens of Gaza themselves. The only civilian deaths that Israel would bear responsibility for would be those that occurred when they did not have a legitimate military target (and I’m not sure any of those exist).
That seems harsh and it is. There are plenty of things the US federal government and my state government does that are objectionable and immoral, and I would not want to be held responsible for them. Nonetheless, if you want to look beyond the actual individuals making those choices, who else would be responsible for them if not the citizens of the US? I think the blame is virtually zero, but it’s there. And the same applies to residents of Gaza. If they want to avoid being collateral damage in wars started by Hamas, the first thing they should do is probably fight to get Hamas out of power, or at least do their best to fight against Hamas staging military assets next to and under them.
If Israel wants to sacrifice more of its civilians because its citizens/politicians want to make that sacrifice to protect Gazans who aren’t in a great position to stop Hamas, they is laudable. But it simply should not be required.
LAG
Nov 18 2023 at 1:29pm
Regarding the 1:10,000 ratio–there’s a point where the density of Hamas fighters becomes so low in society that they become a policing problem. The trouble at the moment is that the ratio is nowhere near that low. Take 1945 Germany, for example. There was a point where there were not enough German soldiers/Nazis to justify the continuation of combat operations that targeted them at the expense of other Germans. I don’t know where the point is now, but the point in 1945 was reached when Germans (the ones who survived) began to vote for peace by surrendering (formally/informally), running away, or suddenly becoming anti-Nazi. Same in Gaza. Kill enough fighters to lower the ratio, and watch for surrenders, bug outs, and people who suddenly discover–in public–they hated Hamas all along.
Charley Hooper
Nov 19 2023 at 10:49am
The rules of war should be followed. The discussion here is questioning whether Israel has done enough. We never apply the same scrutiny to Hamas because Hamas doesn’t have an interest in following the rules of war—Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Hamas is an unethical regime. On offense, it tries to kill citizens. On defense, it hopes that citizens will be killed. To oversimplify, Israel uses its weapons to protect its citizens; Hamas uses its citizens to protect its weapons.
When Hamas soldiers kill Israeli citizens and then call home to brag about it to their parents and the parents don’t demand that the soldiers stop immediately, we know something is wrong with the culture in Gaza. What would you do if your son or daughter called home to brag about killing some unarmed citizens? You would say something like, “What are you doing? Stop that immediately! What you are doing is wrong!”
Of course, there are innocent Palestinians in Gaza, but it appears that many, many Palestinians have helped create and perpetuate the “kill Jews” culture in Gaza, helped dig the tunnels, and helped launch missiles toward Israel or at least knew that they would be launched. The murderous culture in Gaza isn’t just isolated to soldiers. Unless we determine that the majority of Gaza’s citizens are the hostages of Hamas, we should suspect that the citizens are at least partly complicit in Hamas’ actions.
Hamas has as a central tenet of its philosophy the destruction of Israel and the extinction of Jews. That makes for an unstainable neighborhood for Israel. How should you make peace and negotiate with a next-door neighbor who wants you dead and won’t rest until you’re dead? Should we allow Hamas to kill half of the Israeli population? Is that a reasonable compromise? That would be disastrous for Israel, and it still wouldn’t be good enough for Hamas. Either Israel must be ended or the genocidal culture within Gaza—let’s call it the Hamas culture—must be ended.
David Henderson
Nov 19 2023 at 11:59am
There’s a lot I agree with in this.
However, I would be interested in your answer to the question I raised.
Charley Hooper
Nov 20 2023 at 10:51am
I think your method of calculating the expected losses and gains is the proper way to make these decisions in the great majority of wars. By following that approach the military can act ethically and still inflict damage on the opponent.
However, I don’t think it will help in this war because the opponent’s utility function is messed up.
Here, I use the metaphor of a patient with a big tumor. That tumor is going to kill the patient eventually. Taking it out may also kill the patient. But our only chance of keeping the patient alive is to try to remove the tumor. The tumor has only one way of existing, which is to keep growing, even if it kills its host. The problem comes down to the fact that we can’t negotiate with tumors.
The weaknesses of my argument are the assumptions that Israel and Hamas can’t live side by side with minimum problems and that, if sufficiently weakened, the Hamas leadership won’t see the light and decide it’s better to live in peace.
Monte
Nov 19 2023 at 11:19am
Perfectly stated!
Ross Levatter
Nov 20 2023 at 3:35pm
I wonder how many Israelis your friend thinks an innocent Palestinian may kill in order to save his life from threatening Israelis who have already killed many of his friends and family?
David Henderson
Nov 20 2023 at 5:53pm
It’s a good question.
Fontaine
Nov 20 2023 at 7:19pm
Don’t incentives matter? If hostage taking, or mixing civilians with military is rewarded, then more hostages will be taken, and more civilians will be placed in jeopardy. Therefore to ignore hostages or civilians will reduce civilian casualties when the opponent sees no benefit and stops taking hostages or risking civilians.
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