How Israel Should Defend its Existence
Ethical discussions about “justice,” “self-defense,” “vindication,” “right,” and “deterrence” often precede wars. Soldiers are then deployed under a nation’s conviction that their actions are based on internationally sanctioned uncompromising moral values.
For those sitting on the bleachers- those who do not suffer the impact of war directly contemplating sacrificing some of the components of a nation’s moral integrity does not seem like “throwing the baby with the water;” usually, it is.
This week, we have experienced the nausea produced by looking down at the abyss that exists between Israel’s right to protect the life of its citizens and those who, from the bleachers, decree how Israel should defend its existence.
Last Sunday, the Italian daily “La Stampa” informed that in a new book published for the Catholic Church’s jubilee year, Pope Francis has called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s operation in Gaza constitutes genocide. On Thursday, the Judges at the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
The Pope’s request follows his earlier telephone call to Israeli President Isaac Herzog, where Francis told Isaac it is “forbidden to respond to terror with terror.” In other words, Israel’s self-defensive measures are equal to Hamas crossing not only the borders of another nation but of human civilization.
Later, in a “Letter to Catholics of the Middle East on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023,” the Pope quoted John 8: 44. This is a passage where This verse from the “New Testament,” in which Jesus says that Jews who did not believe in him “belong to their father, the devil” has for centuries fanned the flames of the Church’s hostility to Jews.
In the year after the October 7 pogrom, Francis spoke publicly about the war in Gaza, at least on 75 different occasions, mentioning Israel repeatedly but not even once mentioning Hamas by name. And, despite Israel’s enemies’ avowed extermination goals, the Pope has never referred to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Houthis, or the Iraqi militias as having distinctly genocidal intent.
International thinking, and thus, law, has been ruled for centuries by the concept that when a state finds itself confronted with a threat of aggression that can endanger its territorial integrity or political independence, it has “the right to make war,” a Latin legal term known as jus ad bellum.
But, when the State of Israel had proved incontrovertibly its jus ad bellum-its right to self-defense-as its territory was invaded, its citizens kidnapped, tortured, and killed in the most savages of ways possible, the attacks against Israel found a new tune.
Because the right to self-defense is too frequently distorted and converted into “holy wars,” the modern just war doctrine played down the themes of fault and vindicative justice and stressed the limits of what can be done in a just cause.
Thus, a distinction was made between jus ad bellum, the justice of war, from jus in bello, justice in war.
Like the ICC, the Pope has not only failed to consider the need for military self-defense. By arguing theoretical concepts detached from reality, such as “proportionality,” “symmetry,” ad extremis, these supposed guardians of human values claim that the use of force, independently of its reasons, is unlawful.
For the Pope, the justice of Israeli military actions is unlawful because they cause harm and suffering. So, a month after Hamas’ brutal carnage, the Pope said, “No war is worth the tears of a mother who has seen her child mutilated or killed; no war is worth the loss of the life of even one human being.”
In abandoning Israel’s primary right to self-defense by demoting it to the harm it causes, the terrorist intentional mutilation or killing of children becomes indistinguishable from the unavoidable forcefulness that results from self-defense.
If the purpose of international laws of war were to prohibit law-abiding nations like Israel and the U. S. from defending themselves against terrorist groups and states such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, lawlessness would be predominant in today’s world.
The sad fact is that the people who applaud Hamas, Hezbollah, and other groups daily raining tens of rockets over Israel’s civilian population and who had openly declared their wish to exterminate every Jew “from the river to the sea” are not only not being condemned, but the Pope and the ICC excuse their acts.