John Polonis
2 min readOct 18, 2024

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I really appreciate your perspective and agree with many of your points here about how Israel has violated international law (especially in terms of proportionate responses). With that said, please consider a few factors when assessing Israel's jus ad bellum and jus in bello, none of which you mentioned:

1) Hamas didn't just attack innocent Israeli civilians on October 7th, it also kidnapped hostages (many of whom later died and many who have still not returned to Israel). That certainly justified retaliation by Israel to get them back, although Israel should have used much more precision.

2) Hamas has stated in its own charter for years that its express intent is to wipe Israel off the map. How is that not genocidal intent to exterminate the only Jewish state in the world? Netanyahu may be extreme and undemocratic, but Hamas is arguably far worse.

3) Hamas does not fight in the open. They do not wear uniforms. There is plenty of evidence of them using civilian locations (hospitals, schools, and the like) to hide their military operations. The numbers of casualties they report do not distinguish between innocent Gazan civilians and Hamas militants. This is a war they welcomed to the streets of Gaza, and although that still does not justify Israel's disproportionate response, it does raise mitigating questions about their ultimate culpability.

All that said, international law needs help. And you did a great job exposing its weaknesses. I wish there were easier solutions, but without clear enforcement mechanisms, I'm afraid it's more "might makes right" as opposed to a balanced and blind enforcement of the rule of law.

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