8/ Just some thoughts, partly thanks to that Catholic university undergrad just war theory class I took years ago.

7/ Even here, calling Oct. 7 “self-defense” risks sanitizing a campaign that has not been about protection but about punitive, indiscriminate, and genocidal violence.

6/ Anyways, I think Walzer’s assessments of Israel (1948, 1967, etc.) are consistently tilted in Israel’s favor - he tends to treat Israeli force as “defensive” by default and then debate excesses as after-the-fact.

5/ this points less to a constrained defensive action and more to punitive and indiscriminate war-making inconsistent with just war requirements.

4/ Walzer himself states that the campaign drifted into “crazed, criminal revenge” and condemns siege tactics as morally wrong and lacking military value; combined with the enormous foreseeable civilian harm and operational choices that endangered and killed even Israeli hostages,

3/ In that setting, “self-defense” rhetoric obscures the legal structure of the occupation and its duties toward the Palestinian population. Morally, even if one grants a prima facie protective cause, just war theory still requires right intention, necessity, proportionality, and discrimination.

2/ On the Court’s assessment, Israel remained capable of exercising key elements of authority over Gaza. It was therefore “not entirely released” from obligations under occupation law, commensurate with its effective control.

Who could have guessed that dismantling equality before the law and the institutions meant to restrain executive power—courts, checks and balances, separation of powers—would be inimical to liberal democracy?

Feliz cumpleaños, Dana!

babb3at-lik 3naaq, ya Dana

www.ynetnews.com/jewish-world...