By Ben Peterson

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either–but right through every human heart–and through all human hearts.
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn 

After a brief truce for hostage-prisoner exchanges, Israel has resumed its war with Hamas, the militant Islamist organization which governs the Gaza Strip. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear: “We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that nobody in Gaza can threaten Israel.” Since October 7, when Hamas members and supporters killed an estimated 1,200 Israeli citizens and soldiers, injured many more, and took 236 people hostage in a terroristic rampage, Israel’s military has conducted an intensive campaign of air strikes and begun a ground incursion. Public health officials in Gaza report that Israel’s military has killed more than 17,700 people, though this estimate does not distinguish between civilians and militants and is at this point unreliable because it is not independently verified from sources outside Hamas’s control. The United Nations estimates that the war has displaced some 1.8 million Gaza residents from their homes. Basic resources and services are unavailable in many parts of the tiny, densely populated enclave, and parts of northern Gaza including Gaza City are in ruins.

Ben Peterson

In addition to leaders of nations around the world who voted at the United Nations for a “sustained humanitarian truce,” one United States senator, a number of House members, and other prominent voices in the U.S. have called for an unconditional ceasefire on Israel’s part. Jacob Nagel, former national security adviser to Netanyahu and senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, expresses an alternative, “decisive victory” view: “Israel’s leadership must focus on achieving a complete decisive victory, meeting all the war goals, as defined by the cabinet: a complete negation of Hamas’ existence in Gaza, destruction of its military, governmental, and organizational capabilities, and killing of all its leaders (regardless of their geographical location) and those who took part in the planning and execution of the barbaric attack on Israel, and first and foremost the return of all the hostages and bodies to Israel.” 

Is Israel’s war, both in terms of rationale and prosecution, just and wise? As the faculty at Brown University who signed a letter calling for a ceasefire wrote, American arms and support are contributing to Israel’s war efforts, morally implicating American taxpayers. 

The goals of bringing home the hostages, removing Hamas from power in Gaza, and ensuring no one in Gaza can threaten Israel are eminently defensible according to just war theory. Terrible though the Israeli military’s destruction of life and property in Gaza is–and it is terrible–pursuing these aims is just even if it causes incidental civilian deaths. There is some evidence suggesting that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) may have exceeded the bounds of just war in prosecuting the effort, though this is exceedingly difficult to discern. But to call for an unconditional ceasefire on the Israelis’ part is to place an unjust demand on a legitimate government seeking redress for grievous atrocities against its citizens and security from future attacks. 

The stated goal of completely destroying Hamas entirely raises a thornier issue at the crux of the matter: Palestinians’ widespread support for or acquiescence to Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza presents a vexing challenge to the Israelis and their allies. Since Hamas is so embedded within the civil and social infrastructure of Gaza, completely eradicating the organization will not be possible without destroying much of that infrastructure and further devastation. The Israelis thus face a moral and strategic dilemma: if they stop short of eradicating Hamas, they risk emboldening those who would sponsor and commit future attacks. But eradicating Hamas as an organization, if it is possible, will likely not eradicate the underlying rejection of Israel’s legitimacy or the sense of grievance helping fuel militancy styled as liberation. Destroying Hamas, and much of Gaza with it, may intensify that sense of grievance. 

The Israelis are not, as many have contended, committing genocide or enacting a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing. But there is a sentiment with increasing prevalence among Israelis and some American commentators, especially after the terrorist attacks on October 7, that there is no solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict because of Palestinian intransigence. That view is understandable and even has some merit; yet, unconstrained, it opens the door to contemplation of injustices and evils against Palestinians. The people of Israel and their allies face not only the threat from Hamas and its partners but also the challenge of upholding the moral commitments differentiating their society from those who seek to destroy it. 

War, Principle, and Humanity

There is a view prevalent among some college students and college-educated Americans that the Israelis are entirely responsible for the war and violence unfolding today, that Israeli strategy and policy created the conditions for and provoked Hamas’s acts of resistance–the stance of Hamas’s leadership itself. On this view, Hamas’s acts of indiscriminate and callous violence are foreseeable and natural results of Israel’s occupation and control of the West Bank and Gaza, including some five million Palestinians who live as stateless dependents in these territories. 

It’s true that Israeli policies, especially since 1967 when Israel wrested these territories from Jordan and Egypt in the Six Day War, burden and disadvantage Palestinians. Yet, the line of thinking justifying the abominable actions of Hamas members and affiliates as legitimate acts of resistance is distorted and reductive, shamefully so. A genuine moral analysis cannot absolve the leaders and members of Hamas of their responsibility for the evil they perpetrate or the principles and purposes animating their organization, which include encouraging the destruction of the state of Israel and celebrating the slaughter of Jews. Hamas leaders’, members’, and affiliates’ choice to attack and brutalize Israeli citizens is the primary, proximate cause of this war and the current misery of millions in Israel and Gaza. Hamas could immediately end the war by freeing the hostages and surrendering, rather than promising further attacks, as some Palestinian officials and other Arab leaders have apparently suggested to the group. 

The Israelis’ policies in Gaza and the West Bank and their defensive posture aren’t independent of their experience of Hamas’s attacks since 2005, and the First and Second Intifadas, and the multiple threats they have faced all the way back to the surrounding Arab countries’ attack on the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, in the fairly immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. And today, according to the principles of just war, Israelis are justified in responding militarily to Hamas’s wanton attacks and refusing to tolerate any longer Hamas’s governance of Gaza. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and has continually attacked Israeli soldiers and citizens since its inception. The state of Israel has the legitimate authority to defend the lives and property of its citizens, and the Israelis are engaged in a military response to an organization implacably and demonstrably opposed to their peaceful and secure existence. Israel withdrew from direct occupation of Gaza in 2005, attempting defensive means of preventing rocket attacks and other forms of terrorism such as the blockade, the Iron Dome, and more limited tactical operations. Their prior short-term military incursions have not eliminated the threat from Hamas. Their cause, based on self-defense, satisfies justice of war (jus ad bellum). 

That doesn’t mean every action Israel takes satisfies justice in war (jus in bello). There is a danger in this war, as in every war, of violating jus in bello to advance a just cause. The justice of Israel’s cause also doesn’t mean Israel’s war or its prolongation is wise or that a ceasefire would not be a better, more just and prudent course of action. 

Some scholars, including Israeli historian Raz Segal, have said Israel’s military response to the attacks constitutes a genocide, which the U.N. defines as follows: “Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Some employ broader definitions of genocide, slashing the requirement of intent. Those who charge Israel with genocide focus on a number of statements by Israeli officials that seem to treat Gazans as collectively responsible for Hamas. Some Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and President Isaac Herzog have made comments seeming to promote an indiscriminate response toward Gazans, treating them as collectively responsible for Hamas’s attacks–though Gallant’s “human animals” comment referred to Hamas fighters, and Herzog clarified he was not advocating indiscriminate targeting of Palestinians in Gaza. 

Scholars who reject the claim that Israel is committing genocide correctly point out that Israel is at war against Hamas, not aiming to destroy Palestinians or Gazans as a group. The Israelis are trying to eradicate an obvious threat to their safety and security, not kill and destroy the Palestinians as a people. As the editors of the New York Times noted, quite unlike Hamas, Israel’s military distinguishes between combatants and civilians and aims to minimize civilian casualties. As Sam Harris pointed out, there is a significant difference between Israel and Hamas, ascribable to different guiding principles and cultural commitments. That difference provides a basis for a degree of moral clarity and respect for Israel as a nation-state committed to defending itself within the boundaries of just war and the international law of war.

Israel’s official position does not mean its armed forces will abide perfectly by the standards, or that in every instance Israel’s military forces act justly. While Israel does not officially target civilians and in many cases takes steps to warn and prevent civilian deaths, Israelis’ threshold for civilian death and destruction of property may indeed be too high to meet the demands of justice in war and international law, particularly with regard to the principle of proportionality, which prohibits attacks “which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”

Netanyahu said to a CBS News reporter that the attempt to minimize civilian casualties has been unsuccessful. In an analysis of Israel’s October 31 strike on Jabalia refugee camp, which killed an estimated 126 civilians including many children, Mark Lattimer has argued that Israel’s threshold for acceptable levels of civilian casualties is much higher than the U.S.’s has been throughout the war on terror and associated engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. The civilian death toll–again, hard to ascertain and to be treated with caution, particularly at this early stage because we are reliant on figures from Hamas-controlled public health officials that have yet to be verified—in past conflicts these figures have tended to be roughly confirmed—appears high compared to Israel’s past incursions in Gaza and the U.S.’s months-long, casualty-heavy battles in Fallujah in 2004 and Mosul in 2014. That said, Hamas intentionally places civilians at risk in Gaza. 

The Israelis’ use of large American-made bombs has likely contributed to a high death toll, and Israel’s restriction on water during a near-total siege of Gaza, which Gallant announced on October 9 but the military relaxed on October 15 under U.S. pressure, is questionable according to international law and principles Israel’s own courts have adopted. Some investigative reporting has alleged, based on anonymous sources identified as former and current Israeli intelligence personnel, that Israel uses a very broad definition of military targets to justify attacks that are primarily designed to cause destruction of civilian property and damage civilian morale. 

In addition to the recent military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israeli leaders have reportedly made private comparisons to the allied bombing campaigns in World War II, including the U.S.’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. The comparison does not help Israel’s case; the Allied forces’ carpet bombing of German and Japanese cities and use of atomic bombs to force an unconditional Japanese surrender was, in my view, unjustified in terms of just war, constituting intentional attacks on civilians aimed at weakening morale. If anything, the comparison inadvertently supports Israel’s position by way of contrast: to the extent Israel is violating jus in bello, it’s much less clear than in these examples from the U.S. and her allies in WWII. 

Hamas and the State of Gaza 

More broadly, though, the comparison reflects an attitude that this is an existential conflict between two societies requiring a total war approach that does not distinguish between civilians and combatants–and this is at the heart of the matter. Some, such as retired Major General Giora Eiland, a respected commentator on public affairs, forthrightly take this approach, arguing that Israel’s conflict is not only with Hamas but with the “State of Gaza.” According to Michael Doran, there is an emerging divergence on this score between Israeli attitudes toward the conflict and that of American officials’, clinging to the notion of a postwar path to a two-state solution. 

It must be said there is a good deal of truth to the view that this is a broader intersocietal conflict. While Israel estimates Hamas has about 30,000 actual fighters, support for the group is somewhat broader within Gaza and the West Bank, though it shifts frequently. Support for armed resistance to Israel is is even clearer and even broader. One analysis of polling found that majorities of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank support neither a two-state solution–nor even a one-state solution–but instead favor armed resistance and renewed intifada (uprising). Other polling efforts from the Washington Institute earlier this year showed less–though still substantial–support for Hamas and violent resistance. Yet, these polls reveal widespread support for other militant groups in the Palestinian territories. Analysts also point out that Hamas has intentionally embedded its physical and governmental infrastructure, including an extensive network of tunnels, amidst the neighborhoods and civilian facilities in Gaza. 

Not only decisive victory advocates, but also ceasefire advocates and critics of the war recognize this uncomfortable truth. Some argue that even if Hamas’s leadership can be destroyed, the ideas that fuel recruitment and support for the organization will continue to fuel resistance against Israel, making the stated war aim of destroying Hamas impossible–at least without mass killing. Arguing for a ceasefire, Shadi Hamid noted that the destruction of Hamas would require a high degree of indiscriminate violence: “Truly eliminating the organization—one with hundreds of thousands of supporters and sympathizers—would require mass killing on an unprecedented scale.” 

There is truth to the totalizing view of Eiland and others, but there is a serious danger here of justifying genocide, ethnic cleansing, and abandonment of the pursuit of peace. Gideon Levy and other progressive Israelis have accused Eiland of such, and he comes close, unphased by the notion that eradicating Hamas will require mass killing and indicating indifference toward sickness and disease in Gaza. Multiple Israeli officials and Knesset members have called for the use of nuclear weapons in Gaza, or for otherwise indiscriminate attacks. 

Thinking of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians as an intersocietal conflict with no solution–and again, there are some reasonable grounds for doing so–may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. According to the United Nations and reports by Israel-based organizations like B’Tselem, Israeli settlers in the West Bank continue to squeeze, harass, and attack Palestinians in the West Bank, at an increasing rate since October 7, though reported violence in the region is far from one-sided. One Israeli Knesset member of Netanyahu’s Likud party explicitly called for a new Nabka in Gaza, a term meaning ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’ that many Palestinians and Arabs use for the period of conflict surrounding the formation of Israel, when some 700,000 people, around half the Arab population in British Palestine at the time, fled the war or Jewish militia who forced them out. 

A Better Peace? 

The U.S. has so far struck the right posture, urging Israel to minimize civilian casualties, give attention to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and curtail settler violence; promoting and facilitating the truce for hostage-return negotiations, but not unconditional ceasefire. Still, many questions remain about the peace that will follow the war. 

One requirement of a just war is that its aim is to establish a peace superior to the peace preceding the war. The Israelis, even those on the left, will not live with Hamas’s governance of Gaza, and they should not. But it’s not clear who will govern the territory following the war. Neither the Palestinian Authority, nor Egypt, nor any of the nearby Gulf States are interested. The Israelis intend to maintain a robust security presence–Netanyahu uses the phrase “overall security responsibility”–in Gaza, but without reoccupying it, for years to come. 

There are no obvious good options, and the challenge is to find the most just and prudent path. Some have argued that the attempt to eradicate Hamas, along with a return to Israel’s pre-October 7 policies, including the blockade coordinated with Egypt, could encourage further radicalization among the Gazan population. That may be so, but Hamas’s leaders, supporters, and bankrollers in Lebanon and Iran could also be emboldened by an Israeli failure to achieve decisive victory and remove Hamas from power, leaving Israelis more vulnerable to future attacks. That said, if Eiland and Hamid are correct about what would be required to truly destroy Hamas, it may be that goal is unachievable at an acceptable cost in terms of Gazans’ suffering and Israeli blood and treasure. The more just and prudent path may be, as Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv argue, to accomplish a more limited aim of killing or exiling core Hamas leaders and operatives before putting a halt to the devastation in Gaza. 

The nature of the postwar peace does not only depend on Israel. There will be no just and lasting peace in the region until Palestinians broadly come to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and exhibit sustained willingness to find a compromise solution based on that premise. 

Moral Clarity and Moral Humility 

In The Gulag Archipelago, the great Russian thinker Alexander Solzhenitsyn exposed the inhumanity and brutality of prison camps in the Soviet Union. Yet, he stressed that the perpetrators of these acts were not uniquely evil. Rather, he exposed something about how evil lurks in all our hearts and can take hold in a society. He understood what Jesus taught: “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7:21-22). Solzhenitsyn achieved moral clarity about the evil basis and character of the Soviet Union, clarity that eluded many observers and visitors to the Soviet Union as recognizing the evil Hamas perpetrated eludes many today. Yet, Solzhenitsyn also saw the susceptibility to evil in Western Europe and the United States, and the dangers of a society forgetting God. He argued that nations have a right to defend themselves, but also that, like persons, they should practice collective responsibility, repentance, and self-limitation. Morality, he insisted, applies to nations and peoples as well as to particular persons. 

The line separating good and evil is shifting and runs through persons and nations. That is not to equate persons, nations, and organizations, which differ drastically in terms of their core moral and spiritual commitments, animating principles, strategic posture, and patterns of behavior. It is to recognize the depth of human fallenness at the root of all our wars and against which we must continually appeal to God’s salvation. Israel’s war in Gaza is just and necessary, but it demands vigilance, not only against threats to physical security, but from the specter of evil lurking within every unredeemed human heart. 

Ben Peterson is an assistant professor of political science at Abilene Christian University.