"When an Israeli airstrike kills a Hamas commander along with 40 civilians, the IDF spokesperson says the civilian casualties were unavoidable because of Hamas’s human shield strategy (you can read a new report about this strategy here)."
I opened the report to which you linked and on page 50, I found that Andrew Fox and Salo Aizenberg wrote: “The most prominent use by Hamas of these humanitarian zones was the establishment of a command centre by senior Hamas leader Mohammed Deif within the tent encampments.”
And:
"Deif and other Hamas operatives deliberately used the humanitarian area in an effort to impede an Israeli attack on him. Only through high-quality intelligence was Israel able to precisely locate and strike his position; however, there were still reports of civilian collateral damage resulting from the attack."
Since I did not find mention 40 of civilian deaths in any incident in their report, I looked further. I24 News wrote:
"Initial reports from Gazan officials said that 40 people had been killed as Israel struck the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, although Israel promptly disputed this. The Gazan health ministry later revised the number down to 19.
Among the terrorists struck was Samer Ismail Khadr Abu Daqqa, Head of Hamas’ Aerial Unit in the Gaza Strip," the IDF said in a statement. "Additionally, the terrorist Osama Tabesh, Head of the Observation and Targets Department in Hamas' Military Intelligence Headquarters, and Ayman Mabhouh, another senior Hamas terrorist, were struck during the operation."
All were involved in planning and executing Oct 7th.
For the family members of those civilians killed, 19 is 19 too many. But it is not 40.
And you want to put the PA in charge of Gaza? You are comparing the PA with the Japanese emperor?
The PA pays terrorists to kill Jews. And 85% of the PA population want Abbas gone. Anyone Abbas would appoint after he dies or can no longer, for health reasons, control the PA would continue his policies or Hamas would take over since they would have won the last election and that is why Abbas cancelled it. This is who you want to see control Gaza?
Well you should first of all ask this question to the Israeli government - why do they allow them to continue to rule the parts of the West Bank we have subcontracted out to them? We know the answer - because the alternative is worse. And in this case, I also think that, despite all the problems (on that note this recent analysis is worth reading: https://israelpolicyforum.org/2025/02/13/if-israel-is-serious-about-deradicalization-its-time-to-put-up-or-shut-up/) is also better than asking our soldiers to commit war crimes by expelling the civilian population from Gaza and/or reoccupying the Strip and building settlements there (which we also can neither afford nor do we have sufficient soldiers for the task, mainly because the most right-wing government in Israel's history, the same right-wing government whose policies led to the single worst day in Israel's history, wants to support mass evasion of IDF enlistment).
Hi Sheri - I was giving a generic rather than a specific example. Certainly there have been attacks that have killed more than 40 as well - you could have also criticized me for not saying that. Nor has every single one of the 'targeted assassinations' taken out someone involved in planning and executing Oct 7. In this sense, the basic point remains, and if you want you can ask yourself whether you would personally shoot 19 civilians if they were between you and Muhammed Deif. And you can also ask the question for far more low-ranking figures, which we have also killed.
I don't have the answers here either. Even if may not agree with everything you have written, I appreciate reading a dissenting voice, not born out of malice, but an existential ache. Thank you.
Let’s begin with the obvious: Hamas’ murderous attack on October 7 bears little no resemblance to Pearl Harbor - beyond the similarity of the two being peacetime surprise attacks.
Hamas was attacking and slaughtering mostly unarmed civilians while the Japanese targeted the U.S. military.
Hamas’ goal was the destruction of Israel while Japan sought to control its “neighborhood” under its “co-prosperity” policy. It sought to remove U.S. influence from the Far East, not to murder every last American and take over the U.S.
The War in the Pacific was a brutal affair with each side using racial stereotypes against the other. Yet, the decision to use of the atomic bomb has been challenged but only because it achieved its central purpose which was to avoid the need for a U.S. invasion of Japan’s home islands at an estimated cost (based on the Okinawa experience) of 1 million U.S. casualties and untold millions of Japanese. Intelligence confirmed that the Japanese had figured out where the landings would take place and were busy reinforcing those areas.
Historians have uncovered Japanese documents, one of which concluded that because of the costs and complexities involved, the U.S. might have only 2 or 3 bombs with little hope of making more. That undermines the idea of demonstrating the atomic bomb for show - and that’s on top of the simple fact that there was no guarantee the bomb would work.
While there is no Palestinian Hirohito, it bears remembering the earth shattering significance of his speaking directly to his people (after a military coup had been put down) - that ended the divine awe in which he was held and opened the opportunity to end the war.
The equivalent for the Arabs would be a highly respected Sunni scholar convincingly declaring to the faithful that the multitude of anti-Jewish declarations in the Qur’an, Hadiths and Suras are all Satanic Verses to be rejected. Sadly, the chances of such a thing happening approach zero.
And, while the U.S. had no territorial designs on Japan to speak of, it did occupy the country until 1955, thereby changing the culture and politics significantly. And then, of course, there’s the matter of the Cold War and changing strategic priorities for both countries.
Perhaps the only similarity with Hamas was the strategy to sacrifice their own people to bleed the other side’s forces and unleash home front opposition to the loss of U.S. (and now Israeli) soldiers, thereby forcing a more favorable settlement. That was one of the calculations in the U.S. decision to drop the bomb. To dissuade the use of such psychopathic strategies in the future, there seems little choice but to be firm now in Gaza.
While some claim that Hamas is an idea and you can’t kill an idea - putting aside the fact that the “idea” is a genocidal one, directed at the Jews in the first instance but inevitably at the entirety of the non-Muslim world - the Middle East is famously the land of the “strong horse”. If Hamas is comprehensively defeated and publicly so, then the ideas it championed will be discredited. That brutal reality needs to be addressed not ignored.
Simply put, the war in Gaza ends upon Hamas’ surrender. Why much of the world seems to go out of its way to prevent this scenario and prefers to pressure Israel is what requires elucidation.
As to Gaza, another significant difference is that Japan stood on its own in terms of its military needs while Hamas is largely dependent on its Iranian patron. So while Japan was the appropriate target for the U.S., a strong case may be made that peace in Gaza ultimately runs through Teheran.
All that said, wars should not be entered into lightly but Hamas began this one - and may have expected Hezbollah to launch a similar, massive surprise attack in the North. We may never know why Hezbollah didn’t, but in the end the rule remains: you start a war of aggression that you lose, there are consequences to your sovereignty.
Nazi Germany’s territory was significantly reduced after its loss and 12 million ethnic Germans moved. Japan was forced to relinquish its holdings in Korea and China. There is no reason why Gaza doesn’t lose territory as well, but for the well-known fact that the world operates under a unique set of rules that apply only to Israel.
To those who claim that war should entail no territorial losses regardless of who initiated the conflict, must explain how a failed aggression is otherwise punished. Currently, no such rule or process exists, and until one is created and implemented, the accepted rule remains in force.
Hi Charles - 1) Throughout the entire series I was very clear that these were not precise analogies but imprecise parallels. I'm sorry that wasn't clear enough vis-a-vis Pearl Harbor. The point was simply that this was the casus belli for the subsequent war. 2) Your point about the production of the bomb is fair, but it doesn't address why the actual scientists who commissioned the bomb thought a warning was desirable. 3) Germany lost around 25% of its prewar territory, including some areas that had been German-controlled for a long time, some for just a few years. As you note, Japan lost its imperial territories, but it didn't lose any of its home territories (although, as you also note, there was a US occupation). Either way, they remained substantial states and soon became among the richest in the world. 3) You imply that there is a set of rules in the contemporary world whereby countries lose territory if they initiate war, but this is false. Iraq didn't lose any territory as a result of its invasion of Kuwait; Russia isn't going to lose any territory because of its invasion of Ukraine (if anything the opposite). In short, "the accepted rule" doesn't remain in force, because it doesn't actually exist. 4) Finally, one of the most important differences you fail to note is that Gaza is not a sovereign entity; Hamas is not an internationally recognized government. This, I think, explains a lot of the dynamics surrounding the war that trouble you.
Thanks, Alex, for your thoughtful reply. If the point of your analogies was simply to identify a “casus belli”, you might have avoided confusion by simply pointing to the specific event. As a famous judge once said, and I paraphrase, you deploy an analogy if it answers more questions than it raises.
Second, it is incorrect to assert that the Manhattan Project scientists were unanimous in their recommendation to use the bomb as a warning. And, given the Japanese thinking I mentioned before the bomb dropped and their response after, such a demonstration would most likely not have achieved the intended goal.
Third, the rule that the failed aggressor loses territory still holds. That the successful defender (either direct or allied) preferred to reinstate the status quo rather than penalize the aggressor is a policy decision that has no effect on normative international law. And even the second Iraq war as well as the U.S. deployment in Afghanistan can be said to have led to periods of occupation.
Finally, I am unsure of what point you are trying to make by saying Gaza isn’t a sovereign entity nor is Hamas a legally recognized government. In disregard of the requirements of the Montevideo Convention if 1933, some 140 nations have recognized the existence of a State of Palestine within the territories lost by Egypt and Jordan in 1967 - which is to say, the lands these countries illegally seized and took in an aggressive war against Israel in 1947-49 and which only in the late ‘80s were suddenly and without any legal analysis recharacterized as OPT.
And none of these 140 countries has claimed that Hamas has lost its electoral legitimacy from 2006 for any reason - including Abbas’ failure to schedule any “national” elections since - as such a position would apply to the PA and Abbas himself who is in the 20th year of his 4 year term. So your premise would appear to be misguided.
It remains the case that special rules, a nearly obsessive international focus and a very slanted public information campaign are principally deployed uniquely against Israel. That much should be an uncontroversial observation.
I didn't say they were unanimous - as I wrote in the article, the figure appears to have been 83%. Regarding the rule, where exactly is this written down? And just ot be clear, by your last point are you claiming that a Palestinian state exists? A Gaza state? A Hamas state? In any case, we know that no country in the world has recognized the Hamas government as a sovereign entity. You may think they should, and you may think international law thinks they should, but the reality is that they (and this of course includes Israel) don't. The point about their "electoral legitimacy" is irrelevant. Either Gaza is a state, or it isn't. And it isn't. I of course agree with your final paragraph; that is the unfortunate reality but it still must be contended with rather than simply wished away.
To answer your question, I was observing what those 140 countries have declared. I should point out that not one has declared Hamas to be the illegitimate rulers in Gaza. At best, they have said nothing or hinted that perhaps it would be better if the PA returned - though not one has called for new elections.
My views on Palestine statehood might have been gleaned by my reference to these countries disregard of the requirements of the Montevideo Convention which sets out the international law requirements for statehood.
Just to be absolutely clear (and understanding that it changes nothing on the ground or in any ministry), the territories claimed by the Palestinians are not a state but, were rules of international law consistently applied (starting with the doctrine of uti possidetis juris), Israel has the superior claim to sovereignty.
But as it has no intention of absorbing millions of Palestinians, eventually there will be some territorial concessions at some unknowable future date - whether even that might lead to a State of Palestine remains to be seen.
“Third, the rule that the failed aggressor loses territory still holds.”
I’m curious—whose rule is that?
As a matter of international law, there’s no body that adjudicates who the “aggressor” is in any conflict. If one side surrenders, there are legally binding terms and instruments of surrender that may include acceptance of war guilt and payment of reparations, such as the case at Versailles. But invariably, each side has their own version of events that generally casts themselves as the noble defenders forced to respond to the other side’s aggression. It’s generally left to the historians to sort out.
In fact, if there were a “first commandment” of the post-WW2 liberal international order, it would be “Thou Shalt Not acquire territory by war” as to disincentivize forcible land-grabs and wars of conquest that had been roiling Europe and their imperial entanglements for the previous hundred years (we’re looking at you, Vladimir Putin!)
Case in point:
Resolution 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967 The Security Council, Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East, Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security, Emphasising further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter
If morality actually played a role in international affairs, the world would be a different place, depending of course on whose morality was the decisive one. Most people in the West might take for granted that our view of “universal rights” would be the touchstone, but as the vast majority of the world rejects these principles, we fall back to a “might makes right” universe.
Like it or not, over time countries have mostly accepted an understanding of rules limiting the conduct of war, unless of course they face an existential crisis or prefer the advantages of asymmetry - I’m a terrorist group, so only you have to follow the rules which I will also use against you. (I tossed that last bit in as a slight counter to the “standard Israel critical Western fare” view of Gaza. It’s far more complex, even if the media weren’t misreporting most events there).
The other issue I have arises from the penchant for retrospective judgment born of the simple fact that, as we know how things turned out, we are in the comfortable position of imagining and gaming out alternatives, some available at the time, others not even thought of.
Everyone agrees that war is bad and all deaths are to be mourned as civilians, for the most part, should not suffer for the decisions of the rulers. Yet even that view is a relatively recent advance in thinking.
But here’s a question to consider on the morality front. You ask by what moral right did the U.S. and France, though you should have added the UK and the Dutch (Indonesia ain’t nothing and it was a Dutch colony at the time) exclude Japan from its share in the bounty. The short answer is none as morality doesn’t come into the equation. If it did, the answer would still be none because the colonies should be by right independent.
Put in more realpolitik terms, the issue might be phrased: which colonial ruler would be better for the local population (independence not being an option)? Whatever horrors might be attributable to Western colonialism, the Japanese form was far worse. So would surrendering these people to that fate be a morally sustainable condition to spare Japanese civilians? I’m don’t think so.
It’s a messy world obviously, but as a matter of personal preference, I much prefer the world under the U.S. led post-WWII dispensation than one ruled by any of the Axis power, the Soviet Union, Xi’s China or any Caliphate. But that’s just me.
It’s not morality but the perceived national interests at stake that underpins state action. To quote from among many possibilities, Lord Palmerston, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” That is not to say there aren’t occasional exceptions though none spring readily to mind.
And if you think Truman acted morally in recognizing Israel, how would you then characterize his contemporaneous decision to slap a full arms embargo on Israel and prosecute Americans who were caught trying to get to Israel to serve in its defense forces or tried to break the embargo. While some avoided detection, others were in fact prosecuted.
And Truman did all this knowing full well that the UK was freely supplying arms to Egypt under a supposed treaty obligation and to Jordan which, in addition, had an officer corps led by British officers - General John Glubb “Pasha” being the most prominent?
Apologies. Comment misfire—meant to send it in main thread not under yours. Since corrected.
That said, I agree with you that international affairs are not generally determined on moral grounds by leaders and politicians in real-time. Through not always—we condemn Hamas terrorism on moral grounds, even where it makes “realpolitik” strategic sense from their POV.
But I read Alex’s series of posts as specifically looking reflectively at the moral justifications of past events and then trying to apply them where possible, to present events that are similarly fraught with impossible dilemmas.
And it makes sense to me when doing such (admittedly academic) exercises to apply the moral standards, writing about Israel as an Israeli or about America as an American, professed in the foundational creeds of those nations that conducted the military actions under question.
You have identified a basic flaw in the structure of international law: the lack of any final arbiter with enforcement authority, in effect the international equivalent of a domestic judiciary.
Of course, that has little to do with the centuries long development of international law that is widely seen as having begun with the writings of Grotius in the 17th century.
The definition of “aggressor”, “aggressive/defensive/preemptive war”, “genocide” and “apartheid” exist in international conventions or caselaw precedent.
That these concepts may be manipulated for political purposes by the UN itself and a gaggle of NGOs is a separate issue, even as it remains one without a solution for now.
Your essential argument is, in short, the victor tells the story. While peace treaties can formalize territorial exchange, these represent an agreement on terms and says nothing about the war’s legality or anything else. These treaties of surrender do serve to extinguish claims at international law, albeit on the fiction that it is a voluntary agreement entered into voluntarily. Yet, so long as the facts and evidence are not covered up, the essence of any conflict is available for all to see.
So, no impartial observer will be fooled into believing that Russia was provoked into waging a defensive war when it invaded Ukraine unprovoked, or that Israel’s return to Gaza is somehow not the direct consequence of Hamas’ genocidal October 7 invasion.
The issue with Israel has a further complication in that, were accepted doctrines of international law applied universally, the frontiers of the Mandate for Palestine as they existed at its termination in May 1948 would be acknowledged by operation of law as becoming those of Israel. It’s the same doctrine that legally made Crimea part of Ukraine at the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, uti possidetis juris.
As to UNSC resolution that you quote rather selectively, two things are noteworthy. First, this was a preemptive war by Israel - even the General Assembly, no friend of Israel, rejected a resolution that sought to pin the label of aggressor on Israel.
Second, in the more famous section that you omitted, what was requested (this was a resolution under Article VI not the mandatory Article VII) was a withdrawal from “territories” not “the territories” - a distinction everyone understood to mean that there was no legal prohibition against Israel retaining such territory as it deemed necessary to undo its “Auschwitz borders” that incentivized prior Arab attack.
It is also noteworthy that the Palestinians appear nowhere in UNSC 242 in any capacity other than as “refugees”. At the time, no one saw them as a “people” and any peaceful resolution would be among the existing nations - Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Syria to name the most obvious.
And this simple fact leads to another question: how did lands illegally seized, occupied for 19 years and lost by Jordan and Egypt suddenly became Palestinian. This transformation has been asserted not legally sustained - which in part explains the nature of every UN question submitted to the ICJ: Palestinian sovereignty is assumed and is not subject to inquiry. It’s a neat trick but one that doesn’t advance the goals of international law.
Everyone would love to live in a world where international conflicts can be peacefully resolved as is the case domestically. It’s a false parallel so long as countries retain the lawful use of violence making enforcement well nigh impossible.
As to the specific question we were discussing, until international law can effectively penalize a failed aggressor state so that it doesn’t simply regroup and try again, the centuries old customary practice is the loss of territory of the losing aggressor. And that’s implicit in UNSC 242.
Very well done and it made me recalibrate many of my opinions on the topic of the US decisionmaking in the Pacific in WW2.
(My opinion on the Gaza war is standard Israel-critical western liberal fare, so I’ll save my typing)
My take is that the war with Japan started over perceived national interests and imperial rivalries in the Pacific Ocean wherein a rising Japan wanted more of a cut of what France and US enjoyed in the region. The actions of Imperial Japan to their subjugated victims in the region (and American, Filipino, and Australian POWs) were horrendous, but by what moral right did the US have to go to total war to deny Japan a share of the bounty?
Yet the Pacific war ended when the US employed weapons of mass destruction, deliberately targeting civilian populations as to put political pressure on its government for a desired outcome. In fact, there’s a name for this kind of attack when a non-state actor does it—-George W. Bush used it a lot. I can’t dismiss that, even with myriad moral distinctions to be made abound.
The Pearl Harbor attack was indeed the initiation of hostilities, but there was a clear strategic logic to the attack to cripple the US Navy Pacific fleet. The question isn’t whether some military response to the attack was justified, but whether the nature of the self-justifying chain of events and ultimate outcome 4 years later was justified. It wasn’t done in collective self-defense of citizens of the United States who were never seriously threatened. It was just about material interests. Yet, in addition to Japanese loss-of-life, it cost 110,000 American sailors and Marines their lives.
I can’t think of a universal moral frame of reference (i.e., one that weighs perceived national interests of parties involved on an equal footing without appeals to either side’s internal ideologies) that supports the decision to use nuclear weapons—or firebombing for that matter. Therefore I cannot find the events of Aug 1945 to be morally justifiable in any absolute sense. Yet I suspect any American president, past or future, would have done or would do the same thing if they were in Truman’s shoes. Besides, if Truman had decided against dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he probably would have just firebombed them instead. As you pointed out in an earlier article, the incendiary campaign on Tokyo was in many ways worse than the nuclear attacks. Unconditional surrender may have been a political necessity for any occupant of the White House, but that doesn’t mean it was a moral one.
All that said, a society that is capable of seriously and soberly weighing the moral costs of past actions with open-eyes before coming to conclusions about them is a much, much healthier one than one that takes justifications for that same conclusion as self-evident and unworthy of further reflection.
This is a thoughtful and morally serious piece, and I appreciate its refusal to settle for easy certainties. That said, I’d like to respectfully offer a different perspective on two underlying premises that seem to shape the analysis.
First, the idea that the war “started on October 7” risks overlooking the longer historical continuum of violence that led to this moment. While the Hamas-led attacks on that day were abhorrent and indefensible, they did not mark the beginning of this crisis, but rather a horrific escalation within a much deeper and ongoing pattern of violence and structural oppression.
According to UN OCHA records, between 2008 and October 6, 2023, more than 6,400 Palestinians—including over 1,400 children—were killed by Israeli military actions and settler violence. Gaza had already endured four major military offensives (2008–09, 2012, 2014, and 2021), resulting in thousands of civilian deaths and repeated destruction of essential infrastructure. Under blockade since 2007, Gaza’s population faces severe humanitarian conditions: over 80% reliant on aid, clean water access below 4% (WHO Gaza Bulletin), and unemployment near 45%.
In the West Bank, the first nine months of 2023 alone saw at least 230 Palestinians killed, making it the deadliest year there since the Second Intifada—even before October 7.
Recognizing this history doesn’t excuse Hamas’s atrocities, but it does seem essential to avoid framing the current crisis as a sudden and isolated eruption rather than the culmination of long-standing structural violence. That framing shapes whether we search for solutions that address only immediate symptoms or confront deeper, underlying causes.
Second, I wonder whether the Japan analogy, while provocative, might inadvertently cast Israel in the role of the WWII Allied powers—a comparison that feels uneasy given the vast asymmetries of power, the ongoing occupation, and the lack of a sovereign Palestinian state. Unlike Imperial Japan, Hamas does not control an industrialized nation-state or command a conventional military force. Israel, by contrast, holds overwhelming military dominance and faces a population under occupation and siege.
If, as you suggest, we are living through “impossible dilemmas and imperfect outcomes,” perhaps the most demanding test of leadership lies in the willingness to pursue political choices that minimize suffering—not normalize it. That requires not only imagining a better future after the war, but making difficult, humane decisions now to avoid its endless repetition.
I share these thoughts as someone working at the intersection of political theory and human rights, grappling with how historical memory and structural violence shape our understanding of current crises.
Hi - thanks for your comments. 1) The start of the war: I agree that one can't understand October 7 without understanding the wider context of the failure to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but I find your focus too reductive. Mainly because you yourself don't mention another part of the wider context - namely Hamas's decision post-disengagement to turn the Gaza Strip into a military base with which to attack Israel rather than an example of why Palestinian sovereignty should be widened to the West Bank as well. I'm fine recognizing the history of the occupation etc but one also needs to recognize the history of Palestinian rejectionism (and of course Israeli rejectionism), rather than a simple story of good and evil in which Hamas's invasion is simply a brutal response to Israeli oppression, as if Palestinian decision-making hasn't also played a role in bringing us to this juncture. 2) Regarding the second point, I tried to make it clear that these were not exact parallels; as for the political choices, this brings us back to our discussion of your article; I can't assess them without you specifying what you think these should be.
Thank you for this thoughtful engagement. I take your point that any serious analysis must also account for the decisions made by Palestinian actors, including Hamas, and the long history of political rejectionism across all sides. My aim wasn’t to present a simple story of good and evil, but to highlight that when we mark October 7 as the “start” of the war, we risk framing this moment as an unprecedented rupture rather than a tragic escalation of longstanding structural conditions—which shape, but of course don’t determine, political choices.
On the point about Hamas’s post-disengagement militarization of Gaza, I agree this is a critical part of the context. But it also seems important to ask why disengagement did not translate into meaningful political or economic sovereignty for Gazans, and whether the ongoing blockade—and the absence of viable pathways for self-determination—contributed to the entrenchment of hardline actors over time.
If the siege of Gaza was justified on the grounds of security, then by any reasonable measure, it has clearly failed to deliver that security—for either Palestinians or Israelis. Instead, it has entrenched suffering, empowered hardline actors, and repeatedly produced catastrophic outcomes. Acknowledging this doesn’t absolve anyone of responsibility for their decisions; it simply insists that we look honestly at how structural conditions shape those decisions over time.
On the question of justice, I’ve tried to indicate in previous comments that my thinking is directed toward liberal democratic outcomes—outcomes that prioritize human dignity, legal equality, and the protection of fundamental rights. But if you’re asking for a clearer picture of what that means in practice, I would put it this way: every individual living between the river and the sea should enjoy the same fundamental rights and protections that you currently enjoy as an Israeli citizen.
That includes personal security, legal equality, political freedom, and the ability to lead a dignified, meaningful life free from violence, domination, and fear.
Whatever political arrangement—two states, one state, some form of confederation… or indeed whatever!—that can achieve (or get closer to) that outcome should be pursued.
Justice, in this sense, doesn’t require a perfected final-status map; it requires a political and legal order in which no population remains permanently subject to occupation, blockade, or exclusion, and where rights are not distributed based on ethnicity or citizenship status. That may not satisfy those looking for a complete blueprint, but I’d suggest it’s a more honest and practical starting point than deferring action until some ideal solution emerges—while injustice and suffering continue in the meantime.
I totally agree with you vis-a-vis desirable outcomes, although I'm not sure I'd agree that they're necessarily "just." And while I don't think it needs a "perfected" final-status map, it does still require a practical plan to achieve the support of the people living here. I'd add, though, that some people argue that the two-state solution is in itself unequal, because it does not allow for the Palestinian right of return; in this sense, describing the vision does not mean that the practical elements won't be contested. For my part, I try, albeit from my biased perspective, to use LoTL at least in part to modestly lay the groundwork for this future in terms of historical narratives, by explaining that Jews are not settler-colonial invaders and that Palestinians are not an invented people, but both have a deep (if somewhat different) relationship with the land that will also have to be acknowledged if we are ever to have a better future here.
Apologies for reading this a couple of weeks late - but, also as expected, fundamentally nothing has really changed since it was written.
The question now is whether Trump's apparent change of attitude to Israel's operations in Gaza will force Netanyahu to rethink the "occupy Gaza" plan that was announced just when you wrote this.
Right now it appears that the carte blanche has been very much withdrawn, although perhaps only temporarily.
Alex, surely you recognise how tendentious it is to assert that "the current war was started by Hamas when it invaded on October 7, making it the equivalent of Pearl Harbor." Analogies are imperfect, yes, but this erases all the necessary context and history which make October the 7th an abominable episode of terror in a longstanding conflict - whatever aspects of that you choose to emphasise, and whenever you date it from. Later in the piece you rightly talk about how the PA needs to be bought in from the cold as part of the solution for a post-Hamas Gaza. This points to the fact that the failure to pursue a two-state settlement in recent decades and the marginalisation of Palestinan actors committed to this is part of what has bought us to this point. For all your realist rhetoric of deterence, and your blithe dismissal of the laws of war, I have read nothing that convinces me remotely that destruction on this scale, the killing of so many innocents (many in situations which the "human shield" defense does not cover), and the despicable subjection of Gazan civilians to seige tactics will produce anything but even more violently rejectionist Hamas clones down the line.
I don't think it's tendentious at all. Exactly the same could be said about Pearl Harbor! Japan's attack also had a wider context - specifically the encroachment of Western imperialism and the Japanese response to this threat. But declaring war - as Japan and Hamas did - clearly marks a major departure from what came before. Because what Hamas did wasn't an "abominable episode of terror," but, as has been proven by documents found in Gaza, was a carefully planned invasion with clear strategic goals. I also reject the idea that I blithely dismiss the laws of war. I am, though, pointing out that if party X follows the rules of law while party Y ignores them, then party X will always lose, and other groups will be encouraged to mimic party Y's behavior. I would have much more respect for critics of Israel if they were able to acknowledge this point. A good example of this is the total denial, despite massive evidence to the contrary, of Hamas's use of hospitals for military purposes. As for the final point, I think this is a bit of a cliche, and not necessarily empirically grounded. If we bring it back to Japan, for example, then this would have meant that Hiroshima etc would have led to Japan being more determined to fight, but the reverse was true (this of course does not justify what was done).
The analogy is very limited, for reasons other posters have spelled out even if the description of "structural conditions" often omit important details, such as Iranian funding for terror groups and Islamic rejectionism. I don´t deny that October 7th was a major escalation, but Hamas have clearly regarded themselves at war with Israel since their inception. And of course I am signalling my utter rejection of Hamas with the words I use but they also point to the deliberate targeting of civilians and the abhorrent methods employed (just as I believe that the current far-right Israeli´government´s policy of starvation warfare is, by virtue of its indiscriminate assault on the civilian population, utterly "despicable"). I agree, however, that "invasion" should also be part of how that day is described. As for the rules of war, perhaps you could respond to critics one by one and what they say without feeling compelled to lump them all together. Regarding your point about tactics, clearly an organisation like Hamas is not going to fight in the open or they will be destroyed instantly. And like in any other situation where a military power confronts a guerrilla army / terrorist group operating among civilians, this does indeed create an enormous moral risk. Which is one of the reasons why military force is a limited means of responding to an event like October 7th and there needs to be, at minimum, a parallel political track towards Palestinian statehood and a strategy which marginalises rejectionist forces on both sides. But there is overwhelming evidence of a desire for revenge, destruction and ethnic cleansing among the most extreme parts of the Israeli government that goes beyond the legitimate military objectives of destroying Hamas and dismantling their infrastructure, and accords with what we see on our screens, as well as from credible eyewitness accounts of snipers targeting civilians, journalists, aid workers etc. And of course the policy of blocking aid which is not even being dissimulated any more and is a clear war crime. The point about Hamas using hospitals as a base - valid and important - is moot if Israel is prepared to convert the whole of the Gaza strip into a morgue by starving its inhabitants.
I really think this is a straw man. Beyond the fact that I made it clear I wasn’t claiming a precise analogy with Japan, you should reread my final paragraph, where I make several of the points that you do!
You also seem to be implying that I support the denial of humanitarian aid, even though I’ve repeatedly rejected it (in writing, on this Substack) throughout the war.
I'd also add this: You write about the importance of international law but when it comes to Hamas there's a sort of shrug of the shoulders ("clearly an organisation like Hamas is not going to fight in the open or they will be destroyed instantly"). You write that destroying Hamas and dismantling their infrastructure are "legitimate military objectives," but you don't address the fact that they have entrenched themselves in Gaza in such a way that it's basically impossible to achieve that without causing massive harm to the civilian population. In fact, all you seem to offer are rewards in the form of a two-state solution, without ensuring Hamas's destruction at all, thus encouraging their strategy further down the road.
You write:
"When an Israeli airstrike kills a Hamas commander along with 40 civilians, the IDF spokesperson says the civilian casualties were unavoidable because of Hamas’s human shield strategy (you can read a new report about this strategy here)."
I opened the report to which you linked and on page 50, I found that Andrew Fox and Salo Aizenberg wrote: “The most prominent use by Hamas of these humanitarian zones was the establishment of a command centre by senior Hamas leader Mohammed Deif within the tent encampments.”
And:
"Deif and other Hamas operatives deliberately used the humanitarian area in an effort to impede an Israeli attack on him. Only through high-quality intelligence was Israel able to precisely locate and strike his position; however, there were still reports of civilian collateral damage resulting from the attack."
Since I did not find mention 40 of civilian deaths in any incident in their report, I looked further. I24 News wrote:
"Initial reports from Gazan officials said that 40 people had been killed as Israel struck the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, although Israel promptly disputed this. The Gazan health ministry later revised the number down to 19.
Among the terrorists struck was Samer Ismail Khadr Abu Daqqa, Head of Hamas’ Aerial Unit in the Gaza Strip," the IDF said in a statement. "Additionally, the terrorist Osama Tabesh, Head of the Observation and Targets Department in Hamas' Military Intelligence Headquarters, and Ayman Mabhouh, another senior Hamas terrorist, were struck during the operation."
All were involved in planning and executing Oct 7th.
For the family members of those civilians killed, 19 is 19 too many. But it is not 40.
Do you not think that accuracy is important?
And you want to put the PA in charge of Gaza? You are comparing the PA with the Japanese emperor?
The PA pays terrorists to kill Jews. And 85% of the PA population want Abbas gone. Anyone Abbas would appoint after he dies or can no longer, for health reasons, control the PA would continue his policies or Hamas would take over since they would have won the last election and that is why Abbas cancelled it. This is who you want to see control Gaza?
Well you should first of all ask this question to the Israeli government - why do they allow them to continue to rule the parts of the West Bank we have subcontracted out to them? We know the answer - because the alternative is worse. And in this case, I also think that, despite all the problems (on that note this recent analysis is worth reading: https://israelpolicyforum.org/2025/02/13/if-israel-is-serious-about-deradicalization-its-time-to-put-up-or-shut-up/) is also better than asking our soldiers to commit war crimes by expelling the civilian population from Gaza and/or reoccupying the Strip and building settlements there (which we also can neither afford nor do we have sufficient soldiers for the task, mainly because the most right-wing government in Israel's history, the same right-wing government whose policies led to the single worst day in Israel's history, wants to support mass evasion of IDF enlistment).
Also nowhere in the article did I say the PA is the equivalent of the Japanese emperor.
Hi Sheri - I was giving a generic rather than a specific example. Certainly there have been attacks that have killed more than 40 as well - you could have also criticized me for not saying that. Nor has every single one of the 'targeted assassinations' taken out someone involved in planning and executing Oct 7. In this sense, the basic point remains, and if you want you can ask yourself whether you would personally shoot 19 civilians if they were between you and Muhammed Deif. And you can also ask the question for far more low-ranking figures, which we have also killed.
I don't have the answers here either. Even if may not agree with everything you have written, I appreciate reading a dissenting voice, not born out of malice, but an existential ache. Thank you.
Let’s begin with the obvious: Hamas’ murderous attack on October 7 bears little no resemblance to Pearl Harbor - beyond the similarity of the two being peacetime surprise attacks.
Hamas was attacking and slaughtering mostly unarmed civilians while the Japanese targeted the U.S. military.
Hamas’ goal was the destruction of Israel while Japan sought to control its “neighborhood” under its “co-prosperity” policy. It sought to remove U.S. influence from the Far East, not to murder every last American and take over the U.S.
The War in the Pacific was a brutal affair with each side using racial stereotypes against the other. Yet, the decision to use of the atomic bomb has been challenged but only because it achieved its central purpose which was to avoid the need for a U.S. invasion of Japan’s home islands at an estimated cost (based on the Okinawa experience) of 1 million U.S. casualties and untold millions of Japanese. Intelligence confirmed that the Japanese had figured out where the landings would take place and were busy reinforcing those areas.
Historians have uncovered Japanese documents, one of which concluded that because of the costs and complexities involved, the U.S. might have only 2 or 3 bombs with little hope of making more. That undermines the idea of demonstrating the atomic bomb for show - and that’s on top of the simple fact that there was no guarantee the bomb would work.
While there is no Palestinian Hirohito, it bears remembering the earth shattering significance of his speaking directly to his people (after a military coup had been put down) - that ended the divine awe in which he was held and opened the opportunity to end the war.
The equivalent for the Arabs would be a highly respected Sunni scholar convincingly declaring to the faithful that the multitude of anti-Jewish declarations in the Qur’an, Hadiths and Suras are all Satanic Verses to be rejected. Sadly, the chances of such a thing happening approach zero.
And, while the U.S. had no territorial designs on Japan to speak of, it did occupy the country until 1955, thereby changing the culture and politics significantly. And then, of course, there’s the matter of the Cold War and changing strategic priorities for both countries.
Perhaps the only similarity with Hamas was the strategy to sacrifice their own people to bleed the other side’s forces and unleash home front opposition to the loss of U.S. (and now Israeli) soldiers, thereby forcing a more favorable settlement. That was one of the calculations in the U.S. decision to drop the bomb. To dissuade the use of such psychopathic strategies in the future, there seems little choice but to be firm now in Gaza.
While some claim that Hamas is an idea and you can’t kill an idea - putting aside the fact that the “idea” is a genocidal one, directed at the Jews in the first instance but inevitably at the entirety of the non-Muslim world - the Middle East is famously the land of the “strong horse”. If Hamas is comprehensively defeated and publicly so, then the ideas it championed will be discredited. That brutal reality needs to be addressed not ignored.
Simply put, the war in Gaza ends upon Hamas’ surrender. Why much of the world seems to go out of its way to prevent this scenario and prefers to pressure Israel is what requires elucidation.
As to Gaza, another significant difference is that Japan stood on its own in terms of its military needs while Hamas is largely dependent on its Iranian patron. So while Japan was the appropriate target for the U.S., a strong case may be made that peace in Gaza ultimately runs through Teheran.
All that said, wars should not be entered into lightly but Hamas began this one - and may have expected Hezbollah to launch a similar, massive surprise attack in the North. We may never know why Hezbollah didn’t, but in the end the rule remains: you start a war of aggression that you lose, there are consequences to your sovereignty.
Nazi Germany’s territory was significantly reduced after its loss and 12 million ethnic Germans moved. Japan was forced to relinquish its holdings in Korea and China. There is no reason why Gaza doesn’t lose territory as well, but for the well-known fact that the world operates under a unique set of rules that apply only to Israel.
To those who claim that war should entail no territorial losses regardless of who initiated the conflict, must explain how a failed aggression is otherwise punished. Currently, no such rule or process exists, and until one is created and implemented, the accepted rule remains in force.
Hi Charles - 1) Throughout the entire series I was very clear that these were not precise analogies but imprecise parallels. I'm sorry that wasn't clear enough vis-a-vis Pearl Harbor. The point was simply that this was the casus belli for the subsequent war. 2) Your point about the production of the bomb is fair, but it doesn't address why the actual scientists who commissioned the bomb thought a warning was desirable. 3) Germany lost around 25% of its prewar territory, including some areas that had been German-controlled for a long time, some for just a few years. As you note, Japan lost its imperial territories, but it didn't lose any of its home territories (although, as you also note, there was a US occupation). Either way, they remained substantial states and soon became among the richest in the world. 3) You imply that there is a set of rules in the contemporary world whereby countries lose territory if they initiate war, but this is false. Iraq didn't lose any territory as a result of its invasion of Kuwait; Russia isn't going to lose any territory because of its invasion of Ukraine (if anything the opposite). In short, "the accepted rule" doesn't remain in force, because it doesn't actually exist. 4) Finally, one of the most important differences you fail to note is that Gaza is not a sovereign entity; Hamas is not an internationally recognized government. This, I think, explains a lot of the dynamics surrounding the war that trouble you.
Thanks, Alex, for your thoughtful reply. If the point of your analogies was simply to identify a “casus belli”, you might have avoided confusion by simply pointing to the specific event. As a famous judge once said, and I paraphrase, you deploy an analogy if it answers more questions than it raises.
Second, it is incorrect to assert that the Manhattan Project scientists were unanimous in their recommendation to use the bomb as a warning. And, given the Japanese thinking I mentioned before the bomb dropped and their response after, such a demonstration would most likely not have achieved the intended goal.
Third, the rule that the failed aggressor loses territory still holds. That the successful defender (either direct or allied) preferred to reinstate the status quo rather than penalize the aggressor is a policy decision that has no effect on normative international law. And even the second Iraq war as well as the U.S. deployment in Afghanistan can be said to have led to periods of occupation.
Finally, I am unsure of what point you are trying to make by saying Gaza isn’t a sovereign entity nor is Hamas a legally recognized government. In disregard of the requirements of the Montevideo Convention if 1933, some 140 nations have recognized the existence of a State of Palestine within the territories lost by Egypt and Jordan in 1967 - which is to say, the lands these countries illegally seized and took in an aggressive war against Israel in 1947-49 and which only in the late ‘80s were suddenly and without any legal analysis recharacterized as OPT.
And none of these 140 countries has claimed that Hamas has lost its electoral legitimacy from 2006 for any reason - including Abbas’ failure to schedule any “national” elections since - as such a position would apply to the PA and Abbas himself who is in the 20th year of his 4 year term. So your premise would appear to be misguided.
It remains the case that special rules, a nearly obsessive international focus and a very slanted public information campaign are principally deployed uniquely against Israel. That much should be an uncontroversial observation.
I didn't say they were unanimous - as I wrote in the article, the figure appears to have been 83%. Regarding the rule, where exactly is this written down? And just ot be clear, by your last point are you claiming that a Palestinian state exists? A Gaza state? A Hamas state? In any case, we know that no country in the world has recognized the Hamas government as a sovereign entity. You may think they should, and you may think international law thinks they should, but the reality is that they (and this of course includes Israel) don't. The point about their "electoral legitimacy" is irrelevant. Either Gaza is a state, or it isn't. And it isn't. I of course agree with your final paragraph; that is the unfortunate reality but it still must be contended with rather than simply wished away.
And thanks for your thoughts, which as ever keep me on my toes :) I recommend reading Overy's book, btw.
To answer your question, I was observing what those 140 countries have declared. I should point out that not one has declared Hamas to be the illegitimate rulers in Gaza. At best, they have said nothing or hinted that perhaps it would be better if the PA returned - though not one has called for new elections.
My views on Palestine statehood might have been gleaned by my reference to these countries disregard of the requirements of the Montevideo Convention which sets out the international law requirements for statehood.
Just to be absolutely clear (and understanding that it changes nothing on the ground or in any ministry), the territories claimed by the Palestinians are not a state but, were rules of international law consistently applied (starting with the doctrine of uti possidetis juris), Israel has the superior claim to sovereignty.
But as it has no intention of absorbing millions of Palestinians, eventually there will be some territorial concessions at some unknowable future date - whether even that might lead to a State of Palestine remains to be seen.
“Third, the rule that the failed aggressor loses territory still holds.”
I’m curious—whose rule is that?
As a matter of international law, there’s no body that adjudicates who the “aggressor” is in any conflict. If one side surrenders, there are legally binding terms and instruments of surrender that may include acceptance of war guilt and payment of reparations, such as the case at Versailles. But invariably, each side has their own version of events that generally casts themselves as the noble defenders forced to respond to the other side’s aggression. It’s generally left to the historians to sort out.
In fact, if there were a “first commandment” of the post-WW2 liberal international order, it would be “Thou Shalt Not acquire territory by war” as to disincentivize forcible land-grabs and wars of conquest that had been roiling Europe and their imperial entanglements for the previous hundred years (we’re looking at you, Vladimir Putin!)
Case in point:
Resolution 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967 The Security Council, Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East, Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security, Emphasising further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter
…
If morality actually played a role in international affairs, the world would be a different place, depending of course on whose morality was the decisive one. Most people in the West might take for granted that our view of “universal rights” would be the touchstone, but as the vast majority of the world rejects these principles, we fall back to a “might makes right” universe.
Like it or not, over time countries have mostly accepted an understanding of rules limiting the conduct of war, unless of course they face an existential crisis or prefer the advantages of asymmetry - I’m a terrorist group, so only you have to follow the rules which I will also use against you. (I tossed that last bit in as a slight counter to the “standard Israel critical Western fare” view of Gaza. It’s far more complex, even if the media weren’t misreporting most events there).
The other issue I have arises from the penchant for retrospective judgment born of the simple fact that, as we know how things turned out, we are in the comfortable position of imagining and gaming out alternatives, some available at the time, others not even thought of.
Everyone agrees that war is bad and all deaths are to be mourned as civilians, for the most part, should not suffer for the decisions of the rulers. Yet even that view is a relatively recent advance in thinking.
But here’s a question to consider on the morality front. You ask by what moral right did the U.S. and France, though you should have added the UK and the Dutch (Indonesia ain’t nothing and it was a Dutch colony at the time) exclude Japan from its share in the bounty. The short answer is none as morality doesn’t come into the equation. If it did, the answer would still be none because the colonies should be by right independent.
Put in more realpolitik terms, the issue might be phrased: which colonial ruler would be better for the local population (independence not being an option)? Whatever horrors might be attributable to Western colonialism, the Japanese form was far worse. So would surrendering these people to that fate be a morally sustainable condition to spare Japanese civilians? I’m don’t think so.
It’s a messy world obviously, but as a matter of personal preference, I much prefer the world under the U.S. led post-WWII dispensation than one ruled by any of the Axis power, the Soviet Union, Xi’s China or any Caliphate. But that’s just me.
It’s not morality but the perceived national interests at stake that underpins state action. To quote from among many possibilities, Lord Palmerston, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” That is not to say there aren’t occasional exceptions though none spring readily to mind.
And if you think Truman acted morally in recognizing Israel, how would you then characterize his contemporaneous decision to slap a full arms embargo on Israel and prosecute Americans who were caught trying to get to Israel to serve in its defense forces or tried to break the embargo. While some avoided detection, others were in fact prosecuted.
And Truman did all this knowing full well that the UK was freely supplying arms to Egypt under a supposed treaty obligation and to Jordan which, in addition, had an officer corps led by British officers - General John Glubb “Pasha” being the most prominent?
Apologies. Comment misfire—meant to send it in main thread not under yours. Since corrected.
That said, I agree with you that international affairs are not generally determined on moral grounds by leaders and politicians in real-time. Through not always—we condemn Hamas terrorism on moral grounds, even where it makes “realpolitik” strategic sense from their POV.
But I read Alex’s series of posts as specifically looking reflectively at the moral justifications of past events and then trying to apply them where possible, to present events that are similarly fraught with impossible dilemmas.
And it makes sense to me when doing such (admittedly academic) exercises to apply the moral standards, writing about Israel as an Israeli or about America as an American, professed in the foundational creeds of those nations that conducted the military actions under question.
You have identified a basic flaw in the structure of international law: the lack of any final arbiter with enforcement authority, in effect the international equivalent of a domestic judiciary.
Of course, that has little to do with the centuries long development of international law that is widely seen as having begun with the writings of Grotius in the 17th century.
The definition of “aggressor”, “aggressive/defensive/preemptive war”, “genocide” and “apartheid” exist in international conventions or caselaw precedent.
That these concepts may be manipulated for political purposes by the UN itself and a gaggle of NGOs is a separate issue, even as it remains one without a solution for now.
Your essential argument is, in short, the victor tells the story. While peace treaties can formalize territorial exchange, these represent an agreement on terms and says nothing about the war’s legality or anything else. These treaties of surrender do serve to extinguish claims at international law, albeit on the fiction that it is a voluntary agreement entered into voluntarily. Yet, so long as the facts and evidence are not covered up, the essence of any conflict is available for all to see.
So, no impartial observer will be fooled into believing that Russia was provoked into waging a defensive war when it invaded Ukraine unprovoked, or that Israel’s return to Gaza is somehow not the direct consequence of Hamas’ genocidal October 7 invasion.
The issue with Israel has a further complication in that, were accepted doctrines of international law applied universally, the frontiers of the Mandate for Palestine as they existed at its termination in May 1948 would be acknowledged by operation of law as becoming those of Israel. It’s the same doctrine that legally made Crimea part of Ukraine at the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, uti possidetis juris.
As to UNSC resolution that you quote rather selectively, two things are noteworthy. First, this was a preemptive war by Israel - even the General Assembly, no friend of Israel, rejected a resolution that sought to pin the label of aggressor on Israel.
Second, in the more famous section that you omitted, what was requested (this was a resolution under Article VI not the mandatory Article VII) was a withdrawal from “territories” not “the territories” - a distinction everyone understood to mean that there was no legal prohibition against Israel retaining such territory as it deemed necessary to undo its “Auschwitz borders” that incentivized prior Arab attack.
It is also noteworthy that the Palestinians appear nowhere in UNSC 242 in any capacity other than as “refugees”. At the time, no one saw them as a “people” and any peaceful resolution would be among the existing nations - Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Syria to name the most obvious.
And this simple fact leads to another question: how did lands illegally seized, occupied for 19 years and lost by Jordan and Egypt suddenly became Palestinian. This transformation has been asserted not legally sustained - which in part explains the nature of every UN question submitted to the ICJ: Palestinian sovereignty is assumed and is not subject to inquiry. It’s a neat trick but one that doesn’t advance the goals of international law.
Everyone would love to live in a world where international conflicts can be peacefully resolved as is the case domestically. It’s a false parallel so long as countries retain the lawful use of violence making enforcement well nigh impossible.
As to the specific question we were discussing, until international law can effectively penalize a failed aggressor state so that it doesn’t simply regroup and try again, the centuries old customary practice is the loss of territory of the losing aggressor. And that’s implicit in UNSC 242.
Very well done and it made me recalibrate many of my opinions on the topic of the US decisionmaking in the Pacific in WW2.
(My opinion on the Gaza war is standard Israel-critical western liberal fare, so I’ll save my typing)
My take is that the war with Japan started over perceived national interests and imperial rivalries in the Pacific Ocean wherein a rising Japan wanted more of a cut of what France and US enjoyed in the region. The actions of Imperial Japan to their subjugated victims in the region (and American, Filipino, and Australian POWs) were horrendous, but by what moral right did the US have to go to total war to deny Japan a share of the bounty?
Yet the Pacific war ended when the US employed weapons of mass destruction, deliberately targeting civilian populations as to put political pressure on its government for a desired outcome. In fact, there’s a name for this kind of attack when a non-state actor does it—-George W. Bush used it a lot. I can’t dismiss that, even with myriad moral distinctions to be made abound.
The Pearl Harbor attack was indeed the initiation of hostilities, but there was a clear strategic logic to the attack to cripple the US Navy Pacific fleet. The question isn’t whether some military response to the attack was justified, but whether the nature of the self-justifying chain of events and ultimate outcome 4 years later was justified. It wasn’t done in collective self-defense of citizens of the United States who were never seriously threatened. It was just about material interests. Yet, in addition to Japanese loss-of-life, it cost 110,000 American sailors and Marines their lives.
I can’t think of a universal moral frame of reference (i.e., one that weighs perceived national interests of parties involved on an equal footing without appeals to either side’s internal ideologies) that supports the decision to use nuclear weapons—or firebombing for that matter. Therefore I cannot find the events of Aug 1945 to be morally justifiable in any absolute sense. Yet I suspect any American president, past or future, would have done or would do the same thing if they were in Truman’s shoes. Besides, if Truman had decided against dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he probably would have just firebombed them instead. As you pointed out in an earlier article, the incendiary campaign on Tokyo was in many ways worse than the nuclear attacks. Unconditional surrender may have been a political necessity for any occupant of the White House, but that doesn’t mean it was a moral one.
All that said, a society that is capable of seriously and soberly weighing the moral costs of past actions with open-eyes before coming to conclusions about them is a much, much healthier one than one that takes justifications for that same conclusion as self-evident and unworthy of further reflection.
This is a thoughtful and morally serious piece, and I appreciate its refusal to settle for easy certainties. That said, I’d like to respectfully offer a different perspective on two underlying premises that seem to shape the analysis.
First, the idea that the war “started on October 7” risks overlooking the longer historical continuum of violence that led to this moment. While the Hamas-led attacks on that day were abhorrent and indefensible, they did not mark the beginning of this crisis, but rather a horrific escalation within a much deeper and ongoing pattern of violence and structural oppression.
According to UN OCHA records, between 2008 and October 6, 2023, more than 6,400 Palestinians—including over 1,400 children—were killed by Israeli military actions and settler violence. Gaza had already endured four major military offensives (2008–09, 2012, 2014, and 2021), resulting in thousands of civilian deaths and repeated destruction of essential infrastructure. Under blockade since 2007, Gaza’s population faces severe humanitarian conditions: over 80% reliant on aid, clean water access below 4% (WHO Gaza Bulletin), and unemployment near 45%.
In the West Bank, the first nine months of 2023 alone saw at least 230 Palestinians killed, making it the deadliest year there since the Second Intifada—even before October 7.
Recognizing this history doesn’t excuse Hamas’s atrocities, but it does seem essential to avoid framing the current crisis as a sudden and isolated eruption rather than the culmination of long-standing structural violence. That framing shapes whether we search for solutions that address only immediate symptoms or confront deeper, underlying causes.
Second, I wonder whether the Japan analogy, while provocative, might inadvertently cast Israel in the role of the WWII Allied powers—a comparison that feels uneasy given the vast asymmetries of power, the ongoing occupation, and the lack of a sovereign Palestinian state. Unlike Imperial Japan, Hamas does not control an industrialized nation-state or command a conventional military force. Israel, by contrast, holds overwhelming military dominance and faces a population under occupation and siege.
If, as you suggest, we are living through “impossible dilemmas and imperfect outcomes,” perhaps the most demanding test of leadership lies in the willingness to pursue political choices that minimize suffering—not normalize it. That requires not only imagining a better future after the war, but making difficult, humane decisions now to avoid its endless repetition.
I share these thoughts as someone working at the intersection of political theory and human rights, grappling with how historical memory and structural violence shape our understanding of current crises.
Hi - thanks for your comments. 1) The start of the war: I agree that one can't understand October 7 without understanding the wider context of the failure to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but I find your focus too reductive. Mainly because you yourself don't mention another part of the wider context - namely Hamas's decision post-disengagement to turn the Gaza Strip into a military base with which to attack Israel rather than an example of why Palestinian sovereignty should be widened to the West Bank as well. I'm fine recognizing the history of the occupation etc but one also needs to recognize the history of Palestinian rejectionism (and of course Israeli rejectionism), rather than a simple story of good and evil in which Hamas's invasion is simply a brutal response to Israeli oppression, as if Palestinian decision-making hasn't also played a role in bringing us to this juncture. 2) Regarding the second point, I tried to make it clear that these were not exact parallels; as for the political choices, this brings us back to our discussion of your article; I can't assess them without you specifying what you think these should be.
Thank you for this thoughtful engagement. I take your point that any serious analysis must also account for the decisions made by Palestinian actors, including Hamas, and the long history of political rejectionism across all sides. My aim wasn’t to present a simple story of good and evil, but to highlight that when we mark October 7 as the “start” of the war, we risk framing this moment as an unprecedented rupture rather than a tragic escalation of longstanding structural conditions—which shape, but of course don’t determine, political choices.
On the point about Hamas’s post-disengagement militarization of Gaza, I agree this is a critical part of the context. But it also seems important to ask why disengagement did not translate into meaningful political or economic sovereignty for Gazans, and whether the ongoing blockade—and the absence of viable pathways for self-determination—contributed to the entrenchment of hardline actors over time.
If the siege of Gaza was justified on the grounds of security, then by any reasonable measure, it has clearly failed to deliver that security—for either Palestinians or Israelis. Instead, it has entrenched suffering, empowered hardline actors, and repeatedly produced catastrophic outcomes. Acknowledging this doesn’t absolve anyone of responsibility for their decisions; it simply insists that we look honestly at how structural conditions shape those decisions over time.
On the question of justice, I’ve tried to indicate in previous comments that my thinking is directed toward liberal democratic outcomes—outcomes that prioritize human dignity, legal equality, and the protection of fundamental rights. But if you’re asking for a clearer picture of what that means in practice, I would put it this way: every individual living between the river and the sea should enjoy the same fundamental rights and protections that you currently enjoy as an Israeli citizen.
That includes personal security, legal equality, political freedom, and the ability to lead a dignified, meaningful life free from violence, domination, and fear.
Whatever political arrangement—two states, one state, some form of confederation… or indeed whatever!—that can achieve (or get closer to) that outcome should be pursued.
Justice, in this sense, doesn’t require a perfected final-status map; it requires a political and legal order in which no population remains permanently subject to occupation, blockade, or exclusion, and where rights are not distributed based on ethnicity or citizenship status. That may not satisfy those looking for a complete blueprint, but I’d suggest it’s a more honest and practical starting point than deferring action until some ideal solution emerges—while injustice and suffering continue in the meantime.
I totally agree with you vis-a-vis desirable outcomes, although I'm not sure I'd agree that they're necessarily "just." And while I don't think it needs a "perfected" final-status map, it does still require a practical plan to achieve the support of the people living here. I'd add, though, that some people argue that the two-state solution is in itself unequal, because it does not allow for the Palestinian right of return; in this sense, describing the vision does not mean that the practical elements won't be contested. For my part, I try, albeit from my biased perspective, to use LoTL at least in part to modestly lay the groundwork for this future in terms of historical narratives, by explaining that Jews are not settler-colonial invaders and that Palestinians are not an invented people, but both have a deep (if somewhat different) relationship with the land that will also have to be acknowledged if we are ever to have a better future here.
Great comment.
Fantastic analysis (as I've come to expect!).
Apologies for reading this a couple of weeks late - but, also as expected, fundamentally nothing has really changed since it was written.
The question now is whether Trump's apparent change of attitude to Israel's operations in Gaza will force Netanyahu to rethink the "occupy Gaza" plan that was announced just when you wrote this.
Right now it appears that the carte blanche has been very much withdrawn, although perhaps only temporarily.
You’re forgiven!
Alex, surely you recognise how tendentious it is to assert that "the current war was started by Hamas when it invaded on October 7, making it the equivalent of Pearl Harbor." Analogies are imperfect, yes, but this erases all the necessary context and history which make October the 7th an abominable episode of terror in a longstanding conflict - whatever aspects of that you choose to emphasise, and whenever you date it from. Later in the piece you rightly talk about how the PA needs to be bought in from the cold as part of the solution for a post-Hamas Gaza. This points to the fact that the failure to pursue a two-state settlement in recent decades and the marginalisation of Palestinan actors committed to this is part of what has bought us to this point. For all your realist rhetoric of deterence, and your blithe dismissal of the laws of war, I have read nothing that convinces me remotely that destruction on this scale, the killing of so many innocents (many in situations which the "human shield" defense does not cover), and the despicable subjection of Gazan civilians to seige tactics will produce anything but even more violently rejectionist Hamas clones down the line.
I don't think it's tendentious at all. Exactly the same could be said about Pearl Harbor! Japan's attack also had a wider context - specifically the encroachment of Western imperialism and the Japanese response to this threat. But declaring war - as Japan and Hamas did - clearly marks a major departure from what came before. Because what Hamas did wasn't an "abominable episode of terror," but, as has been proven by documents found in Gaza, was a carefully planned invasion with clear strategic goals. I also reject the idea that I blithely dismiss the laws of war. I am, though, pointing out that if party X follows the rules of law while party Y ignores them, then party X will always lose, and other groups will be encouraged to mimic party Y's behavior. I would have much more respect for critics of Israel if they were able to acknowledge this point. A good example of this is the total denial, despite massive evidence to the contrary, of Hamas's use of hospitals for military purposes. As for the final point, I think this is a bit of a cliche, and not necessarily empirically grounded. If we bring it back to Japan, for example, then this would have meant that Hiroshima etc would have led to Japan being more determined to fight, but the reverse was true (this of course does not justify what was done).
The analogy is very limited, for reasons other posters have spelled out even if the description of "structural conditions" often omit important details, such as Iranian funding for terror groups and Islamic rejectionism. I don´t deny that October 7th was a major escalation, but Hamas have clearly regarded themselves at war with Israel since their inception. And of course I am signalling my utter rejection of Hamas with the words I use but they also point to the deliberate targeting of civilians and the abhorrent methods employed (just as I believe that the current far-right Israeli´government´s policy of starvation warfare is, by virtue of its indiscriminate assault on the civilian population, utterly "despicable"). I agree, however, that "invasion" should also be part of how that day is described. As for the rules of war, perhaps you could respond to critics one by one and what they say without feeling compelled to lump them all together. Regarding your point about tactics, clearly an organisation like Hamas is not going to fight in the open or they will be destroyed instantly. And like in any other situation where a military power confronts a guerrilla army / terrorist group operating among civilians, this does indeed create an enormous moral risk. Which is one of the reasons why military force is a limited means of responding to an event like October 7th and there needs to be, at minimum, a parallel political track towards Palestinian statehood and a strategy which marginalises rejectionist forces on both sides. But there is overwhelming evidence of a desire for revenge, destruction and ethnic cleansing among the most extreme parts of the Israeli government that goes beyond the legitimate military objectives of destroying Hamas and dismantling their infrastructure, and accords with what we see on our screens, as well as from credible eyewitness accounts of snipers targeting civilians, journalists, aid workers etc. And of course the policy of blocking aid which is not even being dissimulated any more and is a clear war crime. The point about Hamas using hospitals as a base - valid and important - is moot if Israel is prepared to convert the whole of the Gaza strip into a morgue by starving its inhabitants.
I really think this is a straw man. Beyond the fact that I made it clear I wasn’t claiming a precise analogy with Japan, you should reread my final paragraph, where I make several of the points that you do!
You also seem to be implying that I support the denial of humanitarian aid, even though I’ve repeatedly rejected it (in writing, on this Substack) throughout the war.
To be clear, I don´t think you support this, and have never thought that. Apologies if this was implied.
I'd also add this: You write about the importance of international law but when it comes to Hamas there's a sort of shrug of the shoulders ("clearly an organisation like Hamas is not going to fight in the open or they will be destroyed instantly"). You write that destroying Hamas and dismantling their infrastructure are "legitimate military objectives," but you don't address the fact that they have entrenched themselves in Gaza in such a way that it's basically impossible to achieve that without causing massive harm to the civilian population. In fact, all you seem to offer are rewards in the form of a two-state solution, without ensuring Hamas's destruction at all, thus encouraging their strategy further down the road.