Director Emeritus Theologian in residence at Scripture Institute D. Litt. (Doctor of letters) at Cambridge University U.K.
Every innocent victim is a tragedy. But not every civilian death in war is evidence of illegal conduct by one of the parties. The law of war operates in an environment that is inherently brutal and tragic. Law cannot banish that brutality altogether. It aims, more modestly, to mitigate war’s cruelty by balancing military necessity with humanitarian aims. International humanitarian law’s most powerful instrument for protecting innocents is separating combatants from civilians. Armed forces cannot target civilians. And they must separate their own military assets from the civilian population. It is Hamas’s defiance of both of those rules that has made each successive phase of this war a humanitarian catastrophe.
