DAVID BENATAR: Nuance is ignored and the morality of war is misunderstood

Leslie London is as strident as he is wrong (“Benatar’s defence of human shield claims relies on IDF propaganda,” January 22).

First, he claims that he asked for evidence that “human shields are being deployed” and says I provided none. I did provide some evidence via hyperlinks, but Business Day does not permit these. 

Some, but not all, of this evidence comes from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Even the New York Times, a publication unsympathetic to Israel, has begrudgingly acknowledged the enormous network of tunnels under, and connected to, Gazan civilian infrastructure.

Part of the problem is that Prof London seems not to understand what constitutes the use of human shields. It includes building military infrastructure under hospitals, homes and mosques, storing arms in, and firing from, schools, and using ambulances for military purposes. There is ample evidence that Hamas does all of this.

Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon, who Prof London cites with approval, want to identify a category that they call “proximate shields” — those who “become shields simply because they are ‘too close’ to a legitimate target”. They claim this is morally different from “involuntary shields” who “are coerced to protect military targets”.

That may well be a distinction without a (moral) difference. If a sovereign country is attacked, it does not lose its right to self-defence because the attackers have embedded themselves among civilians.

Perhaps Prof London wants to go further, denying that Hamas is doing all the things I listed. That kind of motivated denial is not uncommon. Like denial of the Holocaust, anthropogenic global warming and the October 7 Hamas attack itself, nothing counts as evidence in the minds of the denier. They certainly will not be persuaded by the kind of evidence that can be presented in a 1,000-word opinion piece. 

Second, Prof London attributes to me the assumption that “co-location of military infrastructure with civilian residents is the same as human shielding” but says I would not therefore accuse the IDF of human shielding if Hamas bombed the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, killing civilians.

Here Prof London both ignores nuance and misunderstands the morality of war. The Pentagon is across the Potomac from Washington DC. MI5 is located in the heart of London. It is not uncommon for there to be such situations, but this differs from Hamas, which is fighting while fully embedded within the civilian infrastructure.

More importantly, the morality of war does not reduce to the principles of distinction (between combatants and non-combatants) and proportionality. It also includes crucial principles of jus ad bellum — what justifies going to war in the first place. That is a separate debate, but there is excellent reason to think that Hamas was unjustified in attacking Israel, but that Israel is justified in responding. Hamas bombing Tel Aviv would not meet the requirements of jus ad bellum.

Third, Prof London responds to my accusation that he is making armchair judgments about military matters by saying that that is exactly what I am doing. Yet I did not claim that all the Israeli strikes are proportionate. What I said is that “there is a radical moral asymmetry” between Hamas using human shields and Israel killing civilians in the process of fighting Hamas.

War crime

The former is straightforwardly a war crime, but claims of disproportionality require detailed, specialised knowledge. I do not need military expertise to say that, but Prof London does require military expertise to make the claim that Israel is acting disproportionally.

Indeed, it is an indication of his unfamiliarity with the principle of proportionality that he continues to insist that this matter can be determined by a total death count. I have previously explained why this is a mistake. This is the reason I do not tell him “when a civilian death toll would reach an unacceptable level”.

However, I did try to consider his calculation on its merits. At the time of writing, the death toll in Gaza was 22,000 people. Prof London questions the veracity of the IDF claim that about 9,000 terrorists are among those killed (but he does not question the Hamas figures). He then speculates that perhaps 1,000 Gazan deaths are from “friendly fire”. 

That is not, as he suggests, a high estimate. Hamas is fighting in a civilian area. It has demonstrated no concern for the safety of Gazan civilians. It grants the protection of its tunnels only to Hamas fighters and commanders. It siphons off aid intended for civilians. It is entirely possible that Hamas is firing with little regard for civilians. Again, cui bono? If we add the death toll from misfired rockets it could be far higher. We also do not know how many of the children killed were actually adolescent combatants.

What I do know is that adding a “population denominator” is not how one determines the collateral death rate. It can tell us what proportion of the Gazan population has been killed, but it tells us nothing about the rate of civilian deaths per combatant killed by Israel, which is what is relevant for the principle of proportionality.

If we accept the Hamas claim of 22,000 dead, the Israeli figure of 9000 combatants killed, and even Prof London’s 1,000 “friendly fire” fatalities, we are speaking about 12,000 civilian deaths. That is fewer than two civilian deaths per combatant killed by Israel — in a very densely populated area. That is tragic, but it is not evidence of totally indiscriminate bombing by Israel, and certainly not of “genocide”.

Fourth, Prof London claims to “care about all lives”, with the scurrilous implication that I do not. He and I care about all lives; what we disagree about is who bears most of the responsibility for the deaths.

And finally, Prof London says he makes “no apologies for offering views about what is right and what is wrong” and that the difference between him and me is that he does so “using evidence”. He may think that he is providing evidence, but he is not.

• Benatar is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town.