Answers/Israel unjust war

Question: Isn't Israel conducting an unjust, unprovoked war in Gaza? Isn't it conducting a genocide? Doesn't it violate international law?

Answer: No, no and no.

Israel unilaterally removed all its forces from Gaza in 2005, and relocated all its citizens from the area around Gaza (causing a great deal of financial and psychological damage for those citizens), in order to acheive peace with the Gazans. The immediate result was a marked increase in the quantity of ordnance lobbed into Israel by the Gazans. The unprovoked targetting of ones civilians is a casus belli according to international law, and therefore Israel would have been legally justified in prosecuting a war against Gaza as early as 2001 (when the first missiles from Gaza started).

The fact is, Israel did almost nothing to safeguard its citizens in the south of the country, who were under ongoing assault, for eight years. The fact is, the war Israel eventually engaged in against Gaza was started by the Gazans under the aegis of Hamas. The fact is, the war was not only just, but entirely legal.

As of the current writing, approximately 1,000 Gazans have been killed (out of a population of 1.5 million). One quarter of them are non-combatants (both according to the Arab press and the IDF figures). The killing of rougly 250 non-combatants in approximately three weeks of fighting, is not equivalent either morally or factually with "genocide", and those who would make that equation are using words cynically. Were Israel to desire the genocide of the Gazans, it would have targetted the population centers with fuel-air explosives, and caused many hundreds of thousands of casualties in a few days.

International law stipulates that a country may take appropriate action in self-defense. Given that missiles from Gaza are even still being fired at Israel, it seems to me that we have not only not over-reacted, but we have not reacted strongly enough. Certainly Israel is well within its rights under international law, to the extent the Israel-bashers actually care to figure out what that law indeed says.