THE Archbishop of York claims that Israel has committed “genocidal acts” in Gaza (News, 21 November). Since the Archbishop is an expert neither in the ethics of war nor in Middle Eastern affairs, it is unclear why he thinks that his view should carry weight. Nor is it clear whom he is addressing, and why. I yearn for the day when, following the ancient Hebrew prophets — not to mention Jesus — the Church of England’s bishops speak incisive and important truths that no one else is already voicing. That would be genuinely prophetic. But this is not that.
According to this newspaper’s report, he chose to speak of “genocidal acts” rather than “genocide”. Why? One explanation is that he understands the latter to refer to a state policy intending the systematic annihilation of a people, and he does not accuse Israel of that.
Rightly so. According to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, “genocide” is a set of “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such” (Article II).
Unfortunately, this definition fails to distinguish the morally different ways in which a people can be “destroyed”: the constituent members of an ethnic group can be comprehensively exterminated, or the ability of an ethnic group to form a coherent political entity — and become “a people” — can be prevented. However unjust the political suppression of a nationalist group may be, it is not, in terms of moral gravity, the same as Auschwitz. And sometimes preventing a people from constituting a polity is not unjust.
So, these two kinds of “genocide” need to be distinguished. Indeed, since the Nazi death camps are the paradigm of genocide, I believe it best not to refer to national political suppression — such as appears to be the intention of the expansion of settlements in the West Bank — as genocide at all.
IT IS possible that, through its military operations in Gaza, the Israeli government intends the systematic extermination of the Arabs. But the large number of civilian casualties alone — maybe around 44,000 — is not sufficient evidence.
In waging war against the genocidally racist empire of the Nazis in 1930-45, the Allies killed about 70,000 French civilians and a further 60,000-80,000 Italian civilians. They did not want to cause those deaths, but the urgent necessity of overcoming the Nazi enemy, and the available military means, meant that civilian casualties on a large scale were, tragically, unavoidable.
The same could be true of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF’s) prosecution of war against Hamas. Indeed, the fact that Israel has permitted aid to civilians at all, and that the IDF customarily warns them of impending military action, is clear evidence that “genocidal” extermination is not its aim.
Nevertheless, the Archbishop accuses Israel of “genocidal acts”, by which he means “deliberately indiscriminate acts”, as, for example, “when hospitals and schools are targeted, when children are targeted”.
According to the Christian just-war reasoning, however, with its principle of double effect, this thinking is confused. We often deliberately embark on an action wanting one effect, but knowing that what we do will probably also cause an undesirable one. The effect that we want we intend; the effect that we do not want we reluctantly accept.
I can deliberately embark on a course of military action, foreseeing that it will endanger the lives of civilians while not intending to kill them. Allied pilots and artillery regularly did that during the Second World War. They intended to strike the enemy, but they could not avoid striking civilians along the way. For sure, it is not enough to regret prospective civilian deaths. One must also seriously consider other and less dangerous ways of achieving one’s military aim, and one must take all practicable steps to minimise the risk to civilians. None the less, it remains true that not everything that we cause deliberately do we intend.
THERE is no doubt that Hamas intended to kill indiscriminately on 7 October 2023, because we know that they deliberately hunted down the old, the young, and the infant. In contrast, the fact that the Israeli military have targeted buildings where they know civilians are present is no proof that they intend to kill them; for it may be that their intended targets are Hamas sites, to which, tragically, civilians are located dangerously close.
As far as I can tell, the IDF has not generally acted indiscriminately. That is not to say that I think that all of Israel’s recent military actions in Gaza have been morally justified. Indeed, I currently judge them wrong for two reasons.
First, deaths caused in pursuit of an impossible aim are futile and unjustified, and I do not believe that the aim of completely destroying Hamas is feasible. Second, I do not see how Israel’s military actions in Gaza are co-ordinated with a political strategy to achieve a just and lasting peace — which is what just-war thinking requires.
Therefore, I consider Israel’s military actions beyond the immediate suppression of Hamas to be “disproportionate”. None the less, it is neither appropriate nor helpful for the Archbishop to use the incendiary adjective “genocidal” in describing them.
The Revd Lord Biggar is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford, and the author of In Defence of War (OUP, 2013).
