Was Israel’s response to Oct 7 disproportionate?

Israel has repeatedly been accused of a disproportionate response to Hamas’s atrocities on and after October 7, 2023.

These accusations have been fuelled by emotive (and unsubstantiated) casualty counts and by a superficial grasp of moral and legal standards. Critics have made unjustified accusations based on moral equivalence – invoking images of suffering Gazans to equate Israel’s defensive campaign with the barbarism it combats. As a principle of the ethics of war, proportionality demands a nuanced calculus: the evils produced by force must not exceed those eliminated, weighing military necessity against foreseeable harm. I argue that Israel’s operation is not disproportionate but aligns rigorously with this criterion, confronting a genocidal foe while implementing unprecedented safeguards for civilians. Hamas’s savagery, not Israel’s restraint, bears the moral burden for the tragedy.

The principle of proportionality requires that force not produce evil effects graver than the threats or evil being confronted. What is also important is the foundational principle, jus ad bellum, which does not consider first the raw numbers of casualties, but the gravity of the threat. Hamas’s assault – massacring 1200 Israelis, including infants, the elderly, and festival-goers; raping and mutilating women; abducting 250 hostages; and vowing in its 1988 charter to eradicate Jews worldwide – constitutes an existential evil and an ongoing grave threat to Israelis and Jewish people worldwide.

Hamas official Ghazi Hamad’s post-attack boast of repeating October 7 a thousand times underscores its genocidal blueprint – invoking hadiths calling for the annihilation of all Jewish people. Hamas’s genocidal intent elevated the stakes beyond a short-term skirmish to ultimate annihilation, which mandates a response that neutralises the threat comprehensively. As Christian scholar George Weigel notes, against popular misconceptions, just war ethics begins not with a presumption against violence but with a “moral obligation” of authorities to defend innocents against evil. Israel’s aim of dismantling Hamas’s military infrastructure and rescuing hostages vindicates this cause, rendering lesser measures futile and capitulation suicidal.

Critics of Israel have erred by conflating proportionality with symmetry. Proportionality refers to the measures necessary to defeat the threat, not the number of victims. There is no need for Israel’s airstrikes or tank fire to mirror Hamas’s rifles or rockets. Instead, international humanitarian law permits escalation in force type if it advances the just objective. As seen throughout the response to Hamas, the Israel Defence Forces conduct such assessments for every strike, balancing civilian risk against “military advantage”, amplified here by Hamas’s unprecedented depravity.