Most people believe that self-defense is a legitimate justification for going to war. Commonsense intuitions about the use of self-defense in our private lives tend to govern how we think about war. If you punch me in the face, and I know you have no other weapon, then I have a right to tackle you to the ground to reduce the probability of your throwing another punch. But I do not have a right shoot you! Such a retaliatory act would be disproportionate to the harm you are trying to inflict on me.

In a recent article in The Conversation (Dec. 1) military ethicist Jessica Wolfendale argues that “directly targeting civilians or exposing them to disproportionate harm is wrong for the same reason it is wrong to harm innocent people in peacetime. People who pose no threat to others deserve respect and protection from violence regardless of their nationality or group identity. To violate that respect in war is not only a war crime but a moral crime, which is why Hamas’ massacre of at least 1,200 Israeli citizens and the taking of 240 hostages is rightly condemned as an atrocity.”

Israel has a right to defend itself against the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on innocent civilians. But there is a growing consensus in the international community that Israel’s military response has been disproportionate to the harms Hamas inflicted on innocent Israeli citizens.

Israel is faced with a dilemma that has no easy solution: how does Israel determine the injury it has a right to inflict on Hamas, when so many Hamas fighters are embedded in the civilian Palestinian population? How does a self-defense model operate if a soldier cannot always distinguish between an innocent civilian and a Hamas militant, or when there is a verified Hamas command center beneath a hospital that houses innocent doctors, patients and civilians seeking a safe haven?

Compounding the problem is Hamas’ public declaration that October 7 is but a prelude of future attacks on Israel. Its ideology is committed to the elimination of the State of Israel. So, what is Israel to do in the meantime to protect its citizens from the constant threat that Hamas poses? Attack no buildings or structures that may house both innocent Palestinian citizens and Hamas militants? What is the morally safer course to take? These are vexing questions.

Wolfendale believes in the “moral equality of noncombatants.” But what does it mean to say that all innocent civilian lives are equal in value? She invokes a version of the “shoe on the other foot” test. Ask the following question: what would the Israeli military force accept “if it were ‘their’ civilians who were at risk of harm from military action?” Imagine a hospital full of innocent Israeli civilians. Wolfendale claims that “if Hamas was holding a control base under an Israeli hospital and it was Israeli citizens at risk, would Israel think that attacking the hospital would be justified?” If the answer is “no,” then an attack on that hospital is not justified. The military value of attacking the hospital would not outweigh the harm to innocent civilians.

Wolfendale’s moral equality argument seems persuasive. But some may argue that it still begs an important question: how does Israel determine whether the military value of attacking the hypothetical hospital does not outweigh the harm to innocent civilians? After all, if there is a control base beneath the hospital, does not that entity still pose a threat to innocent Israeli citizens?

It is useful to view this issue from the point of view of innocent civilians, irrespective of nationality. Suppose you are a patient in a hospital, and you learn that a command center beneath the hospital is being directly targeted. Suppose an attack takes place and you suffer a debilitating injury, say a fractured spine. I explain to you that directly targeting a command center beneath a hospital is different from targeting doctors and patients, that any injury to innocent civilians like yourself is a foreseeable but unintended consequence of the attack, so-called “collateral damage.” I suspect that, as a patient with the broken spine, you would have every right to find my explanation problematic as you rightfully proclaim “The hospital was directly targeted but I wasn’t. You can’t be serious! That’s a distinction without a real difference.”

What should be clear to everyone is that the standards of International Humanitarian Law exist to protect innocent noncombatants. Participants in a war should go out of their way to live up to those standards.

— John Kearney, Ph.D., resides in Waterloo, Iowa.