I have a question for those supporting Israel's actions (Revisited)

(Some context: This is part of my revisited series, where I go back over stuff I have previously written, add to it, clarify it, and make changes in line with my changing views. I have decided not to alter the bits of the piece that refer to a specific moment in time, just the surrounding philosophy. Hence this piece should be written as if it were coming out on Nov 01, 2023.)

Israeli bombing has killed many thousands of Gazan civilians. Recently, an Israeli airstrike directly and intentionally hit a refugee camp, on their account to try and take out a Hamas leader:

My question for Israel’s supporters is this. If that camp had been filled with thousands of Israelis plus some Hamas targets, instead of Palestinians plus some Hamas targets, do you think Israel would have done this? And while we’re on the topic, if the camp had been filled with American citizens (let us specify, lily white) plus some Hamas targets, do you think America would have tolerated this?

Indeed if, somehow by some dark magic, every time a Palestinian civilian died an Israeli civilian died, or an American civilian died, do you think Israel would be conducting its bombing campaign like this? Let us make it even starker. If every time five Palestinian civilians died, one random Israeli or American citizen died, even then, do you think Israel would be bombing like this?

The reason I ask is this. Both the law of war and the common sense morality of war, dictate that the intentional killing of civilians is impermissible. However, doctrines have developed whereby the foreseen, but unintended killing of civilians as a byproduct of trying to hit military targets is permissible. This exception only applies if the value of the military targets is proportionate to the civilian deaths. Once proportionality goes out the window, it’s as much murder as if you’d looked them in the eye while running a knife through them.

I’d suggest that a good test for proportionality is this: would you still be doing it if it were your own civilians? But in case you think the equality of humanity is too demanding a test for assessing claims of murder, you can set the bar at a five-to-one ratio if you like.

I want to know if you think Israel would still be doing what it is doing, by the means which it is doing it, under those conditions. I don’t.

Relevantly, 83% of the Israeli Jewish population and 70% of the general Israeli public think that Israel should take into account the suffering of civilian Gazans “Not at all” or “Not so much”. The current right-wing government is elected by a coalition of even more right-wing voters than that population baseline.

Now, suppose you were to argue as follows. The Israeli state has special obligations to its own people. These mean that it can kill Palestinian civilians in order to kill Palestinian militants at a rate it would never exchange its own civilians for Palestinian militants.

We may accept, for the sake of argument that states have special duties to their own citizens, but these special duties are of a positive character. A state may owe its own people more, but it cannot hurt more innocents from another state to secure more for fewer of its own citizens. This is normally how we regard special duties. If I have some medicine that can save my child’s life or two neighboring children’s lives, few would blame me for not handing over the medicine. If, however, I broke into my neighbor’s house and stole the medicine, saving my child but condemning their two children to die, this would rightly be seen as appalling.

Suppose Colorado and Kansas are at war. There’s a dam near the border of Colorado and Kansas, it’s about to blow, and there’s no time to evacuate the people on either side. As is, 100 Coloradians will die. By throwing some explosives at the right spot the flood will go into Kansas, not Colorado, killing 200 Kansans as a side effect.

Blowing up the dam would be wrong, and so being willing to kill enemy civilians to save a smaller number of your own people is wrong. Even if you may value your own more highly, you cannot sacrifice many others to save fewer of your own. If the numbers were reversed then, at least in a state of war, blowing up the dam would be permissible- but with the numbers as they are, it is monstrous.

I don’t know what ratio Israel accepts in practice. I am sure it is greater than 1:1. It appears to be very high indeed, and we cannot escape the impression that the ideal ratio is infinitely large for many senior people. That such an infinite ratio is supported by many seems to be what is implied in the polling above, where 40 percent of the Israeli public, suggests no weight should be placed on the suffering of the civilian population of Gaza.

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