Gaza is a war; just a war

And a Just War, at that

It barely needs restating that the war in Gaza has sparked widespread condemnation against Israel. Thanks to a concerted Hamas information operation, for too many people, this conflict is not just another episode in regional violence, but a unique moral crisis: the deliberate killing of civilians, the bombing of hospitals and schools, and the starvation of a population. On social media and in some parts of academia, the word “genocide” has been used with confidence. However, the evidence from the battlefield, intelligence analysis, and independent assessments suggests a different account. Gaza is not a genocide. It is not a campaign of random slaughter. It is not a calculated attempt by a nation-state to wipe out a people. Instead, it is more familiar, though no less terrible: a war. A brutal, urban, technologically uneven war, accompanied by all the suffering, chaos, and confusion that come with it.

Acknowledging this does not exonerate Israel from criticism. The IDF has made mistakes. It has killed civilians. It has targeted buildings that, in hindsight, contained people it did not know were there. Some incidents merit investigation and may reveal serious misconduct by individual soldiers. However, to derive from these tragic realities the claim that Israel is committing crimes on the scale of genocide or ethnic cleansing is intellectually unserious and morally reckless. It blurs the line between intent and effect, dismisses the tactical and operational context, and disregards the complexities of the battlefield.

The IDF, despite being a highly equipped and well-trained military, found itself operating in a particularly complex theatre. Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza (lest we forget), has for years adopted a military strategy that involves embedding combatants within civilian infrastructure. Schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and mosques are not off-limits in Hamas’s doctrine. They serve as strategic assets and tools in both informational and kinetic warfare. Hamas operatives have launched rockets from near UN facilities, hidden tunnel shafts beneath nurseries, and used ambulances to smuggle fighters. They wear civilian clothes, hide weapons in family homes, and establish their command centres beneath hospitals.

All of this is not merely incidental. It forms part of Hamas’s deliberate effort to cause civilian casualties and thereby provoke international outrage. As Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh famously said, “We love death as they love life.” The logic is chilling but clear: the more Palestinian blood is shed, the greater the pressure on Israel to cease fighting. In such an environment, even a cautious and restrained military campaign will inevitably lead to significant civilian harm.

The Israeli campaign has been cautious. Perhaps not cautious enough, and certainly not consistently effective, but characterised by extraordinary, sometimes counterproductive, attempts to minimise harm. According to a comprehensive analysis, the IDF exceeded historical benchmarks for delivering humanitarian aid, even during the heaviest fighting. In fact, before the ceasefire in January 2025, more food was being delivered to Gaza daily than in the pre-war period. The often-cited claim that 500 trucks per day were the minimum required to prevent famine was based on flawed assumptions and misinterpretations of data. In reality, fewer than 100 food trucks per day were sufficient to meet caloric and nutritional needs pre-war, and Israeli coordination ensured that this number was doubled during critical phases of the conflict.

Legal advisors are embedded within Israeli combat units. No other army in the world does this on such a scale. IDF commanders have vetoed strikes where the risk to civilians was considered too high. They have employed roof-knocking munitions, mass text alerts, and leaflet drops to warn civilians of upcoming attacks. Entire operations have been abandoned when civilians entered designated target areas. Intelligence-gathering has been adjusted, sometimes imperfectly, to differentiate between combatants and civilians. Israel has paused offensives to allow humanitarian corridors, and although there have been failures in this system, the intention is clear and the effort considerable.

The upcoming report by Jonathan Boxman and Danny Orbach highlights that although aid was sometimes disrupted, particularly in March 2025, the resulting shortages were eventually addressed. (Boxman, Orbach et al’s report is the most important of the war so far, and when it is released in English, I will share the link with you.)

More importantly, many initial claims of starvation were later withdrawn by the same organisations that had initially raised the alarm. However, these retractions were issued quietly and went unreported by the very media outlets that had uncritically boosted the initial alarm. This is not merely a public relations issue; it holds strategic significance. It reveals how premature conclusions, flawed data, and biased reporting have compromised the information environment surrounding this conflict.

What is often overlooked in media coverage is the difficulty of applying peacetime moral standards to a battlefield controlled by a terrorist group. Even the most precise military operation cannot prevent civilian casualties when fighting an enemy that deliberately hides behind civilians.

The Al-Ahli Hospital incident in October 2023 exemplifies a clear case. Within minutes of the explosion, Hamas accused Israel and claimed 500 deaths. Media outlets and governments quickly echoed that assertion. Protests erupted across the Arab and Western world. However, subsequent investigations, including those by the US intelligence community and independent analysts, pointed to a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The actual death toll was probably under 100. The blast radius, intercepted communications, and video evidence all supported this conclusion. Yet, the narrative of an Israeli hospital bombing persisted. The first story is the one that wins. Truth arrives too late.

This dynamic, where rapid disinformation outpaces forensic truth, has shaped much of the discourse on Gaza. Casualty figures released by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry are regarded as an unquestionable fact. These figures, however, have included fighters listed as civilians, double-count individuals, and lack independent verification. A review of the data reveals consistent statistical anomalies: adult men listed as children; natural deaths included in war tallies; misclassification of combatant deaths to inflate the civilian toll. Hamas has, since 2014, instructed its officials to record all military deaths as civilian, a fact confirmed by their own archived social media posts. Hamas has since acknowledged these errors and removed thousands of names from the lists. Collecting this kind of data during wartime is challenging; prominent academics and the world’s media should have been aware of this and not relied on these figures as gospel.

This is not to deny the reality of enormous suffering and civilian loss; it is to challenge the accuracy of numbers used to accuse Israel of genocidal conduct. Even by the Gaza Health Ministry’s own figures, 72% of fighting-age deaths are males. Yet, these figures are routinely misrepresented in Western media, partly due to misreporting and partly due to a desire for moral clarity in a complex war. The problem is: war is never clear. It is muddy, chaotic, and filled with unintended consequences. The key question is not whether civilians are dying. It is why. Are they being targeted? Or are they being killed as a tragic consequence of an enemy that refuses to abide by the laws of armed conflict?

To describe Gaza as “just a war” is not to trivialise it. It is to place it in its appropriate frame: a war with extraordinary suffering, in which errors have been made. It is a war that Israel has politically mishandled, whose government failed to establish a clear end state. It has alienated international allies through poor communication and, at times, has failed to rebut disinformation with the necessary urgency—but it is not a genocide. It is a war against a deeply entrenched, ideologically fanatical enemy operating from within a civilian population.

It is also a war that many commentators refuse to recognise as such. There is a strange moral inconsistency in much of the international discourse. When Western powers bombed Raqqa to oust ISIS, civilian casualties were acknowledged, but the operation was described as a necessary evil. When Russia destroyed Mariupol, the world understood the reasoning behind urban sieges (of course, Russia’s war in Ukraine is illegal, and the Russians have committed genocidal actions, but that does not change the fact the world sees urban combat in Ukraine and judges it as such). But when Israel bombs Khan Younis or Jabalia, it is instantly seen as a war crime. This double standard is not only unfair but also distorts our understanding of how wars are fought and won in the 21st century.

Urban warfare, particularly against irregular forces, leads to devastating outcomes. The IDF has thoroughly studied these dynamics. Its experience in Gaza has provided NATO forces with tactical and doctrinal lessons, such as the importance of combined arms integration, tunnel warfare expertise, and forward-deployed legal oversight. It has also revealed the limitations of airpower and the moral dangers of information warfare. Israel’s campaign has not been perfect, but it has shown a willingness to learn, adapt, and review its actions, including prosecuting soldiers for misconduct, a practice rarely seen in the region.

Indeed, the handful of credible allegations of war crimes committed by IDF personnel remain under investigation. Some will almost certainly lead to disciplinary action. However, the scale is significant. A detailed review of available evidence identified fewer than 100 cases of alleged deliberate civilian killings across a theatre that so far has reported over 56,000 deaths. Many of those reports, upon closer examination, are based on unverifiable claims, dubious witnesses, or sources with a long history of political activism. That does not absolve anyone, but it does provide context for the accusation that Israel is operating a military death machine.

The very idea of proportionality in modern urban combat has been distorted. Proportionality is not about equal casualties. The phrase does not apply to entire campaigns, from a legal perspective. It concerns, on an individual strike-by-strike basis, whether the expected military advantage outweighs the anticipated civilian harm in a specific action or strike. This judgment must be made instantly, based on intelligence and legal guidance. Although it is never flawless, the evidence suggests that Israel has effectively integrated these principles into its command structure. To suggest otherwise is to accuse military lawyers, commanders, and soldiers of a conspiracy on a scale that defies reason.

We should mourn the dead in Gaza. We should press for humanitarian access, accountability, and a political solution that prevents further bloodshed. We should also demand intellectual honesty, reject the cynical manipulation of casualty data, and question the narratives that emerge before the facts are established. Most of all, we should resist the urge to transform tragedy into a theatre for moral grandstanding, divorced from the real choices faced by those fighting in real wars.

Gaza is not the end of the world. It is not the beginning of a genocide. It is a war: bloody, badly handled in many ways, but still a war. One in which a liberal democracy has fought a brutal terrorist group in an impossible environment. That doesn’t mean Israel is always right. It means that when they are not, Israel is not uniquely wrong. If we cannot hold both ideas simultaneously—that war is terrible and that not all war is criminal—then we are not prepared to discuss peace, to create a lasting resolution to conflict, or to face the more difficult question: what happens after the guns fall silent, when war ends and politics pick up again?