A Reply to Statman’s Defense of Israel’s War in Gaza

Abstract In ‘McMahan on the War Against Hamas,’ Daniel Statman systematically criticizes arguments advanced in the essay, ‘Proportionality and Necessity in Israel’s Invasion of Gaza, 2023–2024,’ which was published in this journal in 2024. The arguments in that essay assessed Israel’s war by reference to moral principles commonly recognized as governing the resort to war: in particular, principles of just cause, necessity, and proportionality. The present essay not only defends the arguments and claims of the earlier paper against Statman’s challenges, but also reinforces the earlier arguments with many new arguments intended to demonstrate that Israel’s war has been and continues to be an unjust war. It also includes further material comparing Israel’s war in Gaza with Russia’s war in Ukraine. The essay concludes with an appendix containing a short piece written in 2021 about the previous war in Gaza at that time. Its publication was censored then; hence it appears here for the first time.