Oona Hathaway: Gaza and the Breakdown of International Law | Foreign Affairs Interview

There’s no question that Hamas violated international law when it attacked Israel on October 7, and as it continues to hold hostages in Gaza. But more than seven months into Israel’s response, the issue of whether Israel is violating international law-or even committing war crimes-is coming to a head. Washington is debating holding up deliveries of weapons to Israel. And the International Criminal Court is rumored to be preparing a case against leaders of both Hamas and the Israeli government.
What’s happening in Gaza may seem unprecedented. But as the legal scholar Oona Hathaway (www.foreignaffairs.com/author...) writes (www.foreignaffairs.com/ukrain...) in Foreign Affairs, “The conflict in Gaza is an extreme example of the breakdown of the law of war, but it is not an isolated one.” Hathaway is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale University School of Law and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 2014-15, she took leave to serve as special counsel to the general counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense.
Foreign Affairs Deputy Editor Kate Brannen spoke with her on May 13 about the causes of that breakdown-and what, if anything, can be done to salvage the rules meant to protect civilians in wartime.
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[@markjmacrae]

Wonderful to hear such insightful commentary from genuine expert. Pity it’s not more common

[@samuelelsby1800]

Informative and dispassionate discussion of the international law of war and civilians. I don’t know about other countries, but there is NOTHING like this analysis in the mainstream media in the UK.

[@lordofchaosinc.261]

I'm all for going against terrorists but saying things like we're a small nation so one innocent death from ours is worth one hundred innocents from the other side doesn't strike me as just or resonable. The other side, both sides are humans. In fact on TV it looks like indiscriminate revenge against a people for what their terrorist leaders cooked up even if many of them in fact as children did not vote Hamas into power in that sham election. With 9/11 at least going after Bin Laden in Afghanistan initially made sense even to us Europeans while the random bloody Iraq adventure drove far more criticism. So Saddam wanted to kill Walker's dad. How does this warrant killing all the civilians? It all bites you in the back claiming a just cause.

[@aaron.aaron.v.b.9448]

I'd caution against romanticizing the post WWII era. Rolling Thunder alone cost the lives of at least 30 000 civilians, with targeting that does not fulfill today's standards.

[@toi_techno]

The idea that international law has ever been applied to the steady colonisation of Palestine is naive and even laughable (if it wasn't so tragic) Also if I kick someone out of their house and then make it a house rule that what I did was fine , that doesn't count as a rule/law

[@SeanPan-it3jm]

Stop Netanyahu now, USA.