3) Go after Hamas in its tunnels. Obviously, this would lead to more Israeli military casualties. However, armies are not allowed, either by international law or common morality, at least in principle, to kill innocent civilians in order to protect their own soldiers. 

Walzer agrees with this principle, both in his previous writing and The New York Times essay. He puts it this way: “The war that Hamas designed in Gaza is a grim illustration of the strategy of putting civilians at risk for political gain. Still, a military responding to this strategy has to do everything it can to avoid or minimize civilian casualties.”

In short, Walzer’s excessively mild criticism of the Israeli attack on Gaza effectively amounts to, at a minimum, obscurantism about the massive Israeli criminality. Those of us who admire Walzer’s moral philosophy are aghast at his long and repeated refusal to judge Israeli behavior in terms of that philosophy.

Jerome Slater is a professor (emeritus) of political science at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of Mythologies Without End: The U.S. and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1917-2020.

Image: Anas-Mohammed / Shutterstock.com.