Rushing McCarl LLP stands in solidarity with the victims of this week’s terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas in Israel.
Hamas’ attacks on October 7 were not directed at military targets and did not occur in the context of an active war. Cruelty of the sort on display in Hamas’ murder of concertgoers, deliberate burning of Israelis’ homes, and kidnapping and execution of civilians (including infants, children, and the elderly) can never be excused or justified.
Benjamin Wittes, an expert in the law of war, explained it well in his article How Not to Respond to a Terrorist Attack:
One thing I do know what I think about is murder. I’m against it. I’m not, to be clear, always against war. And I accept that civilians sometimes get killed in warfare and, tragic as that is, it is an inherent part of the enterprise. But the intentional targeting of civilians is always unacceptable.
Terrorism is not an empty concept. Terrorism occurs when radical individuals or groups deliberately inflict brutality and murder on civilian targets, not as a byproduct of necessary self-defense, but as an end in itself or as a means of achieving political, religious, or ideological goals. Hamas’ murder and kidnapping of civilians is terrorism just as much as any attack by al-Qaeda or ISIS, and it must be condemned accordingly.
Violence begets violence. Israel must defend itself, and the war’s cost to noncombatants on all sides will be incalculable. It will cause great suffering in Israel and prove ruinous for those in the Gaza Strip. Condemning Hamas and its attack does not mean demonizing Palestinians; it means recognizing and naming evil when we see it.
Photo credit: Marek Studzinski on Unsplash