Dear Editor,
The action of Hamas, whether justified or unjustified, is not the causa belli but is rather the casus belli in Gaza. The action of Hamas cannot rationally be regarded as causatively related to the genocidal conduct of Israel against the Palestinian people. Rather, it has merely provided the occasion for the Israeli attack on the Palestinian people.
Israel cannot plausibly claim that the action of Hamas in hiding and firing rockets from among the Palestinian people is justification for military exercises against the Palestinian people on the ground of self-defence, since the killing of innocent people cannot be classified as collateral damage from necessary defensive action. Self-defence is inconsistent with the intentional killing of innocent people. In any event, the use of excessive or unreasonable force is inconsistent with acting in self-defence.
The force being used by Israel in its claim to be acting in self-defence is plainly and grossly excessive and inconsistent with the defence of self-defence.
It is not open to Israel to causatively attribute its current genocidal conduct against the Palestinian people to Hamas, since Israel at the very least must have foreseen as a certainty that its military action in Gaza, even if motivated by its desire to incapacitate Hamas, will involve the killing of innocent Palestinians in large numbers.
Therefore, Israel is intentionally killing innocent Gazan Palestinians and this nullifies Israel’s claim to be acting in self-defence. The conduct of Hamas is therefore not the causa but the casus for the genocidal conduct of Israel against the Palestinian people.
It is significant to note that Hamas is a Palestinian organization and not a state power. However, Israel is a state. Israel simply cannot use genocidal conduct by Hamas against it to justify its own genocidal conduct against the Palestinian people because Hamas is not a state but merely an organization which has no United Nations recognition as a representative organization of the Palestinian people. Nor are the innocent Palestinians being killed representative of Hamas.
Yours faithfully,
Shawn Williams
