On 31 October, 2023, Japan imposed a collection of asset freezes on individuals and entities related to or supporting Hamas. The sanctions came after a surprise attack on Israel by Hamas on 7 October. Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel while also crossing the border and massacring Israeli civilians. It is estimated that 1,400 Israeli nationals and foreigners were killed in the attacks. In the following days, while Hamas continued its attacks, Israel scrambled to mobilize its military to counter the threat posed by Hamas in Gaza. Israel began its counteroffensive with a barrage of airstrikes, followed by a ground invasion of Gaza which has lasted for over six months. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Japan joined …

With this month’s direct military strikes against each other, a war between Israel and Iran becomes not only conceivable but a growing risk. For all Israel’s advantages and determination, with the most sophisticated military in the region and an innovative and resilient economy, it is a small country of less than ten million people. Iran is a large country of over 80 million people whose economy and military capabilities have survived years of crippling sanctions. The outcome would depend on who had the strongest external support. For the time being, Israel has firm international friends and allies, as Iranian diplomats recognise. But that international support is under strain from the Israeli government’s refusal to consider any negotiations with the Palestinians …

Since October 7, Israel has blocked most food, water, hygiene items, and medicine from entering Gaza. The government has denied access to aid agencies, security inspections have deliberately slowed the entry of trucks, communication blackouts have cut off internet and phone services to more than two million residents, and Israeli protesters have lined up to block humanitarian aid supplies. Moreover, the US, UK, and other donors suspended funding to UNRWA, the UN’s aid agency for Palestine, after Israel accused staff members of participating in the October 7 attacks and called for the organisation to be disbanded. Crucially, these accusations have not been proven. As a result, people in Gaza are starving. Sixteen children, and counting, have died of malnutrition, UN …

Debate in Israel about the government’s strategy in the Gaza war is heating up.  While a majority of Israelis still support the war in Gaza, a growing minority are questioning whether continuing the war against Hamas will bring greater security to Israel or stability to the region, arguing that the government’s military campaign will perpetuate a conflict damaging all parties – not least Israelis themselves. Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to bring home the Israeli hostages has reinforced tensions and doubt among the public. But continuing the war suits the incumbent government, enabling them to remain in power.  Paradoxically, it also suits Hamas. Only when a majority of Israelis themselves conclude that the current strategy puts at risk rather than guarantees their …

Despite the appalling course of events since 7 October, the continuing fighting and the suffering of the bereaved and displaced in Israel and Gaza, people are beginning to ask where this will all end, how it will end, and even whether it will end? It is essential to address these questions now, because a lasting solution can only be found once people on both sides have some hope for the future The emergence of the two-state solution Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration declared support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and fuelled the two growing national movements of Jews and the Palestinian Arabs, there have been only three possible solutions to the question of who lives in the land between …

Over Gaza, the international criminal justice system (ICJS), spearheaded by the International Criminal Court (ICC), must pick a trench: Does international criminal justice entail the active involvement in humanitarian relief and prevention in conflict zones? I call those who support this proposition, “legal activists”, for a lack of better terminology. Or might, in contrast, the sole objective of ICJS operations be the realisation of ex-post justice, as “purist” interpreters of international criminal justice usually espouse? This post argues that these two objectives are not mutually exclusive. Instead, I argue that a legal activist approach in situations of acute conflict facilitates ex-post justice in the long run. Gaza, War Crimes, Silence The ICC’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating war crime allegations in …

Last week Yochanan Gordon posted a blog entry on The Times of Israel’s website entitled “When is Genocide Permissible?” The answer to this question so blatantly obvious that one has to wonder why the question was asked. Indeed, this inaugural post was almost one word long. However, I felt compelled to look at Mr. Gordon’s reasoning given that it has caused such outrage among people on both sides of the conflict. To borrow from J.S. Mill, doing otherwise makes dead dogma out of living truth (Mill, 37). Genocide is obviously evil, but the forensic examination of an argument with which we disagree is the best way to refute it and, hopefully, convince those who hold it to put it aside.

In September 1938, European statesmen gathered in Munich for a fateful conference. Hitler wanted to annex the Sudetenland, a German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia; Britain and France, desperate to avoid war with Nazi Germany, caved in and granted the Führer’s request. It was hoped that Hitler’s appetite for territorial expansion would be sated: Neville Chamberlain, Britain’s prime minister, proclaimed that the concession had achieved “peace for our time“. Within a year, Hitler had invaded Poland and the Second World War had begun. The policy of appeasement, it appeared, had failed and forever would fail – or so it came to be thought. As the twentieth century evolved, ‘appeasement’ evolved into a term of abuse that would automatically discredit the granting of concessions to satisfy an opponent. What had previously referred to the pacific settlement of disputes through pragmatic negotiation, argues historian David Dilks, “came to indicate something sinister, the granting from fear or cowardice of unwarranted concessions in order to buy temporary peace at someone else’s expense”. The spectre of Munich came to hang over every international crisis: the Korea, Vietnam, Falklands and Suez wars were all justified in terms of the inevitable failure of appeasement. Most recently, the willingness of the West to allow Crimea to fall to Russia has been denounced as ‘appeasement’, and it is common to hear the crisis spoken of as ‘Obama’s Munich‘. The 2005 Gaza Disengagement was Israel’s Munich moment: in Israeli discourse, ‘Gaza’ is to ‘unilateral withdrawal’ what ‘Munich’ is to ‘appeasement’. Israel withdrew its army and 8,000 settlers from Gaza Strip; the power vacuum was soon filled by Hamas, and this densely populated coastal strip became a launching pad for thousands of rockets against Israeli civilian areas, provoking two mini-wars.