My Take | How America learned to embrace Israel’s genocide as future of war
While world looks on in horror at Gaza, lawyers linked to Pentagon see possibilities opening up in military conduct, especially against China
A recent article in The New Yorker literally turned my stomach. “What’s Legally Allowed in War,” the headline said. “How US military lawyers see Israel’s invasion of Gaza – and the public’s reaction to it – as a dress rehearsal for a potential conflict with a foreign power like China.”
Lawyers working for the Pentagon now think anything is possible, everything is allowed. If America’s military does it, it means it’s legal.
The author begins with an interview with a retired US Army senior adviser on what is known as international humanitarian law, or the law of armed conflict (LOAC), which will be the new legal doctrine for large-scale combat operations (LSCO) and is heavily influenced by the Israeli conduct of war in Gaza.
In trips sponsored by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, the lawyer and several retired US three- and four-star generals were shown the rubble that is now Gaza - and were essentially told it was all Hamas’ fault.
They were shown surveillance videos of Hamas activities, so the destruction that followed “was not the product of an indiscriminate assault and that the laws of war had been upheld”.
“Hamas’ use of civilian buildings transformed those sites into ‘military objectives’, the former US Army lawyer concluded,” the report said. “The civilians killed were not targets but ‘incidental deaths’.”
A subsequent report by the US delegation concluded “that the IDF’s implementation of civilian-risk mitigation ‘reflects a good-faith commitment’ to comply with the laws of war, whereas Hamas acted as a pervasive and intentional violator of the law”.