Over the past couple of weeks, the three most prominent scholars in the tradition known as "just war theory" - hereafter JWT, for short - have taken turns applying their work to the current conflict in Gaza between Hamas and Israel.
In the New Republic, Michael Walzer criticized both Hamas for using civilians as weapons in an asymmetric war, and Israel for how it was not living up to the JWT's "doctrine of double effect." In the Boston Review, Frances Kamm took the usage of the term "proportionality" as a way to educate people about the term's conceptual meaning in JWT, by showing how Israel has indeed been disproportionate - just not in the way most people have claimed. In Prospect magazine, Jeff McMahan provided his own corrective to people's usage of "proportionality" and likewise showed, by way of an analysis of various hypothetical examples concerning JWT's understanding of "self-defence," that Israel's methods have been disproportionate.
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