Context:
In the discussions surrounding the recent events in Israel and Gaza, there seems to be little agreement on how Israel is justified in responding to Hamas' recent actions, or to what extent Hamas was provoked in the first place. Even calling Israel's actions a "response to Hamas" could easily be taken as controversial. Beyond some agreement that the death of innocent civilians is undesirable, there seems to be little consensus on what justifies the killing of x number of civilians. Preventing more deaths and acting in self-defense are both generally agreed on as mitigating factors, and intentionally targeting civilians to send a message is generally frowned upon. The scale of death is often thought to be important as well—for example, killing a thousand civilians is worse than killing ten. But these few areas of agreement do not get us much closer to how each of these factors should be weighed against one another. I will detail two possible approaches below.
I will use a number of analogies, some from popular media. Spoilers for Death Note, Loki (2021), and ASoIaF follow. I did not expect to be using the Red Wedding as a metaphor for the philosophical debate surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but few things can be expected in 2023.
Human Rights Approach:
In a previous post, most people seemed to agree that human rights should govern morality. I suppose we should start with the human rights angle since it is the most straightforward. This approach begins with the assumption that all humans have inalienable rights, which can only be violated to protect some amount of other rights. These rights can be forfeited if a human violates the rights of someone else. The most important right, presumably, is the right not to be killed. Measuring civilian casualties, then, is a simple matter of measuring the ratio of innocent people killed to innocent people saved. Different thought experiments have attempted to quantify this, and I will give five scenarios that seem to give different answers.
The classical trolley problem involves redirecting a runaway trolley toward one person to save five people. Most people who are given this scenario choose to redirect the trolley. In a different version, individuals are asked whether they would push a large man in front of the trolley to prevent it from hitting five people. Most people refuse to push the large man. This discrepancy has largely been rationalized with the doctrine of double effect—according to this doctrine, using someone as a means rather than an end is always wrong, but it is justified to directly prevent a great evil, even if it will indirectly lead to the deaths of innocent people. Israel could argue that the citizens of Palestine are not being treated as a means and that civilian casualties are simply an indirect effect of their actions against Hamas. However, the threshold here still requires a 1:1 ratio. If Israel kills more civilians than it saves, on this doctrine, it would be like redirecting the runaway trolley to hit ten people in order to save five—presumably not justifiable. We would have to account for how many more Israelis would die if Israel did not take such extreme measures in the Gaza Strip.
Complicating this is another version of the thought experiment in which the trolley, if redirected, will derail and tumble down a hill, killing someone who is taking a walk. Most people offered this scenario without hearing the others choose not to redirect the trolley, considering the person walking to be less involved in the conflict, in contrast to the trolley workers. This could work against Israel's case since the second-best scenario might involve a ground invasion with soldiers who joined the army voluntarily. Theorists could argue that killing one civilian to save five soldiers who voluntarily joined the army is not justifiable, just like redirecting the trolley in this instance.
Another event we might consider is the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Proponents of these attacks argue that while they killed about 200 thousand people, they saved even more (about 1 million). This presumes that directly killing one innocent person to save five is justifiable. Opponents typically argue that the bombs were not necessary, but it is rare to come across someone who argues that, even if the bombs were necessary, the United States should have bitten the bullet and let 1 million people die. It seems a rare point of agreement then, that in the context of war, killing 1 to save 5 is justifiable.
But on a strict human rights approach, that context should be irrelevant. Humans are individuals, and individuals do not become less innocent just because their leaders elect to declare war. So on a purist human rights approach, people's inclinations seem to have contradictory results. A final example is the anime series Death Note, in which Light Yagami saves about 20 times as many people as he kills, and saves about 200 times as many innocent people as he kills [source]. Most of Yagami's is almost universally condemned as evil, even the killings that were necessary to save a greater number (most of them). If that is the case, then this would seem to contradict the earlier consensus we saw with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It would also seem to contradict the actions of his father and the other members of the Kira task force, involving handing over the Death Note to known terrorists. Kira (the antagonist) kills a small number of people to save a larger number, while the task force (the protagonists) risk thousands of lives to save one person. Perhaps a purist human rights approach is insufficient to account for people's feelings on this matter.
Principle Approach:
It was my initial assumption that the human right not to be killed outweighs most other moral values when weighted in a moral calculus. But what if that's not the case? In Loki (2021), Kang the Conqueror commits genocide on a massive scale in order to prevent a multiversal war, which would likely result (on average) in less deaths than his current approach. In terms of pure death count, the TVA status quo seems like the worst-case scenario already, so Kang is not saving lives on net. Is killing trillions of people to save a lesser number ever justified? In my readings on this, the consensus seems to be that Kang was justified in these killings because an alternate Kang would be a dictator, restricting freedom across the multiverse, even if this alternate version of Kang might kill less people. So perhaps the principle of having freedom outweighs a few trillion lives, even if protecting freedom requires killing those people directly.
It may also be assumed that if a particular war or conflict is provoked by another group, all blame for civilian casualties lies on them. At the Red Wedding, Catelyn Stark's killing of JB is often considered justified under the reasoning that even if killing an innocent person is morally worse than breaking a vow, Walder Frey has started the conflict and thus blame for the deaths of all innocents lies with him. Both Palestine and Israel would likely make this argument, with Israel in particular focusing on Hamas' decision to put bases inside of soft targets like hospitals.
Palestine often defends their actions with the principle of recovering land stolen from them. Israel often relies on the principle of non-responsibility, since Hamas often uses civilians as human shields, forcing Israel to choose between Palestinian casualties and the deaths of Israelis. Religion often factors into this war as well, although it plays a myriad of different roles and doesn't necessarily seem to be the main focus of the conflict. But it may affect how the principle approach is applied in many cases. Hamas would have to rely primarily on this approach since the killing of Israeli civilians is generally done for the sole purpose of sending a message, rather than to save others.
The hard thing about the principle approach is deciding how to weigh principles against each other. How many lives is freedom worth, and how can freedom even be measured? If we're not sure about how to weigh two moral factors, should we refrain from killing civilians just to be safe, or go with our emotions? And finally, when someone's homeland has been invaded and many of their fellow citizens killed, will their emotions be a reflection of accurate moral principles or cloud their judgment?
