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Israel and the Struggle Over the International Laws of War
(Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin - Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and holder of a PhD in political science and a J.D. from Yale, is out with a new book, Israel and the Struggle Over the International Laws of War. He explained: Israel's bitter experience with the Goldstone Report and, in the end, better experience with the Gaza flotilla controversy - both of which concerned Israel's operations against Hamas, which is the ruling authority in Gaza and which is sworn to Israel's destruction - involved the attempt by influential actors on the international stage to criminalize Israel's inherent right of self-defense. All liberal democracies must combat this abuse and corruption of the international laws of war. The international laws of war seek to balance the legitimate claims of military necessity and humanitarian responsibility. Liberal democracies such as Israel and the U.S., which are engaged in a long struggle against transnational terrorism and depend on their armed forces on a daily basis to defend their ways of life, have a special interest in the struggle over the international laws of war. That's in no small measure because soldiers and officers imbued with the principles of freedom and equality justly take pride in honoring laws of war rightly understood.