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In the Israel-Hamas War, International Law Favors the Lawless
(Macdonald-Laurier Institute-Canada) Mathew Giagnorio - The rules of war were created for a world that no longer exists. They were designed to regulate conflicts between states - actors with borders, uniforms, and at least a minimal respect for order. The Geneva Conventions assumed reciprocity: that both sides would follow the same moral code, even during armed conflict. But what happens when one side rejects those norms entirely? What happens when the law begins protecting those who operate outside it? The war between Israel and Hamas exposes that contradiction with brutal clarity. On Oct. 8, 2023, Israel did something unprecedented: it declared a formal state of war - not against another nation, but against a terrorist movement. Hamas is not a resistance movement or a political party, but a death cult that massacres civilians, hides behind them, and celebrates it. Yet in the eyes of international law, Hamas remains entitled to protections it has never earned. That legal fiction has become the foundation of a moral farce. Hamas livestreams atrocities and then hides in hospitals, knowing that each civilian death it engineers will be tallied against Israel in global opinion and international courts. This isn't war - it's lawfare, the weaponization of humanitarian norms to discredit liberal democracies and shield those who commit war crimes. The International Criminal Court's decision in 2024 to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders alongside Hamas commanders marked the collapse of legal neutrality. To equate a liberal democracy defending its citizens with a jihadist organization dedicated to genocide is not impartial justice - it is ideological jurisprudence. The law's neutrality, meant to ensure fairness, now serves those who reject fairness altogether. The result is a grotesque inversion: liberal democracies are treated as war criminals for defending themselves, while regimes and militias that glorify mass murder are treated as legitimate political actors. If international law can no longer distinguish between those who uphold it and those who annihilate it, then it ceases to be law at all. The challenge of our time is to rescue the law from those who would use it to destroy the very civilization that created it. A world where the law protects the lawless is not a world governed by justice - and democracies will not survive long in it.