Israel and Hezbollah: A Legal Assessment of Israel’s ‘War in the North’

“An intentional act of injustice is an injury. A Nation has therefore the right to punish it…. This right to resist injustice is derived from the right of self-protection.”

Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law 1758)

Israel’s law-based conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas terrorism is grounded in the right of self-defense.[1] This “peremptory” or unassailable right is intended to benefit not only the state defending itself against terror-crimes, but also the “community of nations” as a whole. Together with earlier jurists Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf, Vattel was a seminal creator of modern international law. Interestingly for Israel, all three founders drew heavily on Hebrew Scripture (Jewish Law) and derivative Natural Law.[2]

Regarding Israel’s current war on jihadist terror, there are underling and complicating considerations. In law and practice, Israel’s “war in the north” against Hezbollah and against Hamas in Gaza are secondary or “reflective” belligerencies against sub-state adversaries. In both coinciding theatres of warfare (conflict regions that are sometimes overlapping[3]) the true source of pertinent reflections is Iran. In essence, for Israel, Iran represents the common and primary foe, the potentially annihilationist state enemy that systematically seeks to develop operational nuclear warfare capabilities.[4]

Because Hezbollah poses a much greater strategic threat to Israel than does Hamas – including many-sided synergistic hazards with a rapidly-nuclearizing Iran – this article will focus on the mutually-reinforcing perils from Hezbollah and Iran. Moreover, because so little is generally known about applicable jurisprudence, the article will prioritize variously inconspicuous matters of authoritative international law. When considered together with relevant military issues, civilizing issues of law will become increasingly important to Jerusalem’s war-related assessments and decisions. Prima facie, these assessments and decisions will take into account the Iranian Houthi proxy, another anti-Israel terror force that very recently (mid-July 2024) successfully sent drones into central Tel-Aviv.

Jus ad bellum and Jus in bello

International law concerns itself with both the right to wage war and the tangible ways in which a particular war must be fought. At first glance, Israel’s argument for self-defense against Hezbollah terror-crimes concerns only the first right, or the core issue of a “just war” (jus ad bellum). But what of the coinciding issue of “just means” or “justice in war” (jus in bello)? Before Israel’s expanding operations against Hezbollah could be cumulatively law-enforcing, its armed forces would need to satisfy both standards of authoritative assessment.

Is such two-fold satisfaction verifiably the case? A correct answer must be discoverable in all pertinent details. International criminal law is never something that could reasonably be interpreted ex nihilo, out of nothing. Instead, it represents a complex compendium of rules and principles that have identifiable subject-matter boundaries and could require years of disciplined study. Inter alia, there are no comparable contemporary counterparts of Vattel, Grotius or Pufendorf.

With such fundamentals in mind, the guiding question should be rendered explicit: What are clarifying examples from “war in the north?” To begin, the legal issues of Israel versus Hezbollah closely resemble those of Israel versus Iran-backed Hamas. Whatever the specific war venue, authoritative jurisprudence acknowledges that schools and hospitals are protected areas, but also that the legal responsibility for civilian casualties in these normally immunized locales shifts wherever civilian populations are exploited as “human shields.” In law, the formal term for such evident and egregious criminal exploitation is “perfidy.”

With growing Iranian support, Hezbollah has been committing “perfidious” crimes against Israel for years, but the situation has been steadily worsening. To wit, Hezbollah now maintains a deep operational presence in Syria and systematically exploits villages in south Lebanon for military advantage. More precisely, the jihadist Shiite army uses these villages as useful sites for projectile storage, missile launch and terrorist command and control.

For Israel, the anti-Hamas war in Gaza and the “war in the north” against Hezbollah in Lebanon and  Syria represent intersectional components of existential struggle, not at this precise moment, but incrementally; i.e., over foreseeably short time horizons.[5] Ultimately, what would threaten Israel’s survival is not terrorism per se, but escalating levels of Iranian support for Islamist terror-violence. Cumulatively, and on a protracted basis, Iran could once again confront Israel directly. Any such confrontation could have distinctly grave consequences for the entire region, even if the law-violating Islamic Republic were to remain non-nuclear.

Israel’s military forces (IDF) withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000. Since that problematic “disengagement,” Hezbollah has systematically embedded portions of its significantly offensive firepower in well-populated towns in south Lebanon and simultaneously erected bases in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon. With tangible assistance from Iran’s Quds Force, Hezbollah has also established operational bases in forward Syrian areas to be used with “criminal intent” (mens rea) against Israeli noncombatants.

Israel and Asymmetrical Nuclear War

An asymmetrical nuclear war could be waged between an already-nuclear Israel and a still pre-nuclear Iran. Among other more-or-less plausible scenarios, Iran could sometime employ radiation dispersal weapons against Israeli civilian populations and/or launch highly destructive non-nuclear missiles at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. Dimona has already been attacked by rocket fire twice before, once by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and once by Hamas. In what would surely represent a worst-case scenario involving a still pre-nuclear Iran, Israeli forces would come into direct military confrontations with Iran’s already-nuclear state ally, North Korea. In any such portentous circumstance, Israeli planners would also have to deal with the presumed vital interests of Russia, China and the United States.[6]

Intellectually, these would not be matters for the faint at heart. What would best serve Israel in such analytically perplexing situations would not be garden-variety battlefield courage, but capable planners who are able to rise to extraordinary levels of theoretical (logic and mathematics) calculation. Looking to its escalating “war in the north,” Israel will more reasonably require the military insights of an Einstein, Oppenheimer[7] or Yuval Ne’eman[8] than the always-brave combat readiness of IDF military forces,

The world is more familiar with Israel’s war against Iranian surrogate Sunni Hamas than against Iranian surrogate Shiite Hezbollah. Nonetheless, “war in the north” has forced the evacuation of more than 60,000 Israeli civilians and is likely part of the opening response to a progressively more worrisome adversary than the one faced in Gaza. Hezbollah is a de facto branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and maintains an arsenal of more than 150,000 heavy rockets and precision-guided ballistic missiles. Hezbollah represents a vastly more formidable enemy for Israel than Hamas. But if Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad could succeed in the creation of a Palestinian state, that adversarial calculation would likely change. Among other things, a Palestinian state would render more likely a regional nuclear war.[9]

Should such a direct engagement of military forces materialize, the two state adversaries (Israel and Iran) would struggle for “escalation dominance.”[10] Such an  unpredictable contest could quickly spawn unprecedented human and material costs. Regarding any intra-crisis competition in risk-taking between Israel and Iran, the outcomes would depend in considerable measure on the prevailing condition of nuclear symmetry.

There is more. An interactive dynamic characterizes Israel’s war with Hezbollah. This situational dynamic will obtain whether or not Iran becomes a direct adversary of Israel. Seemingly singular strategic and legal[11] matters could quickly become  many-sided, force-multiplying or “synergistic.” By definition, this last conceivable outcome would be a conflict “whole” that is greater than the sum of its “parts.”

The Place of International Law in National and Sub-National Decision-Making

International law represents an indissoluble part of every state’s normative order.[12] Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries, echoing 18^th century jurist Emmerich de Vattel, explains: “Each state is expected to aid and enforce the law of nations, as part of the common law, by inflicting an adequate punishment upon offenses against that universal law….”[13] Understood in  terms of Israel’s war against Hezbollah, this means that each state is obligated to join Israel in its punishment of jihadist criminality. Nullum crimen sine poena, “No crime without a punishment,” stipulate the peremptory Nuremberg Principles of 1950.

Israel is being subjected to protracted aggressions by willfully barbarous enemies. Endlessly, in the acrimonious Middle East, there have been charges and counter-charges. From the beginnings of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the late 1940s, one recurrent response to easily verifiable accusations of “terrorism” has been the invented counter-charge of “disproportionality.”[14]

What does authoritative international law say about this response? What do variously codified and customary[15] legal norms stipulate about such purported violations of the law of war? These are not subjective questions of opinion. The correct answers are discoverable in objective legal rules.

There are subsidiary questions. What are the comparative risks for each side?[16] What are corresponding leadership responsibilities?[17] And what is the contextual relevance of our traditional “Westphalian” system of international law?[18]

A reciprocal question also needs to be raised. To the extent that Hezbollah adopts a policy of “human shields,” that Iranian proxy[19] is guilty of “perfidy.” Any such policy is illegal on its face,[20] and qualifies ipso facto as a “grave breach” of Geneva Conventions.[21] The most critical legal effect of perfidy committed by Islamist terror group leaders – an effect that Jerusalem seeks to make evident to all observers – is that it immunizes Israel from responsibility for any inadvertent counterterrorist harms suffered by Arab civilians.

The Crime of “Perfidy”

In law, even though the bombs killing enemy noncombatants may be fired by Israeli military forces,[22] it is the criminal perpetrators operating from Syria or Lebanon  who have committed perfidy. Under law, when Israel bombs a hospital or ambulance because it is being used by terrorists to shield law-violating activities, noncombatant deaths and injuries become the responsibility of Hezbollah terrorist leaders. Moreover, these perfidy-driven deaths and injuries are cynically exploited by Hezbollah and its Iranian mentor for propagandistic purposes.

There are further specifics to clarify. Perfidy is identified as a “grave breach” at Article 147 of Geneva Convention IV. Deception can be legally acceptable in armed conflict, but The Hague Regulations expressly disallow any placement of military assets or personnel in populated civilian areas. Variously related prohibitions of perfidy can be found at Protocol I of 1977, additional to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949.  These peremptory rules[23] are also binding on the basis of customary international law,[24] a jurisprudential source identified most conspicuously at Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.[25]

Now embroiled in violent struggle with Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and assorted kindred criminal groups,[26] Israel will need to proceed diligently with identification of pertinent legal arguments. Optimally, appropriate identifications would ensure that Hezbollah war crimes not get in the way of Israel’s indispensable self-defense and its corollary obligations under humanitarian international law.[27] Ultimately, this obligation would become especially critical in those circumstances where Sunni and/or Shiite terror attacks were to involve weapons of mass destruction.

Law and Strategy: Mutually-Reinforcing Parameters

It’s time for candor. Such circumstances are presently implausible, but they are nonetheless conceivable. “The worst,” reminds Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt, “Sometimes does happen.”

Though interpenetrating or intersecting, law and strategy ought always to be evaluated separately, as conceptually discrete elements of Israel’s unified military doctrine.[28] In this connection, Israel should take measures to convince both its terrorist insurgent foes and terrorist state patrons that perfidious aggressions will continuously be exposed in law and opposed in practice. In more-or-less discernible increments, these corrective measures could create an efficient “force multiplier” for Israel, one wherein the “whole” desired anti-insurgent effect would be greater than the decipherable sum of its legal and military “parts.”

In law, considerations of distinction, proportionality and military necessity[29]  set defined limits on the permissible use of armed force. Unequivocally, under the customary and codified expectations of the law of war, these three interpenetrating criteria remain binding. Whenever Israel’s terrorist enemies declare an IDF attack “disproportionate,” they wittingly ignore that the rule of proportionality does not demand tangibly equivalent military harms. Rather, it demands an amount of force that is militarily necessary.

For the most part, the key issues here are straightforward. Any gratuitous infliction of harms is illegal under the longstanding law of war, but inflicted harms need never be of determinably equivalent magnitude. If such equivalence were actually an authoritative expectation, the United States, following its August 1945 atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would represent the single most egregious offender of “proportionality” standards in all human history.

There is more. In the main, governing jurisprudence in such complex matters is unhidden. Inevitably, perfidy and perfidy-like behavior represent an especially serious violation of the law of war or law of armed conflict. During Israel’s several Gaza wars,[30] perfidy was exploited with some measure of tactical success by Hamas, but even more importantly, with enduring propagandistic benefit. Today, while Hamas and certain other jihadist leaders live safe and luxurious lives in Qatar or other Gulf states, they simultaneously urge their obedient followers to become “martyrs.”

On patently choreographed occasions, the practice of “human shields” is being justified in terms of alleged Hezbollah commitments to alleviating Palestinian suffering and strengthening Hamas. Though partially successful as propaganda, these justifications are never more than concocted claims. They are premised on fully irrelevant manipulations of acceptable legal definition. For example, when jihadist insurgents claim the right to “any means necessary,” they adopt a seemingly compelling argument, but one that still remains illegal. In the current Gaza War, the battle cry of “Palestine from the River to the Sea” expresses nothing less than an open “intent to commit genocide.”[31] Such “criminal intent” is manifestly a part of both codified and customary international law.

There is more. International law regulates certain primary world system behaviors. In its particular manifestations in the law of war, international law requires every use of force (whether exercised by a uniformed army or an irregular/insurgent force) to meet the test of “proportionality.” Drawn in part from the rudimentary legal precept that “the means that can be used to injure an enemy are not unlimited,”[32] this test of proportionality stipulates that every resort to armed force must remain limited to what is presumed necessary for meeting legitimate military objectives.

This peremptory or jus cogens principle of codified and customary jurisprudence applies to all judgments of military advantage and all planned reprisals or retaliations. It does not mean that each side to an ongoing conflict must ever agree to either suffering or imposing symmetrical harms. Nonetheless, this failure to understand pertinent international law remains widespread, and unjustly plays to the public relations advantage of Hezbollah, Hamas and their many sympathizers.

Can there be Justice?

“Justice,” we may learn from Plato’s Republic, means “a contract neither to do nor to suffer wrong.”[33] Unless there should be substantially greater understanding that perfidious or perfidious-type behavior by insurgents places direct legal responsibility for correlative harms on that insurgency, and not on the victimized state or population, sub-state foes could sometime decide to escalate hostilities. Such increasingly likely terrorist escalations could eventually embrace mega-terror assaults on Israel. Over time, these assaults could even include actual use of nuclear weapon technologies.[34]

To best manage and inhibit such consequential enemy escalations, Jerusalem will have to choose between creating a maximally seamless web of national deterrence (ranging from narrowly conventional to broadly nuclear retaliatory attacks) and allowing enemy forces to proceed directly toward WMD terrorist capacities.[35]

For now, such Israeli judgments will have to be made without “benefit” of any relevant historical experience. In strict scientific terms, there can never be authentic assessments of probability in the absence of pertinent past events. Among other things, the persuasiveness of Israeli deterrent threats will require Israel’s time-sensitive foes to believe that Jerusalem is willing to launch appropriate military retaliations and is simultaneously capable of inflicting “unacceptable damage.” Included in this basic requirement of capability would be a perceived Israeli capacity to penetrate Iran’s active defenses.

Israel’s offensive military forces must stay at least “one step ahead” of the Iranian enemy’s missile defense systems. If this tactical advantage were not present, Israel’s formidable state enemy, no longer having to anticipate unacceptable reprisals, could sometime find itself inclined to strike first itself. In such a scenario, by definition, Israeli deterrence could fail altogether.[36]

Terrorism, like perfidy, is a codified and custom-based crime under authoritative international law,[37] but here the discrete and component crimes are mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive. De jure, any human shields-based deceptions launched by anti-Israel terrorists effectively add a second layer of illegality to an already underlying insurgent dereliction. Though frequently disregarded, minimized or disputed, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Houthi and Fatah insurgencies are illegal per se. This is true even if one were able to associate “just cause” with some or all of these terror groups’ commitment to violence.

In law, perfidious tactics are not “only” mala prohibita (“evil as prohibited”), but also malae in se (“evil in themselves”). This characterization also applies to “lone wolf” terrorist attackers. Many pre-Gaza War Palestinian terrorists identified by Israel were of this “lone wolf” variety.

In law, there is more to learn about deception. The terrorist crime of perfidy is not about deception as such. Under humanitarian international law, deception is never impermissible on its face. Some forms of deception are generally permitted to states and selectively to lawful insurgents; that is, to those with arguably “just cause.” Nonetheless, the specific practice of human shields is always illegal. Its universal prohibition extends to all operational combatants: state, sub-state, “hybrid” and individual.

During Israel’s earlier Lebanon wars,[38] Hezbollah, assisted by Syria and Iran, placed its weapons and fighters within carefully selected areas of Arab civilian population. In the past, ISIS employed a human shields strategy in its battle for Mosul (Iraq). At that time, this prohibited strategy was still useful in providing ISIS with tangible tactical advantages.

Israel, International Law and the Primacy of Intellect

To wage successful war against a Jihadist ideology,[39] Israel’s primary “battlefield” must always be analytic or intellectual.[40] In the ancient Greek and Macedonian worlds, this form of struggle was identified as one of “mind over mind” rather than “mind over matter.”[41] For Israel, the earlier identification remains valid.

Sooner or later, certain of Israel’s Islamic terrorist enemies, perhaps under cover of perfidy, will initiate a quantum magnification of operational goals.  Then, more or less systematically, these criminal adversaries will strive to exploit the particular methods and harms that already lie latent in WMD violence.  In one seldom-mentioned nuance of this threat, the enemy party, whether state or terror-organization, could aim its conventional rockets against Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona.[42] Though unprecedented, the basic results of any such aggression[43] are not difficult to fathom.

The dangers of mass destruction terrorism could be enlarged in the absence of ordinary strategic logic. Such dangers could become still more consequential if insurgent enemies of Israel and their state mentors (most notably Iran) would become more expressly oriented toward what French philosopher Albert Camus (The Rebel; 1956) called “crimes of passion.”  Here, animated by the clarion call of jihad and operating outside of any ordinary “rules of rationality” – outside what Camus calls “crimes of logic” – these terrorists could sometime opt for inflicting chemical, biological or (potentially) nuclear destruction upon Israel.

For now, any terrorist nuclear threat would be limited to a “dirty bomb” attack, though it could already extend, at least in principle, to conventional assaults upon Israel’s Dimona reactor. It is certainly at least possible that the selection of WMD terror would be detached from any rationally-considered calculations of geopolitical advantage. Prima facie, there exists no good historical or intellectual reason to expect only rational behaviors in world politics. Quite the contrary.

War, Fear and Terror

Writing about the species of fear that arises from tragedy, ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle emphasized in Poetics that such fear “demands a person who suffers undeservedly” and must also be felt by “one of ourselves.”  This fear, or terror, has little or nothing to do with any private concerns for impending misfortune to others, but rather from our own perceived resemblance to the victim. Terror, therefore, is generally fear referred back to ourselves. The credible threat of chemical, biological, or nuclear terrorism could sometime prove purposeful from the jointly comprehensive standpoints of enemy passion and enemy logic.

Going forward, Israel should more clearly communicate to Hezbollah, Iran and related jihadist foes that any contemplated excursions into higher-order forms of destruction would never elicit Israeli capitulations. To ensure that such communications have the best possible chance of success, it is most important that Israel’s terrorist and terror-mentoring enemies foresee no meaningful advantages to staging “perfidious” assaults. Always, for the State of Israel, law and strategy should be assessed together, as closely interdependent parts of a single coherent national security policy.[44]

During his presidency, Donald J. Trump pointed with ostentatious pride to the “Abraham Accords,”[45] but these agreements did nothing to reduce the likelihood or corrosiveness of anti-Israel-terrorism. The Accords may have marginally improved Israel’s relations with Arab states that had never been anti-Israel belligerents, but they simultaneously (and shortsightedly) enlarged the felt grievances of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. From the standpoint of Israel’s security, the Trump-mentored Abraham Accords have proven to be a net-negative.

This assessment of Israel’s war against Hezbollah and jihadist terrorism has been about variously complex considerations of law and strategy. In legal and strategic terms, the world is best studied as a system. If, for example, certain conventional-nuclear firebreaks were crossed for the first time by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, the consequences could be experienced profoundly in other places,[46] including the Middle East. It follows that Israel’s protracted war on jihadist terror – a war intersecting with what Brig. Gen (IDF/res.) Eran Ortal insightfully calls Israel’s “thirty-year war with Iran” – will have to draw systematically upon a broad variety of legal perspectives and force-multiplying military operations.

Whether it is directed primarily at Hezbollah or Hamas. Israeli counter-terrorism represents a strategic/legal subject, one that should always be approached as a systemic and dialectical[47] challenge. It follows, inter alia, that the most valuable “armaments” available to Israeli security planners in the months ahead will be disciplined thinkers of uncommonly high intellect. In a national and global society long accustomed to identifying its heroes with special operations, high-technology active defenses, large guns and heavy missiles, acknowledging such “softer armaments” will not come easily. This is not to minimize, however, the all-important Israeli obligation to sustain and enhance nuclear deterrence.[48]

To “Aid and Enforce” the Law of Nations

Recalling Emmerich de Vattel’s introductory comment on a “nation’s” right to punish injury and exercise self-defense – a comment later reinforced by Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England[49] –  it is the obligation of each state in world politics to “aid and enforce” international law. Regarding the existential issues here at hand, this means a universal legal obligation to support Israel’s ongoing counter-terrorism operations in “the north” (Lebanon, Syria) and in Gaza. Though it may first appear that one or both Israeli operational postures fall outside the authoritative expectations of humanitarian international law (jus in bello expectations), it is Iran-supported “perfidy” committed by Hezbollah, Hamas and other jihadist proxies that is generally responsible for noncombatant harms. By their deliberate co-location of military facilities with schools and hospitals, Hezbollah and Hamas have lawlessly imperiled not only Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian civilian populations, but also the literal foundations of world legal order.

Though Israel’s Gaza War against Sunni Hamas is more visible and recognizable to general publics than its coinciding war against Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, it is the latter theater of conflict that has the greater potential of triggering a direct war with Iran.[50] From a purely legal standpoint, the issues involved in both conflicts are essentially the same. In both already intersecting conflicts, Israel will have to identify an optimal strategic posture. This means one that best combines Israel’s core military objectives with the authoritative expectations of international law.

In the final analysis, Israel’s overriding obligation in conducting all sectors of its “thirty-years war with Iran”[51] is the survival of its own populations.  If possible, this incomparable obligation should be met while Iran is still non-nuclear. “The safety of the people,” exclaims Cicero in The Laws, “is always the highest law.”[52]

Notes

[1] A specific variant of this law-based right is known formally as “anticipatory self-defense.” Even before the nuclear age, legal theorists took strong positions in support of anticipatory self-defense. Emmerich de Vattel, the Swiss scholar, concludes in The Law of Nations (1758): “The safest plan is to prevent evil, where that is possible. A nation has the right to resist the injury another seeks to inflict upon it, and to use force and every other just means of resistance against the aggressor.” Vattel, similar to Hugo Grotius in The Law of War and Peace (1625) drew upon ancient Hebrew Scripture and derivative Jewish Law. The Torah contains a provision exonerating from guilt a potential victim of robbery with possible violence if, in capable self-defense, he struck down and, if necessary even killed the attacker, before he committed any crime (Exodus, 22:1.) Additionally, says Maimonides, “If a man comes to slay you, forestall by slaying him.” (Rashi, Sanhedrin, 72a). Finally, apropos of pertinent legal criteria here, the Talmud expressly categorizes a war designed “to diminish the heathens, so that they shall not march against them” as milhemet reshut,” or discretionary (Sotah, 44b).

[2] See by the present author, Professor Louis René Beres, at JURIST: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2021/12/louis-rene-beres-natural-law-us-constitution/

[3] Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah frequently justifies his Shiite rocket attacks on Israeli forces and civilians as tangible expressions of “concern” for Sunni Palestinian populations in Gaza. Theologically, however, any such anti-Zionist justifications would be difficult to explain. More plausibly, Hezbollah and Hamas hatreds of Israel actually stem from their common hatred of “The Jew.” See, by present author, Professor Louis René Beres, at the Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-807376

[4] An Israel-Iran war in which both sides were operationally nuclear would present Israel with an unprecedented and existential threat. Regarding the plausible dynamics of deterring such a war, see, by this author and former SAC commander—in-chief John T. Chain: “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran?” The Atlantic, August 2012; Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press, February 23, 2012. General Chain (USAF/ret.) served as Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).

[5] One key factor here would be Palestinian statehood. Increasingly, argument is offered to minimize expectedly derivative existential threats to Israel via Palestinian “demilitarization.” For informed reasoning against this false argument, see: Louis René Beres and (Ambassador) Zalman Shoval, “Why a Demilitarized Palestinian State Would Not Remain Demilitarized: A View Under International Law,” Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, Winter 1998, pp. 347-363; and Louis René Beres and Ambassador Shoval, “On Demilitarizing a Palestinian `Entity’ and the Golan Heights: An International Law Perspective,” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vo. 28., No.5., November 1995, pp. 959-972.

[6] For assessments of the probable consequences of nuclear war fighting by this author, see: Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd. ed., 2018); Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington MA:  Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington MA; Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis René Beres, ed., Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington MA:  Lexington Books, 1986).

[7] See by this author at JURIST: Louis René Beres: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/02/lessons-from-oppenheimer-the-imperative-of-nuclear-conflict-avoidance/

[8] “Back in the day,” the present author (Louis René Beres) spoke with Professor (and University President) Yuval Ne’eman at TAU on several occasions on strategic military matters. Beres and Ne’eman also engaged in years’ long correspondence concerning Israel’s “bomb in the basement.”

[9] See by this author at JNS (Israel): Louis René Beres: https://www.jns.org/palestinian-statehood-and-regional-nuclear-war/  Significantly, Iran has been backing Palestinian Islamic Jihad as well as Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement) in Gaza.

[10] This struggle signifies a process of competitive risk-taking, a densely unfathomable process wherein each side seeks tangible strategic and tactical advantage without simultaneously incurring existential harms. On “escalation dominance,” see by Professor Louis René Beres at The War Room, US Army War College, Pentagon:  https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/nuclear-decision-making-and-nuclear-war-an-urgent-american-problem/

[11] The laws of war pertain not only to Israel, but also to Hamas and all other terror-group adversaries. Applying the laws of war to insurgent forces dates back to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Further, as more than codified treaties and conventions comprise the comprehensive law of war, authoritative obligations of jus in bello (justice in war) represent a fully-binding part of “the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations” (phrase from Art. 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice). Humanitarian international law binds all categories of belligerents. Hague Convention IV of 1907 further declares that in the absence of a precisely published set of guidelines regarding “unforeseen cases,” the operative pre-conventional sources of humanitarian international law still obtain and still govern all belligerency.

[12] The US Neutrality Act, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 960 (originally Sec. 25) (1794) was enacted in order to formally incorporate international law standards. Pertinent Congressional authority derived most specifically from article 1, Section 8, clause 10 of the U.S. Constitution. See also Talbot v. Jansen, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 133, 156 (1795) (Paterson, J). In the words of Mr. Justice Gray, delivering the judgment of the US Supreme Court in Paquete Habana (1900): “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction….” (175 U.S. 677(1900)) See also: Opinion in Tel-Oren vs. Libyan Arab Republic (726 F. 2d 774 (1984)). The more specific incorporation of treaty law into US municipal law is expressly codified at Art. 6 of the US Constitution, the so-called “Supremacy Clause.”  For pertinent earlier decisions by Justice John Marshall, see: The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66, 120 (1825); The Nereide, 13 U.S. (9 Cranch) 388, 423 (1815); Rose v. Himely, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 241, 277 (1808) and Murray v. The Schooner Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 64, 118 (1804).

[13] See: 2 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, “Of Public Wrongs” (1765-1769). Most famously, in this regard, was the main Nuremberg Trial (IMT) following World War II:  See: “Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal ” Nuremberg, 14 November 1944‑1 October 1946, 42 vols., IMT Secretariat, Nuremberg, 1947‑9. Cited by A.P. D’entreves, Natural Law 110 (1951). Lest anyone inquire about the special significance of William Blackstone, one need only to point out that his Commentaries (1760-1769) represents the original foundation of United States law.

[14] The principle of “proportionality” is contained in the rules governing the resort to armed conflict (jus ad bellum) and in the rules governing the actual conduct of hostilities (jus in bello).  In the former, proportionality relates to self-defense.  In the latter, it relates to conduct of belligerency. Proportionality is itself derivative from the more basic principle that belligerent rights are not unlimited See notably Hague Convention No. IV (1907), Annex to the Convention, Section II (Hostilities), Art. 22: “The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.”

[15] Article 38(1)(b) of the STATUTE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE describes international custom as “evidence of a general practice accepted as law.” The essential significance of a norm’s customary character is that the norms bind even those states that are not parties to the pertinent codification. Even where a customary norm and a norm restated in treaty form are apparently identical, these norms are treated as jurisprudentially discrete. During the merits phase of MILITARY AND PARAMILITARY ACTIVITIES IN AND AGAINST NICARAGUA, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stated: “Even if two norms belonging to two sources of international law appear identical in content, and even if the States in question are bound by these rules both on the level of treaty-law and on that of customary international law, these norms retain a separate existence.” See: MILITARY AND PARAMILITARY ACTIVITIES IN AND AGAINST NICARAGUA, Nicar. V. US., Merits, 1986 ICJ, Rep. 14 (Judgment of 27 June).

[16] Risks include decisional error and could take variously different and overlapping forms. Such forms include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; an incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and internal dissonance generated by any authoritative structure of collective decision-making.

[17] Criminal responsibility of leaders under international law is not limited to direct personal action nor is it limited by official position.  On the principle of command responsibility, or respondeat superior, see:  In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1 (1945); The High Command Case (The Trial of Wilhelm von Leeb), 12 Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals 1 (United Nations War Crimes Commission Comp., 1949); see Parks, Command Responsibility for War Crimes, 62 MIL.L. REV. 1 (1973); O’Brien, The Law of War, Command Responsibility and Vietnam, 60 GEO. L.J.  605 (1972); U.S. Dept. of The Army, Army Subject Schedule No. 27 – 1 (Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Hague Convention No. IV of 1907), 10 (1970).  The direct individual responsibility of leaders is also unambiguous in view of the London Agreement, which denies defendants the protection of the act of state defense.  See AGREEMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS OF THE EUROPEAN AXIS, Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Stat.  1544, E.A.S.  No. 472, 82 U.N.T.S.  279, art. 7.

[18] For authoritative legal origins of this self-help system of international law (aka “Westphalian law”) see: Treaty of Peace of Munster, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; Treaty of Peace of Osnabruck, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 119. Together, these two treaties comprise the “Treaty of Westphalia.” The de facto condition of Westphalian anarchy stands in contrast to the jurisprudential assumption of solidarity between states. This law-based assumption concerns a presumptively common legal struggle against aggression. terrorism and genocide. Such a “peremptory” expectation, known formally in law as a jus cogens assumption, was already mentioned in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis (533 CE); Hugo Grotius, 2 De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres, Ch. 20 (Francis W. Kesey., tr, Clarendon Press, 1925) (1690); and Emmerich de Vattel, 1 Le Droit des Gens, Ch. 19 (1758).

[19] All such Palestinian terror has its early roots in the Palestinian National Covenant. Calling officially for sustained Arab violence against Israel, this document was adopted in 1964, three years before the 1967 Six Day War. This means, significantly, that the PLO’s core guidance on terror was first published – together with its explicit references to the annihilation of Israel – three years before there were any “occupied territories,” For the Palestinian Authority, which until October, 2015, had still officially agreed to accept a “Two-State Solution,” the underlying and inherently lawless position of protracted war was part of a much broader strategy of incorporating Israel into “Palestine.” This irredentist incorporation was already codified on all PA maps. The most unambiguous Palestinian call for the removal of Israel remains the PLO’s “Phased Plan” of June 9, 1974. This Plan represents an unhidden commitment to carry out various certifiable crimes against humanity. In contrast to more militant Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement), the Palestinian Authority is allegedly “moderate.”

[20] “The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. Geneva Convention No. IV, Art. 28 (1949) Also: “The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual citizens shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favor or impede military operations.” Protocol Additional (No.1) to the Geneva Convention, Art. 51 (1977)

[21] The term “Grave Breaches” applies to certain infractions of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Protocol I of 1977.  The actions defined as “Grave Breaches” in the four Conventions must be performed willfully or intentionally, and against the different groups of “protected person” identified by each Convention.  The High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions are under obligation “to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed,” a grave breach of the Convention.  As defined at Art. 147 of Geneva Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (6 U.S.T.  3516, signed on Aug. 12 1949, at Geneva),  Grave Breaches  “shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.  Reference to Grave Breaches can also be found in the INTERIM REPORT OF THE COMMISSION OF EXPERTS, UNITED NATIONS DOCUMENT, S/25274, January 2, 1993, at Sec. 3., Art. 47.

[22] Sometimes, as we have seen, Palestinian civilians also die at the hands of errant or misfired Hamas rockets.

[23] According to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. art. 53: “…a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of states as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.” See Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, May 23, 1969, 1155 U.N.T.S. 331, 8 I.L.M.  679 (entered into force Jan. 27, 1980).

[24] Article 38(1)(b) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice describes international custom as “evidence of a general practice accepted as law.”  59 Stat.  1031, T.S. No. 993 (June 26, 1945).

[25] On the main corpus of jus in bello or humanitarian international law, see:  Convention No. IV Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, With Annex of Regulations, October 18, 1907.  36 Stat. 2277, T.S. No. 539, 1 Bevans 631 (known commonly as the “Hague Regulations:); Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field.  Done at Geneva, Aug. 12, 1949.  Entered into force, Oct. 21, 1950.  6 U.S.T. 3114, T.I.A.S. No. 3362, 75 U.N.T.S. 31; Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea.  Done at Geneva, Aug. 12, 1949.  Entered into force, Oct. 21, 1950. 6 U.S.T. 3217, T.I.A.S. No. 3363, 75 U.N.T.S. 85; Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.  Done at Geneva, Aug. 12, 1949.  Entered into force, Oct. 21, 1950.  6 U.S.T. 3316, T.I.A.S. No. 3364, 75 U.N.T.S. 135; Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.  Done at Geneva, Aug. 12, 1949.  Entered into force, Oct. 21, 1950.  6 U.S.T. 3516, T.I.A.S. No. 3365, 75 U.N.T.S. 287.

[26]Under authoritative international law, terrorist movements are always Hostes humani generis, or “common enemies of mankind.” See: Research in International Law: Draft Convention on Jurisdiction with Respect to Crime, 29 AM J. INT’L L. (Supp 1935) 435, 566 (quoting King v. Marsh (1615), 3 Bulstr. 27, 81 Eng. Rep 23 (1615) (“a pirate est Hostes humani generis”)).

[27] None of this is meant to suggest that Palestinian populations ought ever to be deprived of their peremptory human and/or political rights, but only to clarify comprehensively that the ends can never justify the means under authoritative international law. For example, the popular Palestinian terrorist defense of “by any means necessary” can never be deemed acceptable in law or justice.

[28] Formal doctrine is the required framework from which proper strategic goals should be suitably extrapolated. Generically, in “standard” or orthodox military thinking, such doctrine describes the tactical manner in which national forces ought to fight in various combat situations, the prescribed “order of battle,” and variously assorted corollary operations. The literal definition of “doctrine” derives from Middle English, from the Latin doctrina, meaning teaching, learning, and instruction. Always, a central importance of codified military doctrine lies not only in the way it can animate, unify and optimize pertinent military forces, but also in the way it can transmit certain desired “messages” to an enemy.

[29] The principle of “military necessity” has been defined authoritatively by the United States: “Only that degree and kind of force, not otherwise prohibited by the law of armed conflict, required for the partial or complete submission of the enemy with a minimum expenditure of time, life, and physical resources may be applied.” See: United States, Department of the Navy, jointly with Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps; and Department of Transportation, U.S. Coast Guard, The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, NWP 1-14M, Norfolk, Virginia, October 1995, p. 5-1.

[30] On conceptualizing these wars as a critical transitional stage of Israel’s “thirty years war against Iran,” see:  Brig, Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal: https://besacenter.org/how-to-win-the-thirty-years-war-with-iran/

[31] Though international law does not specifically advise particular penalties or sanctions for states that choose not to prevent or punish genocide committed by others, all states, most notably the “major powers” belonging to the UN Security Council, are bound, among other things, by the peremptory obligation (defined at Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties) known as pacta sunt servanda, to act in continuous “good faith.” In turn, this pacta sunt servanda obligation is itself derived from an even more basic norm of world law. Known commonly as “mutual assistance,” this civilizing norm was most famously identified within the classical interstices of international jurisprudence, most notably by eighteenth-century legal scholar, Emmerich de Vattel, in The Law of Nations (1758)

[32]  See especially, Hague Convention (No. IV); (1907); “Annex to the Convention,” Section II, “Hostilities,” Chapter 1, Art. 22., “The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.”

[33] See also, Philus in Bk III, Sec. 5 of Cicero, DE REPUBLICA.

[34] Regarding early writings by this author on nuclear terrorism, see:  Louis René Beres, Security Threats and Effective Remedies: Israel’s Strategic, Tactical and Legal Options, Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel), Policy Paper # 102, April 2000, 110pp; Louis René Beres,  Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat, second ed., (Boulder and London:  Westview Press,  1987);  and Louis René Beres,  “Confronting Nuclear Terrorism,”  The Hastings International and Comparative Law Review, Vol. 14,  No. 1.,  Fall 1990,  pp. 129 – 154;  Summer 1994.

[35] Israel’s nuclear strategy could have meaningful implications for U.S. national security. On these widely ignored connections, see Louis René Beres, ISRAEL’S NUCLEAR STRATEGY AND AMERICA’S NATIONAL SECURITY, Tel-Aviv University and Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, Tel-Aviv, December 2016: https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf

[36]  Reciprocally, Israel must ensure the durability of its own active defenses. Still, anti-missile deployments can never be “leak proof,” and could sometime resemble a refashioned Bar-Lev line. Such a deterioration would encourage false reassurances, and provide little if any soft-target protection. In the more existential case of Israeli space based defense against ballistic missiles, this refashioned Bar-Lev line could display “orbiting” characteristics. On Israel and Arrow, see: Louis René Beres and Major-General (IDF/ret.) Isaac Ben-Israel, “Think Anticipatory Self-Defense,” The Jerusalem Post, October 22, 2007; Professor Beres and Major-General Ben-Israel, “The Limits of Deterrence,” Washington Times, November 21, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iran,” Washington Tines, June 10, 2007; and Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iranian Nuclear Attack,” Washington Times, January 27, 2009.

[37] In part, it is because of this inherent criminality that any proposals for a “humanitarian cease fire” with Hamas in Gaza would be not merely inappropriate, but also law-violating. Following the peremptory norm of nullum crimen sine poena, or “no rime without a punishment,” there could be no law-based justification for any “deal” with a criminal organization. As an operational matter, any prolonged cease fire would be to the benefit of Hamas and would inevitably become the cause of additional terror crimes against Israeli citizens.

[38] See generally Louis René Beres, After the Falling Rockets from Lebanon: Interrelated

Commentaries on Israel’s Performance and Survival, 10 NATIV ONLINE (2006), available at

http://www.acpr.org.il/english-nativ/10-issue/beres-I 0.htm.

[39] In Man and Crisis (1958), 20th century Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y’Gasset observes: “History is an illustrious war against death.” This comment is especially relevant in regard to present-day Jihadist terrorism. Ultimately, power over death represents the greatest conceivable form of terrorist power anywhere on earth; but acquiring such power in world politics “normally” calls for the killing of certain expressly despised “others.”

[40]  Says Guillaume Apollinaire: “It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.” See: The New Spirit and the Poets, 1917.

[41] The core importance of thoughtful military doctrine – of attention to the complex intellectual antecedents of any actual battle – had been recognized by early Greek and Macedonian strategists and military planners. See, on this still-vital and increasingly urgent recognition, F.E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1962), especially Chapter IV.

[42] Hamas fired rockets at Dimona back in 2014, and Saddam Hussein launched several Scud-B rockets toward Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.  For an early and informed consideration of reactor attack effects, see:  Bennett Ramberg, Destruction of Nuclear Energy Facilities in War (Lexington MA:  Lexington Books, 1980); and Bennett Ramberg, “Attacks on Nuclear Reactors: The Implications of Israel’s Strike on Osiraq,” Political Science Quarterly, Winter 1982-83; pp. 653 – 669. More recently, see: Bennett Ramberg, “Should Israel Close Dimona? The Radiological Consequences of a Military Strike on Israel’s Plutonium-Production Reactor,” Arms Control Today, May 2008, pp. 6-13.

[43] See: RESOLUTION ON THE DEFINITION OF AGGRESSION, Dec. 14, 1974, U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 U.N. GAOR, Supp. (No. 31) 142, U.N. Doc. A/9631, 1975, reprinted in 13 I.L.M. 710, 1974; and CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, Art. 51. Done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945, 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No. 993, Bevans 1153, 1976, Y.B.U.N. 1043.

[44] Israel could also consider various formal treaty-like pacts with pertinent terrorist group enemies, but recognize, at the same time, that such pacts could contain the same sorts of lurking dangers as would treaties with state enemies. In law, terror group organizations may sometimes enter into valid agreements with states, but it need not follow that they would be any more likely than enemy states to comply. Regarding the purely legal aspects of such pacts, see: H. Lauterpacht, International Law: Collected Papers, Vol.1, 1975, pp. 494-495; and I. Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law, 4th ed., 1990, Part II, pp. 65-66.

[45] See, on the Abraham Accords: https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/ To be considered as a complementary agreement, see the Israel-Sudan Normalization Agreement (October 23, 2020) and Israel-Morocco Normalization Agreement (December 10, 2020).

[46] It is also vital to consider an American president’s authority and capacity to initiate a nuclear strike. In this connection, see by this writer:  Louis René Beres, http://www.jurist.org/forum/2017/08/louis-rene-beres-trump-nuclear.php See also:  https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-11/possible-trump-presidency-showcases-fatal-flaw-in-nuclear-command-safeguard. Professor Beres is the author of twelve published books dealing with nuclear command decisions, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (The University of Chicago Press, 1980), and, in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: https://thebulletin.org/2016/08/what-if-you-dont-trust-the-judgment-of-the-president-whose-finger-is-over-the-nuclear-button/

[47] Analysts should always approach their subject as a dialectical series of thoughts, one wherein each important idea presents a complication that moves onward to the next thought or idea. Central to this dialectic is the obligation to continue thinking, an obligation that can never be fulfilled altogether because of what the philosophers call an infinite regress problem. Still, it is an obligation that must be undertaken as fully and as competently as possible. The term “dialectic” originates from an early Greek expression for the art of conversation. A currently more common meaning is that dialectic is a method of seeking truth by correct reasoning. More precisely, it offers a method of refutation by examining logical consequences, and also the logical development of thought via thesis and antithesis to an eventual synthesis of opposites. In the middle dialogues of Plato, dialectic emerges as the quintessential form of proper philosophical/analytical method. Here, Plato describes the dialectician as one who knows how to ask, and then answer, questions.

[48] See, for example, by this author, Louis René Beres, at BESA (Israel):  https://besacenter.org/israel-nuclear-ambiguity/

[49] Blackstone’s Commentaries represent the core foundation of US domestic law.

[50] It ought to be kept in mind that Hezbollah drone attacks have created Israeli deaths and injuries on the Golan Heights, and that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah actively collaborates with Houthi terrorists operating from Yemen. Very recently (mid-July 2024) Houthi drone attacks (Samad-3) were launched from Yemen directly on central Tel-Aviv. See: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-says-tel-aviv-blast-apparently-caused-by-drone-2024-07-19/  Regarding direct Iranian  support for Houthi terror-fighters, see at Israel Defense: https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/62592

[51] The very helpful label used by IDF Brig, Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal at BESA Perspectives; infra.

[52] Any state’s basic right to self-protection – including “anticipatory self-defense” – is a reciprocal of every national leader’s obligation to protect “The People.” Even in pre-democratic or non-democratic states, sovereign-authority must ultimately be based on an assurance of protection. According to Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, then the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.” Similarly,  sixteenth-century French thinker Jean Bodin argues that citizen or subject obligation to the government must derive from the sovereign’s capacity to provide safety: “The word of protection in generall extendeth unto all subjects which are under the obeisance of one sovereign prince or seignorie: As we have said, that the prince is bound by force of arms; and of his laws, to maintain  his subjects in surety of their persons, their goods, and families, for which the subjects by a reciprocal obligation owe unto their prince faith, subjection, obeisance, aid, and succour.”

LOUIS RENÉ BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and articles dealing with war, terrorism and human rights.  Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, his latest and twelfth book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy.   https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442253254/Surviving-Amid-Chaos-Israel%27s-  Professor Beres’ published writings on law and strategy have appeared in Modern War Institute (West Point); BESA (Israel); JURIST; Yale Global Online; Parameters: The Journal of the US Army War College (Pentagon); Special Warfare (Pentagon); Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); The War Room (Pentagon); Modern Diplomacy; The Atlantic; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Conflict and Terrorism; Air and Space Operations Review (USAF); The Hudson Review; Oxford University Press (Annual Yearbook on International Law and Jurisprudence); The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; Armed Forces and Society; The New York Times; American Journal of International Law; Infinity Journal (Tel Aviv); World Politics (Princeton); International Security (Harvard) and the Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School). Dr. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Ariel Sharon, 2003-2004). He was born in Zürich at the end of World War II.