Scott Horton and I have written an article now published at the Mises Institute providing the libertarian view on Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip.
Scott is the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, author, and host of Antiwar Radio and the Scott Horton Show.
I joined Scott on his show on December 21 to discuss this horrific catastrophe and the need for a humanitarian ceasefire.
For additional context for our article, also see my debate on the Tom Woods Show where I took the negative to the resolution that “Israel is justified in doing ‘whatever it takes’ to ‘completely destroy’ Hamas in Gaza”.
I will be debating the Israel-Palestine conflict again on February 26 at the Soho Forum in New York City, where I’ll be arguing the negative to the resolution “The root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Palestinians’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist.”
As Scott write in our article, “The Israeli State’s Assault on Gaza Must Stop“:
The government of South Africa has filed an application with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with the crime of genocide.
An update we sent after submitting the article was not included, but since we wrote the published version, on Friday, January 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a ruling for preliminary measures ordering the government of Israel to fulfill its obligations under the Genocide Convention, including cessation of indiscriminate attacks on civilians and allowance of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
While the ICJ did not go so far as to order Israel to completely halt its military operation, the order to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza to meet the civilian population’s needs effectively amounts to a ceasefire order since a humanitarian ceasefire, as the international community has been repeatedly reiterating for months, is absolutely required to deliver aid and prevent an outright famine as Israel has been using starvation as a method of warfare.
In ordering Israel to comply with the Genocide Convention, the ICJ found that South Africa had successfully argued that a plausible legal cases exists that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza.
As Scott and I write in our article:
There are two basic positions on this issue held by Americans. One is that Israel is justified in doing whatever it takes to eliminate Hamas in Gaza. The other is that, while Israel has a right to self-defense, it must exercise that right in accordance with international humanitarian law.
The only view compatible with the foundational ideal of libertarianism, the non-aggression principle, is the latter.
To learn why any self-described libertarian must oppose Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza or cease pretending to be a libertarian: