“It’s clear that Hamas and the state of Israel cannot coexist and Israel’s judgment — that whatever it’s doing now has to have as one of its political goals the eradication of Hamas — is an apt judgment,” said Capizzi, who is also the dean of the university’s School of Theology and Religious Studies. “Hamas is designed and animated by the desire to extinguish the state of Israel.”
The Israeli government has claimed that it does not target civilians. The Israeli offensive has reportedly resulted in more than 20,000 deaths, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health. This amounts to nearly 1% of Gaza’s population prior to the invasion.
Capizzi said Israel must “pursue the execution of [its] political aims by military means in a manner that is attentive to … the proportion of innocent people who will die as a consequence of the use of military force.”
“There is a point at which Israel has to be concerned about how many people it’s killing,” Capizzi added.
To comply with just war doctrine, Capizzi said military forces must “follow the normal morality that the rest of us have to follow in our lives,” such as the moral principle “to not kill innocent people … by intention.”
“The most important thing is that war, or the use of force in war, be understood as serving actual political goals, all of which themselves are in the service of peace,” Capizzi continued. “So everything that you do in war has to serve the goal of peace.”