Excerpts from the article published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 4/01/2026
In this interview, Michael Walzer, American specialist in the ethics of war and a convinced Zionist, tells Israelis that after the destruction of Gaza by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, soul-searching is essential. He explains how the just war waged by Israel in Gaza turned into an unjust war.
In the spring of 1967, the young philosopher Michael Walzer travelled across the United States, passionately denouncing the Vietnam War wherever people were willing to listen. Then the Six-Day War broke out—and the Harvard professor defended the Israeli attack with the same fervour.
“Some found this inconsistent,” he recalls, “and I wanted to explain that there are just wars and unjust wars. But I noticed that there was little literature available on the subject. The last ones to take an interest in it were Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages, and their theories were taught only in Catholic universities.”
Walzer set about working on a secular version of this reflection that would examine the circumstances justifying or not justifying war. This decision overturned his life and made him one of the most influential political thinkers of the past fifty years, as well as the world’s foremost authority on the ethics of war.
“I worked on the subject for ten years,” he confides to Haaretz during a three-hour marathon conversation on the occasion of a recent visit to Israel. Walzer read, he says, countless texts of Catholic philosophy and military history, and, in order to deepen his knowledge, he spoke with many soldiers. “I took an interest in this field even though I never served in the army,” he explains in an almost contrite tone. “I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam.”
His book, Just and Unjust Wars, was published in 1977. “I was a young left-wing activist,” he says, “and to my great surprise, a few months after its publication, the work was added to the required reading list of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Since then, I have been invited there many times.”
It is not obvious that a university work of philosophy could have such influence.
“Wittgenstein once said that philosophy changes nothing in the world, and he was right. But my argument on just wars has become an integral part of international law, and it also influences the way soldiers think. American army officers have told me they took my book with them to Iraq.”
Can you briefly explain what makes a war just?
“The most important thing is legitimate self-defence. That is the fundamental principle that justifies going to war. To this is added intervention to put an end to a massacre. For example, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia to stop the Khmer Rouge was justified. It is important to distinguish preventive war from pre-emptive war. The first is triggered by the mere fear of an attack; it is therefore more hypothetical. The second is undertaken when one knows that an attack is imminent, beyond any doubt, and one strikes first. That is what happened in 1967.”
Was the war against Hamas just, according to your principles?
“It must not be forgotten that the war was also aimed at the Iranian ‘Axis of Resistance.’ For most Israelis, the conflict was focused on Gaza, but it was a war on several fronts, including a strike against Iran. This strike was justified, because Iran was participating in the joint attack against Israel. Israel was lucky that the attack was not coordinated—perhaps because Hamas feared a leak. If it had been carried out simultaneously from three directions, with the weapons supplied by Iran, it would have been extremely dangerous for Israel. It is important to remember this.”
Unsurprisingly, Walzer affirms unequivocally that the war launched by Israel after the October 7 attack was perfectly justified.
“After such an attack, every country in the world would go to war,” he affirms. But over time, questions began to arise. “There is an important ethical distinction between the justification of war—what is called in Latin jus ad bellum—and the moral justification of the manner in which it is waged—jus in bello. Entering the war was just; afterwards, things became complicated.”
Walzer weighs his words. “I assume that the Israel Defense Forces fought loyally at the beginning of the war,” he says. “But it is not easy to fight a militia that conceals itself within the population and uses human shields. The established rules stipulate that after identifying a military target, the attacking party must evaluate its importance and the number of civilians who would be affected, then determine whether the value of the target justifies killing that number of people.”
Is there an accepted ratio?
“No, because this ratio depends on the evaluation of the target. So it is very problematic. However, armies tend to establish rules concerning a justified casualty ratio. During previous operations in Gaza, such a ratio existed, and according to the media, senior Israeli officers stated that, in the current conflict, Israel modified it to justify the killing of more civilians. It is difficult for me to be specific about this from New York, but during the bombings in the last phase of the war, it seemed that no evaluation had been carried out. What people saw on American television was, for example, a six- or seven-storey building that entirely collapsed after a bombing. Then an IDF spokesperson appeared and said that a Hamas observation unit was on the roof. Everyone who saw that thought: that does not justify the destruction of 40 apartments. The attacks seemed disproportionate, as if they were aimed at making Gaza uninhabitable.”
Alongside his criticisms of Israel’s conduct, Walzer underlines that Hamas’s use of civilians in Gaza was unprecedented. He explains that one of the most important questions of the ethics of war concerns the degree of risk that soldiers must accept in order to minimise harm to civilians.
“When one talks to soldiers, they often speak of taking risks to reduce the number of civilian casualties. But in Gaza, there was a double instrumentalisation of civilians, something unprecedented.
First, Hamas integrated its men into the civilian population: hospitals, schools, family apartments. But beyond that, there was also the underground city. They were called ‘tunnels,’ but it was in reality a veritable city.
“There were three levels, some ventilated, which required pumps and electricity. And all this was protected by the city above. I have found nothing similar in military history.
It is a new form of war, and it is difficult for me to determine what the rules are and what risks the soldiers should take. In such a case, those who bear the greatest responsibility are sometimes not the generals or the legal advisors who approve the wars, but the people directly on the ground.”
“In different armies, at different times, many soldiers have tried to fight according to moral principles, and the most important are the officers on the ground,” Walzer explains.
“Some units fight with bravery, others with barbarity, and this depends in large part on the age of the officer. Not only on his morality, but also on his composure. In Vietnam, during the massacres, it was generally the result of the panic of young officers. I spoke with an Israeli officer whose unit, during a previous operation in Gaza, was searching for tunnel entrances. He told me that these entrances always concealed a trap, an ambush, and he added: ‘If the commander keeps his calm and self-control, he generally succeeds in getting his men out of the trap without the help of artillery or aviation—which causes the death of many civilians.’”
“But the most serious trap of this war did not concern only the units on the ground, but the IDF as a whole and Israel as a whole.
“Hamas planned an attack to which Israel could not respond without killing civilians, destroying homes, and displacing populations,” Walzer explains.
“This is a common characteristic of asymmetric wars—wars between a high-technology army and a low-technology organisation. The latter conceals itself among civilians, and the army kills a great many of them. There has been a series of asymmetric wars, beginning with the Algerian War. All were disasters.
“Hamas was particularly effective at infiltrating the civilian population, and death and destruction were an integral part of its plan.
Israel had no other choice but to fall into this trap, but when one falls into a trap, one must think carefully about how to get out of it.”
“It is the army that kills the most, and it loses the war if it does not exterminate the population, as the Russians did in Chechnya or the Sri Lankans against the Tamils,” he continues.
“But one can only act this way if no one cares. The French, the Americans, the Israelis cannot allow themselves this, because the whole world is watching. Hamas knew how to infiltrate effectively into the civilian population, and death and destruction were an integral part of its strategy. Israel had no other choice but to fall into this trap, but when one falls into a trap, one must think carefully about how to get out of it.
One can try to get around it through politics and diplomacy—as members of the IDF and the American administration recommended—or one can get out of it by force, which is what the Israeli government chose to do.”
Is that how you understand the choice of Israel’s leaders?
“The trauma of October 7 generated an unbridled rhetorical reaction, calling for vengeance and indiscriminate massacres.
“Leading Israeli political figures affirmed that there were no innocent civilians and that everyone had to be killed. The shock and trauma of the attack created a rhetoric that will be used against Israel in all future debates on the conduct of the war and on the question of whether a genocide took place.”
These reactions also had repercussions on the ground, Walzer explains. “This generated moral problems that should have been dealt with, but were not. On social networks, horrible videos showed soldiers boasting of war crimes they had committed. They were no doubt a minority, but this illustrated a relaxation of discipline within the army. At the same time, settler violence intensified to the point of…”—he hesitates—“pogroms, under the passive gaze of the police and the army. Credible testimonies also reported mistreatment inflicted on detainees. The refusal to allow access to the Red Cross was a mistake, even if it was motivated by the will to pressure Hamas into allowing visits to the hostages.”
The most serious ethical problem, in his view, was the siege imposed on Gaza. Here again, he adopts a measured but firm position.
“It was a partial siege, with interruptions, but it nonetheless represented an important part of the Israeli military effort, and constitutes perhaps the most crucial aspect of the debate on the justification of the war: Israel’s responsibility for the medical and nutritional situation of the inhabitants of Gaza. After the attack of October 7, many Israelis, and many Jews around the world, believed that Israel had no responsibility, given the celebrations organised in Gaza following the attack. But that was a mistake.”
Why would it be a mistake to think this way? After all, Hamas is supposed to be responsible for the inhabitants of Gaza.
“Imagine the structure of a siege. One surrounds a city, blocks the supplies, then waits. The inhabitants, starving, put pressure on their leaders, and that is what, historically, led the latter to accept negotiations or to capitulate. But this scenario presupposes a moral or political link between the inhabitants and their leaders. Now, such a link did not exist between Hamas and the population of Gaza, and the Israeli decision-makers knew it.
“This is one of the principal reasons why Hamas was so widely condemned. Its leaders wanted to kill Jews, but they also wanted Jews to kill Palestinians. The massacres in Gaza were part of their plan. Consequently, the siege was a political error and, more seriously, morally reprehensible. It cannot in any way be qualified as a military operation.”
But if the leaders of the Gazans do not care about them, why should Israel?
“As strange as it may seem, in an asymmetric war, the well-being of the civilian population falls upon the high-tech army.
First, because civilian deaths constitute an asset for the enemy.
Even if Hamas stole part of the fuel and food and profited from it, it profited more from the destruction caused by the siege. A senior commander of the American army in Afghanistan declared: ‘The more civilians we kill, the more we risk losing the war.’
“That is a strategic element to consider. But there is also the fact that the one who causes destructions must care about the innocent and defenceless victims on the other side. And Israel did not. Israel was claiming that there would be no relief from suffering before a ‘total victory’—a victory that was impossible and in which no one, not even the IDF, truly believed.”
Walzer, born in the Bronx in New York, has long been considered an unconditional friend of Israel. On October 7, he reacted with shock and anger, convinced that a firm military response was justified and indispensable. He moreover stated this to Haaretz in November 2023.
“From the beginning of the war, I insisted on Hamas’s responsibility, and not just for the October 7 attack,” he says today. “In the United States, some condemned the attack, then wrote about the war as if Hamas had not participated in it and only the Israeli army were present on the battlefield.”
Was there a precise moment when your view of the war changed?
“When Joe Biden and his advisors came to see Prime Minister Netanyahu and said to him: ‘You have caused enough damage; you can now pursue the struggle against Hamas through diplomatic channels.’ As a specialist in questions of war and morality, I can affirm that at the moment when a political path existed to defeat Hamas and liberate the hostages, the war became unjust.
“The will to win at a time when it was impossible to win without destroying Gaza was criminal. Wars are sometimes necessary, but they must have an end and a purpose. Your government refused to commit to any purpose, except the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the expulsion of all or almost all of its inhabitants—whereas a better outcome was possible.
“I speak today as an American who voted for Biden and admired him. On October 8, with remarkable lucidity and moral conscience, Biden took a stand alongside Israel and the Jews as no American president had done before. He deployed aircraft carriers and formed a coalition to defend Israel against missiles. And he had a plan to end the war—at least a year before Donald Trump drew inspiration from it. Of course, Biden’s plan was not perfect, nor was Trump’s. Both involve risks.”
[…]
“I admire the Israeli civil society that has taken to the streets to demand the release of the hostages and the end of the war,” Walzer declared. “I admire those who go to the [occupied] territories to protect the Palestinians from aggressors.”
But the war, he stated, “is a collective work,” and Israeli citizens “must recognise their responsibility in the destruction and the massacres in Gaza. Of course, one must also salute the courage of the soldiers in the face of the difficulties of the war. There is reason to be proud, but also to feel guilty about the injustices committed in your name. The international reaction will probably be unilateral and unjust. That is why, for the future of Israel, it is essential that you carry out your own soul-searching,” he concluded, almost imploring. “Do it well.”
[…]
Walzer has written 27 books and more than 300 articles. One of his works, The Paradox of Liberation, published in 2015, is particularly relevant today. One of the most striking political phenomena of recent decades is the abandonment, by oppressed peoples who had won their independence through modernisation and democratisation, of democracy and secularism after a more or less long period of prosperity, in favour of religious and anti-democratic paths. In this book, Walzer endeavours to understand the reasons for this phenomenon.
His explanation is the following: although the liberation movements fought against the European occupiers, their leaders were themselves people educated in the West—secularists who aspired to instituting democratic regimes. Now, the peoples whom they sought to liberate were traditional and resolutely non-European. Over time, the newly independent population would vote democratically for religious parties, thus marginalising the founders of the State and depicting them as perfidious elites, disconnected from the aspirations of the people.
In his work, Walzer is interested in the passage from secular liberation to religious fundamentalism, a process that has unfolded in Israel, India, and Algeria. “The main argument of the book is that the liberators were engaged in two struggles: against colonial power and against their own traditional society,” he explains. “Nehru fought both the British and the caste system. The Marxist FLN in Algeria fought the French and Islam. As for Zionism, it claimed national independence and the rejection of the idea of diaspora, that is to say, in reality, the rejection of Judaism as it had existed for 2,000 years.” Here is the paradox of liberation according to Walzer: liberation is not limited to deliverance from the yoke of the colonial conqueror, but also concerns ancestral conceptions of oneself—and the two are incompatible.
If national liberation is won, secular liberation not only fails, but leads to a fundamentalism more extreme even than before independence, precisely because of the brutal attack against the traditional and religious foundations of the people.
How should the first Zionist leaders have acted?
“Apparently, there was no other choice but to reject important aspects of life in diaspora, but this rejection was excessive. For more than two thousand years, existence in diaspora had made it possible to preserve a national life without territory or sovereignty. That is an accomplishment that should have been respected and integrated into the Zionist movement. Some tried. Bialik, for example, created a collection of midrashic tales.
“In retrospect, the value of the diaspora should have been recognised.
This would have facilitated mizrahi (Eastern) immigration, which was more traditional.
But I admit that it would not have been simple.”
One criticism made of your work is that the theory you present is not universal, and that in Christian countries that gained independence, such a reversal of situation did not occur. Do you think Judaism harbours a tendency toward extremism?
“In France, after the Revolution, there was a Catholic reaction. The same thing in Germany: the country first welcomed the Enlightenment before tipping into extremism. But it may be that Protestantism is more open to liberal government than Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism.
Those who claim to have a direct link with God are the most dangerous, whereas Protestantism has tended, throughout history, to fragment into many currents. Moreover, Judaism has known the same fate, becoming a religion with multiple branches: haredi, Reform, Conservative. This fragmentation ultimately worked in its favour.”
It seems that, ten years after the publication of “The Paradox of Liberation,” the situation in the countries you examined has not improved.
“That is correct. In Algeria, the FLN, opposing Islamic fanaticism, instituted an authoritarian military regime, contrary to the aspirations of the leaders of the liberation struggle. In India, Hindu nationalism has gained in power. And in Israel, one observes a more religious and more right-wing regime, notably because Netanyahu has integrated extremists into the government.”
Perhaps Netanyahu is not responsible for this process, which, according to your book, would probably have occurred anyway, as was the case in other countries.
“I think that for the State of Israel, Netanyahu is a very bad leader. First of all, because of his incitements to hatred against Rabin and his opposition to the end of the occupation and to coexistence with the Palestinians.
He has systematically undermined all efforts. He has approved or financed the settlements and formed coalitions with very extremist figures, both on the nationalist and the religious planes. The religious reaction against secular national liberation would have occurred anyway, but Netanyahu plays a major role in its political success.”