There is a peculiar species of modern moralist who treats war not as a tragedy to be understood, but as a stage upon which to perform indignation. Kenneth Roth’s recent lament in The Guardian is a near-perfect specimen of this genus: a piece so saturated in prosecutorial certainty, and so curiously devoid of intellectual balance, that it collapses under the weight of its own pretensions.

We are told, in solemn tones, that international humanitarian law is approaching its breaking point. The villains are presented in familiar hierarchy: Israel foremost, Russia predictably, Sudan dutifully, and a scattering of other offenders to preserve the illusion of universal concern. But it does not take a particularly trained eye to notice where Roth’s prosecutorial enthusiasm truly resides. Israel is not merely criticised; it is indicted, convicted, and morally sentenced in a single breath.

One need not be an apologist for any government to recognise what is taking place here. This is not legal analysis. It is moral theatre.

The first and most glaring defect in Roth’s argument is his treatment of Hamas – not as the central actor responsible for initiating the present conflict, nor as an organisation whose operational doctrine explicitly depends upon embedding itself within civilian infrastructure – but as a kind of atmospheric condition. It exists, certainly, but only as background. The foreground is reserved exclusively for Israel’s response.

This omission is not trivial. It is the entire case.

International humanitarian law was never written for wars between armies that courteously meet in open fields. It exists precisely because combatants often exploit civilians to shield themselves from retaliation. The prohibition against human shields is not decorative language. It is a recognition of an ugly truth: that some belligerents deliberately transform civilian proximity into a defensive weapon.

Hamas has refined this practice into an art form. Its tunnels run beneath apartment buildings. Its command structures burrow beneath hospitals. Its weapons caches hide among homes, schools, and mosques. This is not accidental. It is doctrine.

Yet Roth’s essay performs a remarkable act of intellectual laundering. He describes the civilian consequences while erasing the military cause. He mourns the fire while declining to mention the arsonist.

This is the rhetorical equivalent of condemning firefighters for water damage while ignoring the inferno.

Then comes the familiar incantation of “indiscriminate bombing,” a phrase repeated so frequently in contemporary discourse that it has become almost entirely detached from its legal meaning. Indiscriminate attacks are those that cannot be directed at military objectives or whose effects cannot be limited. They are, by definition, blind.

But Israel’s military campaign – whatever one thinks of its wisdom or proportionality – has been characterised by extensive target identification, evacuation warnings, and precision-guided strikes. Civilian casualties, however tragic, do not in themselves prove indiscrimination. If they did, every urban conflict in modern history would qualify as criminal.

War in cities is not a surgical procedure. It is closer to demolition work conducted in the dark, amid uncertainty and danger. To pretend otherwise is to indulge in fantasy.

Roth goes further, invoking the gravest accusation available in the legal lexicon: genocide. This word, once reserved for the systematic extermination of peoples, is now deployed with the casual abandon of a social media hashtag.

Genocide is not defined by the presence of civilian deaths. It is defined by intent – the demonstrable, deliberate intent to destroy a people as such. This standard exists for a reason. Without it, the term collapses into meaninglessness.

Israel possesses both the capability and, if one accepts Roth’s thesis, the alleged intent to annihilate Gaza’s population. Yet Gaza’s population continues to exist. Its growth over decades is documented. Its survival, even amid war, is evident. The accusation of genocide therefore rests not upon demonstrable extermination, but upon speculative interpretation.

This is not law. It is accusation inflated into doctrine.

What emerges most clearly from Roth’s essay is not the death of international humanitarian law, but its transformation into a kind of ideological instrument. Its application has become conspicuously selective. Democracies with functioning courts, investigative journalism, and internal dissent are subjected to relentless scrutiny. Meanwhile, regimes that operate beyond the reach of accountability are condemned in principle but pursued with noticeably less fervour.

This inversion produces a perverse incentive. The more transparent a state is, the more vulnerable it becomes to legal and moral prosecution. The more opaque and tyrannical a regime, the less susceptible it is to sustained outrage.

In this moral economy, accountability becomes a liability.

One might forgive this imbalance if it stemmed from mere intellectual error. But there is something more troubling at work. There is, in certain quarters, an unmistakable appetite for Israeli culpability – a readiness, even an eagerness, to interpret every military action through the lens of criminality.

This impulse is not driven solely by humanitarian concern. It is sustained by something closer to moral exhibitionism. Israel, as a democratic state engaged in asymmetrical warfare, presents the perfect object upon which to project outrage. Its actions can be scrutinised. Its leaders can be criticised. Its conduct can be debated.

Terrorist organisations offer no such opportunities. They do not hold press conferences. They do not publish legal justifications. They do not submit themselves to inquiry.

It is therefore easier, and safer, to prosecute Israel in the court of public opinion than to confront the nihilism of those who oppose it.

International humanitarian law is not dying because it is violated. War has always violated law. It is dying because it is being manipulated – because it is being transformed from a universal standard into a selective weapon.

Law ceases to function as law when it becomes indistinguishable from advocacy. It ceases to restrain violence when it is perceived not as impartial but as partisan.

The tragedy is not merely that conflicts produce suffering. The tragedy is that those who claim to defend the law increasingly undermine its credibility through their own intellectual dishonesty.

If international humanitarian law is to survive, it must be applied consistently – even when doing so complicates preferred narratives. It must confront uncomfortable truths – not merely convenient villains.

Otherwise, it will not collapse under the weight of war.

It will collapse under the weight of hypocrisy.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)