Thank you for your email.
Allow me to examine your words point by point:
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You admit that you are not versed in international law but only in pre-modern history. If so, you should surely not have put your name to an Open Letter that was much concerned with International Law. It is, after all, not as if there are no other experts in international law, such as Natasha Hausdorff, that take a very different view to Professor Banu. If you are ignorant, you should refrain from judgement on matters of international law.
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You say that the bombing of Gaza is not the solution. Not the solution to what? Bombing military installations in Gaza and destroying the hundreds of kilometres of tunnels built by Hamas is the solution to the problem of Hamas's announced intention of resuming its genocidal attacks on Israel and its citizens as soon as it is able to regroup. Destruction of Hamas terrorists and of its military infrastructure is clearly the solution to Israel's problem of ensuring that the slaughter of 7.10.23 cannot happen again from Gaza. Do you wish to dispute this?
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You say that Israel's bombing of Gaza will only create more Palestinian resistance. It will not only create more resistance, since it will destroy Hamas's military capability.
Will it also create more Palestinian hatred and so fuel more resistance? How can there be more hatred than there already is? More than 75% of the Palestinians on the West Bank in a poll taken last week, approved of Hamas's slaughter of Israelis on 7.10.23, approved of Hamas's bombing of Israeli civilian targets (close to ten thousand rockets to date), and applauded the slogan 'From the river to the sea', a slogan that means destroying the state of Israel and killing all its Jewish population. Are you worried that if the IDF succeeds in destroying Hamas's military capability and its rule in Gaza, this percentage of hatred will rise and create more resistance?
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You say that you "deeply believe in the importance of a ceasefire as a platform to try to resume talks on a two-state solution". You surely cannot be ignorant of the fact that Hamas has no interest in a two-state solution. Its charter commits it irrevocably to the destruction of the state if Israel. You know perfectly well that its spokesman Ghazi Hamad (a member of its politburo), speaking on Lebanese LBC TV on 24 October said "The Al Aqsa Flood [Hamas's name for the hideous attack on innocent Israelis on 7.10.23] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight.' You know this because I informed you of it in my reply to the Open Letter you signed (and if you doubt my word, you can check it). If so, you must surely also know that a cease fire would only enable Hamas to regroup and continue its murderous attacks on Israeli civilians. Is this what you want?
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You would like to see a resumption of talks on a two-state solution. So would I. But you surely cannot believe that such talks would ever be with Hamas.
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You say that my letters did not influence your position. I am sorry to hear that. I should be grateful if you could explain any flaws in my reasoning. I can do no more than confront you with the facts and appeal to generally recognized principles, such as the principle that a State has a duty to protect its citizens from murderous attack. I wonder how you would feel if ten thousand missiles shot by a terrorist organization sworn to destroy Britain fell on London in less than six weeks, if 1400 civilians were slaughtered in the most hideous manner unparalleled since the Holocaust, and more than 4,800 injured, many maimed for life. If you are pedantic, and are as interested as you assert you are about proportionality, you can multiply these figures by seven, since the population of the UK is roughly seven times that of Israel.
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You accuse me of being arrogant and insulting in my replies to the Oxford 44 and to Roxana Banu. I have done no more than to respond to the arguments that the Oxford 44 and Professor Banu advanced. Those arguments are deplorably defective, ill-informed, and often deeply offensive. I have done no more than I would do to ill-supported and ill-constructed arguments by my philosophy students. Allow me to point out such defects in your own email:
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You write: "it seems to me that the fundamental issue is whether or not the presence of terrorists amid civilian populations is just cause to kill those civilians en masse and whether or not we therefore think that the eradication of the Palestinians of Gaza is a proportionate response to a terrorist attack." With this statement you are asserting;
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that Israel is killing Gazan civilians en masse. If you mean that many Gazans are tragically being killed, no one can deny that. But your wording suggests that you mean that the IDF is indiscriminately killing Gazans. If you mean that, you are doubly mistaken. First, the latest Gazan figures from Hamas are 11,420. These figures do not specify how many of the dead are terrorists. I assume that you will agree that some thousands are, since of the 3,000 murderers who broke into Israel on a murder spree on 7.11.23, fifteen hundred were killed by the IDF, and numerous further Hamas terrorists have been killed since then. Hamas further specifies that 4,630 children have been killed, but does not specify that UNWRA (the primary reporting agency) counts as children teenagers up to the age of nineteen or twenty, some of whom are active terrorists. The matter is murky. What have you done to obtain reliable information on the matter? Secondly, you omit mention of the fact that the IDF has gone to great lengths to ensure that civilians leave the battle zone. In particular, the IDF intelligence unit has to date made more than 30,000 individual telephone calls, sent ten million electronic messages and dropped four million flyers to encourage Gazan citizens to flee south. Is that part of 'killing en masse'? Can you cite any other army in modern warfare that has gone to comparable lengths to minimize civilian casualties?
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You say that Israel is "eradicating the Palestinians of Gaza". This is a most peculiar statement. Even if 11,500 Gazan civilians have been killed (which is obviously too high a figure since it does not include Hamas terrorists, nor does it include civilian deaths caused by Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets falling short within Gaza and killing Gazan civilians, as at Al Ahli hospital), that is less than 0,5% of the Gazan population. Is that what you mean by "eradicating the Palestinians of Gaza"? What precisely did you mean by your accusation?
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that Israel is killing Gazan civilians en masse. If you mean that many Gazans are tragically being killed, no one can deny that. But your wording suggests that you mean that the IDF is indiscriminately killing Gazans. If you mean that, you are doubly mistaken. First, the latest Gazan figures from Hamas are 11,420. These figures do not specify how many of the dead are terrorists. I assume that you will agree that some thousands are, since of the 3,000 murderers who broke into Israel on a murder spree on 7.11.23, fifteen hundred were killed by the IDF, and numerous further Hamas terrorists have been killed since then. Hamas further specifies that 4,630 children have been killed, but does not specify that UNWRA (the primary reporting agency) counts as children teenagers up to the age of nineteen or twenty, some of whom are active terrorists. The matter is murky. What have you done to obtain reliable information on the matter? Secondly, you omit mention of the fact that the IDF has gone to great lengths to ensure that civilians leave the battle zone. In particular, the IDF intelligence unit has to date made more than 30,000 individual telephone calls, sent ten million electronic messages and dropped four million flyers to encourage Gazan citizens to flee south. Is that part of 'killing en masse'? Can you cite any other army in modern warfare that has gone to comparable lengths to minimize civilian casualties?
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You claim that the pivotal question that you (and your co-signatories?) are asking can be "accurately" asked as follows: "should the international community and its citizens support the ongoing killing of children in an occupied area or should they advocate for a solution that does not support that?" Are you suggesting that Israel's war aim is the killing of children? Do you really mean that? Are you really suggesting that anyone who supports Israel in its war against Hamas is "supporting the ongoing killing of children"? Does that not strike you as a morally offensive claim? If your recommendation were adopted in international law, it would incentivize every future terrorist group in the world to occupy schools and shoot RPGs and rockets from schools in the safe knowledge that it would be illegal for any army to shoot back at them. Is this a recommendation that you are making?
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You repeat the false claim that Israel occupies Gaza, a claim made by Professor Banu. Do you not know that Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip in 2005, that Hamas was elected government of Gaza in 2006 and proceeded to murder all the previous PA officials by throwing them off high-rise buildings or shooting them in the back?
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You assert, in your parting shot, that "attempts to intellectually undermine signatories is a troubling trait perhaps indicative of the moral and intellectual instability of one’s position". I wonder how you think one should argue with an adversary (or 44 adversaries) without intellectually undermining their position? If this troubles you, I cannot but wonder what you conception you have of the moral responsibilities of a university teacher? I have been teaching philosophy for 57 years and I am dedicated to teaching my students how intellectually to undermine invalid arguments, question-begging assertions, and false or misleading presentations of the facts. I confess that it never occurred to me that doing so was "perhaps indicative of the moral and intellectual instability of my position".
Peter Hacker