21 Winter 2025 ntroduction: The Hamas Terror Attacks On October 7, 2023, Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza since June 2007, launched a surprise attack against southern Israel. Hamas terrorists fired thousands of rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilian targets, and simultaneously invaded Israeli territory from the land, sea and air. The terrorists brutally slaughtered at least 1,200 Israelis and other nationals in a variety of towns and villages. Hundreds of other victims had been enjoying an open-air music festival in the Negev desert. The terrorists butchered babies, children, women and elderly victims. They severed limbs, burned people alive, tossed hand grenades at unarmed civilians cowering for their lives, raped women, beheaded infants and adults, gouged out eyes, and committed rape, sexual violence, and many other atrocities. Some of the terrorists wore go-pro cameras and livestreamed their savagery on the stolen cellphones of their victims.1 Thousands of other victims were wounded, many seriously and critically. The terrorists also kidnapped nearly 250 other victims and took them to Gaza as hostages. Israel responded with a formal declaration of war, striking Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. Less than one week later, Israel asked all Gazan civilians to leave the northern half of the Gaza Strip and move to the south for their safety.2 Hamas, however, “actively discourage[ed] civilians from evacuating to the south and is reportedly even preventing them from leaving, as in the case of blocking roads.”3 Hamas also blocked hundreds of foreign passport holders trapped in Gaza from leaving for Egypt through the Rafah border crossing, effectively holding those people hostage too.4 As of this writing the war has lasted for more than one year, other than a one week pause in fighting in late November 2023, when Hamas traded 81 Israeli women and children hostages for more than 200 Palestinian terrorists and an influx of fuel and other supplies. The available evidence, including the real-time videos uploaded by Hamas terrorists on the social media accounts of some of their victims, body camera videos seized from dead and captured terrorists, footage from surveillance cameras and automobile dash-cameras, plus eyewitness accounts, overwhelmingly demonstrate the Hamas massacres, sexual violence and hostage-taking violated every norm of international law, including many provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute.5 The Israel-Hamas War: Self Defense, Necessity and Proportionality Steven E. Zipperstein 1. Sheera Frenkel and Talya Minsberg, “Hamas Hijacked Victims’ Social Media Accounts to Spread Terror,” N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 17, 2023. 2. John Reed and Mehul Srivastava, “Residents Flee Gaza City as Israel Tells 1.1mn to Leave,” FINANCIAL TIMES, Oct. 13, 2023. 3. Michael N. Schmitt, “Israel – Hamas 2023 Symposium – What Is and Is Not Human Shielding?,” LIEBER INSTITUTE (Nov. 3, 2023), available at https://lieber. westpoint.edu/what-is-and-is-not-humanshielding/#:~:text=Hamas%20is%20actively%20 discouraging%20civilians,qualify%20as%20using%20 human%20shields; see also “Hamas Tells Gaza Residents to Stay Put as Israel Ground Offensive Looms,” REUTERS, Oct. 13, 2023. 4. Ben Farmer and David Millward, “Hamas Blocks Foreign Nationals from Leaving Gaza,” THE TELEGRAPH, Oct. 29, 2023. 5. See, e.g., Bel Trew, “‘Kfar Aza Smells Of Death’: Inside the Israeli Border Village Where ‘Babies Were Slaughtered’ in Hamas Attack,” THE INDEPENDENT, Oct. 11, 2023; see also Samuel Forey, “Hamas Attack: October 7, a Day of Hell on Earth in Israel,” LE MONDE, Oct. 30, 2023; see also Isabel Kershner, “Israel Shares Raw Footage of the Oct. 7 Attacks,” N. Y. TIMES, Oct. 23, 2023; see also “Remarks by President Biden on the October 7th Terrorist Attacks and the Resilience of the State of Israel and its People” (Oct. 18, 2023), WHITEHOUSE.GOV, available at https://www.whitehouse. gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/18/remarksby-president-biden-on-the-october-7th-terrorist-attacksand-the-resilience-of-the-state-of-israel-and-its-peopletel-aviv-israel/ I
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