The Israeli hostage rescue and Christian just war theory
by Martin Davie, Christian Today:
On Saturday the Israeli police and military staged a raid into the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza and succeeded in rescuing four Israeli hostages Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrei Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, who had been held captive by Hamas since being abducted from the Nova music festival on 7 October last year.
There have been contrasting reactions to this raid.
In Israel was public rejoicing, and their rescue was also welcomed by US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Russian ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov.
However, Josep Borell, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, wrote on X ‘reports from Gaza of another massacre of civilians are appalling. We condemn this in the strongest terms,’ and the deputy Foreign Minister of Norway, Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik, wrote on X that he was ‘appalled by reports of another massacre of civilians in Gaza.’ The Turkish ministry of foreign affairs released a statement declaring that the country deplored the Israeli attack, which it called ‘barbaric’ and another in a long list of ‘crimes’ committed by Israel in Gaza, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation condemned what it called ‘the horrific massacre carried out by the Israeli occupation army, which resulted in the murder and injury of hundreds of Palestinians, most of them women and children.’
If we ask the reason for these contrasting reactions, the answer is that the focus of the responses has been different. Those who have welcomed the raid have done so because it resulted in the release of the four Israeli hostages. Those who have condemned it have done so because of the resulting Palestinian casualties, which Israel has suggested were under 100 and the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry says were 274.
In the light of these differing reactions the question I want to explore in this article is what we are to make of the Nuseirat raid in terms of traditional Christian just war theory.
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