Rep. Raskin’s statement strikes the appropriate balance between self-defense and consideration for the lives of by-standers:

“Israel has the indisputable right under international law to engage in military self-defense against this explosion of mass terrorist violence. It may act to stop and repel the violence, completely secure its borders and people, and disarm and neutralize Hamas…

A just war undertaken in self-defense must be prosecuted justly, according to international and humanitarian law, the central purpose of which is the protection of civilian life from military violence…

The ultimate legitimacy of even the most just war depends not only on the original righteousness of its cause but on the legality of its prosecution and the military’s attention to the rights and lives of innocent civilians. The defense of innocent civilians on all sides is not an obstructive legal doctrine or battlefield annoyance but the entire purpose of a just war against an enemy that has set itself against humanity. Contempt for civilian life is the hallmark of terrorist regimes and actors, not liberal democracies.