Contrary to U.S. criticism, Israel is going well beyond the requirements of international law, even as defined by Sullivan, to limit harm to Gazan civilians, at great cost to Israeli civilians and combatants. To clarify Israel’s right to defend itself, and to prevent America’s adversaries such as China, Russia, and Iran from exploiting international law to gain military advantage, President Biden should restore an important sentence to the manual that the Obama administration deleted: “If the proportionality rule were interpreted to permit the use of human shields to prohibit attacks, such an interpretation would perversely encourage the use of human shields and allow violations by the defending force to increase the legal obligations on the attacking force.”

The United States should once and for all declare that a country’s use of human shields does not increase its adversary’s burden under international law. Accordingly, as U.S. military law expert William Hays Parks wrote, a country undertaking an analysis of possible harm to civilians under the proportionately rule described above is not required to take into account “civilians injured or killed as a result of the enemy placing them around a lawful target in an effort to shield it from attack.” The United States should formally adopt this principle, which is already implicit in the Manual. Israel’s security, and our own, may depend on it.

[Human behavior is governed by incentives. By agreeing to hostage swaps that carry material and numerical benefits for Hamas, the West is incentivizing more hostaging. By imposing the responsibility for civilian deaths on Israel rather than Hamas and its use of civilian facilities for military operations and the use of civilians as human shields, the West incentivizes even greater use of those criminal strategies. The real object is clear: to make an effective self-defense by Israel impossible and hasten its collapse. — Ed]