Q: Which Ethical Framework Justifies Israel’s Genocide of Palestinians? A: None!
By Michael Kelman Portney
I. Introduction: The Myth of Moral Clarity
Israel claims it is acting in self-defense. Western governments echo that claim. Media institutions repeat it so often it becomes a hypnotic refrain: "Israel has the right to defend itself." But ethical reasoning isn’t built on slogans. It's built on principles, consistency, and consequences.
When a state reduces an entire civilian population to collateral damage, the question is not whether it had a right to respond. The question is whether its response was just. Moral legitimacy is not granted by the existence of trauma. It must be earned in how that trauma is wielded. And in Gaza, Israel has utterly failed that test.
To understand why, we must turn to the ethical frameworks taught in the first few weeks of any Philosophy 101 course — and see how each one condemns what’s happening in plain terms.
II. Utilitarianism: The Arithmetic of Suffering
"The greatest good for the greatest number." That’s the guiding principle of utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill — the classic moral thinkers who built this framework — judged actions not by intent but by outcome.
A. Net Suffering
Over 30,000 Palestinian deaths, most of them civilians.
Thousands of children killed or maimed.
Total infrastructure collapse.
Mass starvation, siege warfare, ethnic cleansing by expulsion.
If Israel’s stated goal was “self-defense,” the outcome is mass civilian annihilation. The “terrorist infrastructure” argument dissolves in the numbers. Entire city blocks have been flattened. Hospitals bombed. Humanitarian aid blocked.
Even if you believe Hamas must be stopped — and many do — a utilitarian would ask: at what cost? And the answer is unambiguous: far more harm than good.
B. Future Harm Multiplier
Rather than preventing terrorism, Israel’s assault has become its own recruiting tool for extremist factions across the Middle East. The international perception of moral hypocrisy — especially from Western powers — has triggered deep rage and disillusionment.
This is not a deterrent. It is a feedback loop.
Utilitarian verdict: Massive, long-term, expanding harm. A moral catastrophe.
III. Deontological Ethics: The Categorical Imperative Betrayed
Immanuel Kant’s core principle: Act only according to that maxim by which you can, at the same time, will it to become a universal law.
A. The Moral Rule: Proportionality
Every moral society understands proportionality. Even in war. Even under attack. Even in grief.
To will the destruction of entire families, neighborhoods, and medical centers as a moral rule is to destroy the possibility of morality itself. It says: our pain is sacred, your pain is expendable. That is not law. That is tribal revenge in the skin of civilization.
B. Means and Ends
Kant also insisted: never treat people as mere means to an end. Every human being is an end in themselves. Bombing civilians to eliminate an enemy who hides among them fails this test unequivocally. It sacrifices the dignity and rights of noncombatants in pursuit of military utility.
If the only way to achieve your goal is to treat innocent people as disposable, your goal is no longer moral.
C. The Categorical Imperative is Peace
Let’s be blunt: The only maxim that survives universalization in this context is coexistence. If every group that experiences trauma adopts a doctrine of permanent siege and preemptive slaughter, the world becomes unlivable. Peace isn’t an ideal. It is a moral imperative.
Deontological verdict: Israel's actions violate the core principles of duty, dignity, and universal moral law.
IV. Virtue Ethics: What Kind of Nation Does This?
Aristotle’s ethics focus not on rules or outcomes, but on the development of moral character — cultivating virtues like courage, justice, and moderation.
So the question becomes: What kind of moral character is revealed by this war?
A. Courage or Cowardice?
Dropping bombs from jets on children does not reveal courage. It reveals the cowardice of overwhelming force applied with no regard for conscience. No virtue is present in this violence. It is brute dominance.
B. Justice or Vengeance?
Justice seeks balance. Vengeance seeks pain. The images from Gaza — bloodied infants, amputated limbs, fathers digging their daughters out of rubble with bare hands — are not the product of justice. They are the product of institutionalized rage.
C. Wisdom or Hubris?
If this is deterrence, it is grotesquely self-defeating. If this is extermination, it is unspeakable. Either way, Israel has not acted as a wise republic, but as an arrogant occupier — blind to the ethical mirror it now stands in front of.
Virtue ethics verdict: A nation that calls this moral is not cultivating virtue. It is cultivating rot.
V. The Collapse of Consent
Israel does not just fail abstract moral tests. It also fails the ethical standards of the world it claims to be part of:
International Humanitarian Law prohibits collective punishment.
Geneva Conventions prohibit targeting civilian infrastructure.
The Rome Statute defines mass displacement, starvation, and indiscriminate killing as war crimes.
Israel is violating all of them.
And yet, it continues with impunity, because the West — led by the U.S. — refuses to enforce the rules it helped write. The world sees this. The gap between proclaimed values and observed behavior is no longer subtle. It is a chasm.
This is not defense. It is domination. It is occupation. It is apartheid. It is the sustained ethical breakdown of a state that now seems incapable of recognizing its own reflection in the mirror of global conscience.
VI. The Strategic, Not Ethical, Logic
So if this fails all moral tests, what logic remains?
Only one: strategy.
Benjamin Netanyahu — politically cornered, facing corruption charges, clinging to power — has every incentive to escalate. War rallies nationalist support. Chaos delays accountability. Ethnic conflict consolidates political control.
He is not pursuing peace. He is pursuing impunity through escalation. And that, too, is visible to anyone who looks closely.
Under this view, the point of Israel’s actions isn’t to stop Hamas. It’s to make coexistence impossible — to permanently destroy the idea of a Palestinian state, to normalize apartheid, and to desensitize the world to Palestinian death.
But even if this were strategically effective, it is still morally bankrupt.
VII. But What About October 7?
The October 7 attacks were horrifying. No moral person denies that.
Civilians murdered. Families terrorized. Children taken hostage. The grief and trauma are real.
But moral clarity is not a zero-sum game. Their atrocities do not justify yours. Grief does not license genocide. Pain does not sanctify revenge.
And if your response kills 10 children for every 1 you lost, you are no longer grieving. You are retaliating into madness.
In Jewish ethics, there is a concept called tikkun olam — the duty to repair the world. This is not repair. It is destruction on a planetary scale.
VIII. The Holocaust and the Mirror
Many Jews, myself included, were raised on the phrase "Never Again." It was meant as a universal moral directive — a shield against all genocide.
But what we are now witnessing is that very principle reversed. Not "Never Again for anyone." But "Never Again — unless we do it."
That is the ethical mirror Israel now shatters. To use the trauma of the Holocaust as a shield to justify the mass murder of civilians is not only perverse — it is sacrilegious. It turns the greatest moral wound of the 20th century into an alibi for the next one.
You don’t honor the memory of Auschwitz by building a miniature version in Rafah.
IX. The American Lie
The United States, too, is morally implicated.
With its vetoes at the UN.
With its arms shipments.
With its press briefings where genocide is called "self-defense."
This isn’t neutrality. It’s complicity.
America claims to be a nation of values. But values mean nothing if they collapse when tested. You don’t get to claim moral leadership while funding war crimes in full view of the world.
X. The Harder Truth
This is not just about Israel. It’s about how modern states use language to obscure atrocity:
"Surgical strike"
"Human shields"
"Targeted operation"
"Regrettable collateral damage"
These are euphemisms for dead children, used by men in suits with sanitized accents. The ethical frameworks we teach in classrooms are obliterated by the spin machines of PR consultants and defense ministries.
But philosophy doesn't care about spin. It asks: What are you actually doing? Who are you hurting? What do your actions say about who you are?
And the answers here are not ambiguous.
XI. Conclusion: Criminally Disproportionate
When Israel bombs a hospital, it isn’t just a military action. It’s a moral statement. A declaration of whose life counts and whose doesn’t. When it cuts off food and water to two million people, it is not just “pressure.” It is a crime.
The phrase that defines this war is simple:
Criminally disproportionate.
It fails utilitarianism.
It fails deontological ethics.
It fails virtue ethics.
It fails international law.
It fails common decency.
It fails the Jewish values it claims to defend.
And history will remember.
Because if moral philosophy means anything, it means this: You cannot bomb your way to justice.
Michael Kelman Portney is a writer, strategist, and the founder of MisinformationSucks.com.
He holds a BBA and studied ethics, philosophy, and rhetoric extensively in college and after.
This article is part of an ongoing moral and political commentary project focused on truth, justice, and public reckoning.
