People protest outside Berlin’s Humboldt University in support of Israel and against antisemitism, in Berlin, Germany, Oct. 5, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang

The number of antisemitic incidents in Germany almost doubled last year, at a time of continued war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, the semi-official German body that tracks antisemitism reported on Wednesday.

The Federal Research and Information Point for Antisemitism (RIAS) said it had registered 8,627 incidents of violence, vandalism, and threats against Jews in Germany last year, almost twice the 4,886 recorded in 2023, and far ahead of 2020’s 1,957.

“Objectively, the risk of being persecuted as a Jew in Germany has increased since Oct. 7, 2023,” Benjamin Steinitz, head of RIAS, told a news briefing on the report, referring to the start of the Gaza war.

“But debates about what counts as an expression of antisemitism seem to take up more space than empathy for the victims.”

The largest category of incidents reported by RIAS – about 25 percent of the total – fell within the category of “anti-Israeli antisemitism.”

In a report published last month, Jewish activist group Diaspora Alliance questioned what it said was RIAS methodology equating opposition to Israel with antisemitism.

Alliance activist Jossi Bartal said RIAS’ approach “delegitimizes criticism of the Israeli state, marking every expression of Palestinian identity as suspect,” alluding to Israeli policy toward Palestinians.

Steinitz told the briefing in response to questions that the Diaspora Alliance report distorted RIAS’ work. “I think the aim of publishing the report now was to present our work as somehow controversial and discredit the experiences of victims.”

Antisemitic violence, vandalism and threats have surged in recent years, with far-right Germans responsible for around three times as many incidents as Islamists, RIAS reported.

For Germany, tracking such incidents and countering antisemitism is central to its post-war project of atoning for the Nazi-era Holocaust of Europe’s Jews.

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An Israeli military vehicle patrols on the Israeli side of the Gaza border, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Israel has always had to navigate “new waves.” Today, however, separate but force-multiplying “seas” of jihadi terrorism and Iranian nuclearization define an existential threat. To confront this, Jerusalem’s strategic decision-makers will need to offer assessments in legal and strategic terms.

On these matters, geography remains specific. Gaza is often center stage, and Gazan Palestinians are portrayed as victims of incessant harms. Though the death and victimization of so many Gaza noncombatants seems difficult to reconcile with humanitarian international law, there exists a clarifying distinction between jihadist-inflicted terror violence and Israeli-inflicted defensive measures — measures needed by Israel to survive as a state.

This distinction centers on “criminal intent” or mens rea. For Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, the Houthis and assorted other Islamist foes, mens rea is conspicuous and indisputable. These groups aim to kill civilians.

For Israel, on the other hand, it is absent prima facie. Though Gaza civilians do not deserve to suffer the harms of any military attacks, legal responsibility for these attacks does not lie with Israel. It lies with those Palestinian leadership cadres that insidiously place military assets within normally-protected civilian structures — and that launched this war with its massacre against Israel on Oct. 7, which it has threatened to repeat “over and over” if it stays in power.

Critics of Israel’s Gaza policies should consider an elucidating analogy from domestic law. In national or “municipal” legal settings, no reasonable comparisons can be made between the crime of murder and police action to stop murder. In the first case, the grievously inflicted harms are intentional. In the second case, they are unavoidable.

International law is not a suicide pact. As is the case for every state in world politics, Israel has an immutable right to “stay alive.”

To protect itself against the sorts of lascivious harms perpetrated on October 7, 2023, Jerusalem has not only the right — but the obligation to prevent Israel’s planned “elimination.” This primary obligation extends beyond Israel to the entire community of nations.

In its current law-enforcing war against jihadist terror — in Gaza, but also in Yemen, Lebanon, Judea/Samaria (West Bank), and various other places — Israel is acting on behalf of all imperiled or “at risk” states.

While this assessment has been difficult to acknowledge by those who see only the tangible effects of Israeli counter-terrorism efforts, it is still supported by applicable legal standards, especially the long-established principle of “mutual aid.” By this immutable principle, each state is obligated to assist other states threatened by terror-violence.

The Nuremberg Principles (especially Principle 1) stipulate “No crime without a punishment” (Nullum crimen sine poena). There would have been no Gaza war and no Palestinian casualties if Hamas had not launched its October 7, 2023, criminal assault against noncombatant Israelis, some under five years old, with civilians repeatedly raped (male and female) and ceremoniously burned alive.

Among the jurisprudentially-vacant charges leveled against Israel in its necessary Gaza War operations is “disproportionality.” But what exactly does this charge mean under humanitarian international law?

Though counter-intuitive, proportionality has nothing to do with any obligation to inflict symmetrical or equivalent harms.

The law-based obligations of “proportional combat” are contained in rules governing resort to armed conflict (“justice of war”) and the operational conduct of hostilities (“justice in war”). In the former, proportionality concerns existential rights of national self-defense. In the latter, it references the manner in which a particular belligerency is being conducted.

Proportionality derives from a more basic legal principle, namely that belligerent rights of insurgent groups and nation-states always have specific limitations. To wit, the ubiquitous Hamas declaration that the organization is entitled to fight “by any means necessary” contravenes Hague Convention No. IV (1907), Annex to the Convention, Section II (Hostilities), Art. 22: “The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.”

Unlike Israel, which plainly regrets the collateral damage of its mandatory self-defense war in Gaza, Hamas rocket fire and variegated terror attacks are the express product of openly “criminal intent.”

There is more. Unlike Israel, Hamas actively seeks to target, maim and kill noncombatants. Under humanitarian international law, a belligerent’s resort to armed force always remains limited to what is “necessary” to meet allowable military objectives. The related notion of “military necessity” is defined as follows: “Only that degree and kind of force, not otherwise prohibited by the law of armed conflict, required for the partial or complete submission of the enemy with a minimum expenditure of time, life, and physical resources may be applied.”

We generally speak of “international” law, but belligerents include not only nation-states, but also insurgent and terrorist armed forces. This means that even where an insurgency is presumptively lawful — that is, where it seemingly meets the settled criteria of “just cause” — it must still satisfy all corollary expectations of “just means.” It follows that even if Hamas and its sister terror groups could have a presumptive right to fight against an alleged Israeli “occupation,” that fight would need to respect the established limitations of “distinction,” “proportionality” and “military necessity.”

Deliberately firing rockets into Israeli civilian areas and intentionally placing military assets amid civilian populations represents a “perfidious” crime of war. And any taking of civilian hostages, whatever the alleged cause, represents an unpardonable criminality.

If a “common-sense” definition of proportionality was ever deemed appropriate, there could be no legitimate defense for America’s “disproportionate” attacks on European and Japanese cities during World War II. By that standard, Dresden, Cologne, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would represent the incontestable nadir of inhumane and lawless belligerency. Expressed differently, these US attack histories would represent the modern world’s very worst violations of humanitarian international law.

Hamas’ perfidy represents a much greater wrongdoing than simple immorality or visceral cowardice. It expresses a starkly delineated and punishable crime. It is identified as a “grave breach” at Article 147 of Geneva Convention IV.

Deception can be lawful in armed conflict, but The Hague Regulations disallow any placement of military assets or personnel in populated civilian areas. Related prohibitions of perfidy can be found at Protocol I of 1977, additional to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949. These rules are also binding on the basis of customary international law, a principal jurisprudential source identified at Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.

All combatants, including Palestinian insurgents allegedly fighting for “self-determination,” are bound by the law of war. This rudimentary requirement is found at Article 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. It cannot be suspended or abrogated.

On its face, the expressed Hamas goal of Palestinian “self-determination” is founded on an intended crime — that is, the total “removal” of the Jewish State by attrition and annihilation.

This literally genocidal orientation has its origins in the PLO’s “Phased Plan” of June 9, 1974. In its 12th Session, the PLO’s highest deliberative body, the Palestinian National Council, reiterated the terror-organization’s aim “to achieve their rights to return, and to self-determination on the whole of their homeland.”

For Israel, the core existential threat is no longer “Pan-Arab War.” At some still-ambiguous point, Hamas and other jihadi forces (plausibly, with Iranian support) could prepare to launch mega-terror attacks on Israel. Such potentially perfidious aggressions, unprecedented and in cooperation with allied non-Palestinian Jihadists (e.g., Shiite Hezbollah) could include chemical, biological, or radiological (radiation-dispersal) weapons.

Foreseeable perils could also include a non-nuclear terrorist attack on the Israeli reactor at Dimona. There is a documented history of enemy assaults against this Israeli plutonium-production facility, both by a state (Iraq in 1991) and by a Palestinian terror group (Hamas in 2014). Neither attack was successful, but variously fearful precedents were established.

Under international law, terrorists are considered hostes humani generis or “common enemies of humankind.” This category of criminals invites punishment wherever the wrongdoers can be found. Concerning their required arrest and prosecution, jurisdiction is now unambiguously “universal.” Correspondingly relevant is that the universality-declaring Nuremberg Principles reaffirm the ancient legal principle of “No crime without a punishment.”

In the end, Hamas and its kindred jihadi forces argue they are fighting a “just war” and are therefore entitled to employ “any means necessary.” Under determinative international law, however, even a just war must be fought with “just means.” Ends can never justify means.

A corollary clarification is warranted: Rights can never stem from wrongs (ex iniuria ius non oritur). Under no circumstances can there be law-based justifications for inherently-criminal terror-violence. To suggest otherwise would be an oxymoron.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the forerunner of both Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) and the Palestinian Authority was formed in 1964. This formation was three years before there were any “Israeli Occupied Territories.” So what exactly were the Palestinians trying to “liberate”?

It’s not a hard question. The answer remains incontestable. “Palestine” is everything “From the River to the Sea.” By unwavering design, it includes the entire State of Israel.

Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018).

The post Here Is Exactly Why Israel’s War Against Hamas Is Legal — and Required — By International Law first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool

Israel has carried out its first airstrikes in Syria in nearly a month, saying it hit weapons belonging to the government in retaliation for the firing of two projectiles towards Israel and holding interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa responsible.

Damascus said Israeli strikes caused “heavy human and material losses,” reiterating that Syria does not pose a threat to any regional party and stressing the need to end the presence of armed groups and establish state control in the south.

Israel had not struck Syria since early May – a month marked by US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Sharaa, the lifting of US sanctions, and direct Syrian-Israeli contacts to calm tensions, as reported by Reuters last week.

Describing its new rulers as jihadists, Israel has bombed Syria frequently this year. Israel has also moved troops into areas of the southwest, where it has said it won’t allow the new government’s security forces to deploy.

The projectiles Israel reported fired from Syria were the first since longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad was toppled. The Israeli military said the two projectiles fell in open areas.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he held the Syrian president “directly responsible for any threat and fire toward the State of Israel.”

A Syrian foreign ministry statement said the accuracy of the reports of shelling towards Israel had not yet been verified.

“We believe that there are many parties that may seek to destabilize the region to achieve their own interests,” the Syrian foreign ministry added, as reported by the state news agency.

A Syrian official told Reuters such parties included “remnants of Assad-era militias linked to Iran, which have long been active in the Quneitra area” and have “a vested interest in provoking Israeli retaliation as a means of escalating tensions and undermining current stabilization efforts.”

Several Arab and Palestinian media outlets circulated a claim of responsibility from a little-known group named “Martyr Muhammad Deif Brigades,” an apparent reference to Hamas’s military leader who was killed in an Israeli strike in 2024.

Reuters could not independently verify the statement.

The Syrian state news agency and security sources reported Israeli strikes targeting sites in the Damascus countryside and Quneitra and Daraa provinces.

Local residents contacted by Reuters said Israeli shelling targeted agricultural areas in the Wadi Yarmouk region. They described increased tensions in recent weeks, including reported Israeli incursions into villages, where residents have reportedly been barred from sowing their crops.

An Israeli strike also hit a former Syrian army base near the city of Izraa, a Syrian source said.

Israel has said its goals in Syria include protecting the Druze, a religious minority with followers in both countries.

Israel bombed Syria frequently during the last decade of Assad’s rule, targeting the sway of his Iranian allies.

The newly appointed US envoy to Syria said last week he believed peace between Syria and Israel was achievable.

Around the same time that Israel reported the projectiles from Syria, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile from Yemen.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said they targeted Israel‘s Jaffa with a ballistic missile. The group says it has been launching attacks against Israel in support of Palestinians during the Israeli war in Gaza.

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