What happens when the rules of war no longer match the reality of the battlefield?
In this episode of “Basic Law,” host Aylana Meisel, executive director of the Israel Law & Liberty Forum, sits down with Professor Jeremy Rabkin, professor emeritus of Law at George Mason University, to tackle one of the most urgent legal and moral dilemmas of our time: Should a nation change how it fights?
With Israel under constant international scrutiny for its military actions, this conversation dives deep into the intersection of international law, war theory and modern warfare. Together, Meisel and Rabkin challenge the prevailing notion that all wars should be judged by identical legal standards, regardless of the justification behind them.
Rabkin argues that the moral legitimacy of a war—particularly wars of survival, like Israel’s fight against Hamas or Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression—must shape how legal norms are applied.
Key issues include:
- The evolution of the Law of Armed Conflict from the Geneva Conventions to today’s disputed protocols
- Why proportionality and military necessity remain highly contested concepts
- The flawed separation of jus ad bellum (why war is fought) and jus in bello (how war is fought)
- The implications of Israel’s operations in Gaza and Iran, and how international double standards distort legal discourse
- The risks of over-lawyering warfare and the moral cost of ignoring context in battlefield decisions
- What lessons can be drawn from Ukraine, Iraq and historical conflicts about how laws evolve in the fog of war
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The Israel Law & Liberty Forum is proud to partner with JNS to offer a platform for conservative and classical liberal legal thought from within Israel. Any opinions stated are those of the speaker and not meant to represent the positions of the forum or JNS. The forum is an organization that fosters thoughtful conversation and debate on key issues in Israeli law and democracy. The forum takes no official position regarding any specific policy issue, nor does it advance specific policies.
