Buttigieg Had Good Reason

For those who understand what "genocide" truly is, Israel is not committing genocide. However,Israel hater Mehdi Hasan at least does seem to ask a good question:

Glad to hear Buttigieg describe what happened in Gaza as war crimes, but if that’s what he believes, then why didn’t he resign from the Biden administration in protest? Why would he want to be part of a government that was arming and funding what he believed to be war crimes? https://t.co/fBP3Vs9tCM

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) August 3, 2026

Buttigieg didn't resign in part because he is a careerist, which characterizes most prominent politicians. However, there may be at least a couple of other reasons.

According to an analysis by U.S. War Explained, the law governing war crimes "is a complex tapestry woven from international treaties and domestic statutes".  The latter include the Geneva Conventions; the Rome Statute (the founding charter of the International Criminal Court); and U.N. Security Council Resolutions. Therefore, to determine whether something is a "war crime," then, we should consider the source and intent (where the allegation is coming from); the principle of distinction (whether the target is civilian or military); the principle of proportionality (a question of balance); evidence of intent (e.g., purpose of the attack); and command responsibility (which individuals along the chain should be held accountable).

Whew! That's a lot for one paragraph. And that's the point. Accurately distinguishing a war crime from bad act by someone we don't like is not a simple matter, despite the wish of activists.  Laws and regulations typically are written by lawyers and often are very hard to interpret. That's not a coincidence 

In such cases, there is, somewhere, an objective truth. However, in the absence of a declaration from God, what one views as the truth is in the eyes of the beholder.  Most likely, Israel has committed war crimes, though the vast majority of its actions probably don't qualify.

One of the factors cited by US War Explained, the matter of proportionality, illustrates another reason Buttigieg didn't find the Biden Administration's policy toward Gaza horrendous.  The Biden Administration had been supplying Israel with the relatively precise 500-pound bombs, as well as with 2,000-pound bombs, with a significantly greater blas radius and collateral killing of unintended bystanders. However, in May of 2024

the White House announced a decision to withhold a shipment of 1,800 2,000-lb bombs and 1,700 500-lb bombs, with then-US president Joe Biden threatening to freeze additional offensive weaponry if Israel launched a major military offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where over one million Palestinians were sheltering at the time.

In July, the 500-lb bombs were eventually released by the Biden administration after the IDF entered Rafah. The Palestinian civilian population in the Strip’s southernmost city had largely evacuated by then.

The Biden administration had asserted that only the 2,000-pound bombs were withheld, over concerns that Israel would use them in densely populated parts of Gaza, and that all other shipments had been processed.

That was a politically tricky decision to make, for soon after the Trump Administration returned, Donald & Co. hastily shipped 1800 of these heavy bombs to Israel. Suspending shipment in 2024 upehld both the principle of distinction and the principle of proportionality. Pete Buttigieg was part of an Administration which understood that our ally must defend itself, including killing Hamas fighters, while avoiding extraneous deaths. 

That's never addressed by critics of Israel, those who blithely accuse the nation of "genocide," a policy they don't understand; of the apartheid they don't understand; and of war crimes, which are extraordinarily difficult to figure out. (August is semi-colon month.) Hatred of the only democracy in the Middle East blinds them to complexities and to truth, neither of which captures their interest.

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