(We’re talking about this post)

I worked for the Department of Emergency Medicine at an East Coast University Hospital for a decade after working closely with the ED at another hospital the six years prior. Ours was the only Level 1 Trauma Center for hundreds of miles in most directions, so we got a lot of serious cases and a lot of airlifted patients. I saw a Blackhawk helicopter land and take off from our roof once.

Want to learn how difficult that kind of work is? Watch The Pitt.

When health professionals tell you The Pitt is accurate, they’re not just talking about the way the show portrays the practice of Emergency Medicine.

The way the hospital administrators (too few of whom are clinicians, too many of whom are MBAs) treat the ED as the only department with rubber walls, making the ED responsible for dealing with the hospital’s staffing and bed unavailability issues with no regard for how that degrades emergency care…is wholly accurate.

The way administration utterly relies on the ED without giving it the respect it is due is accurate.

The way some specialists talk down to ED clinicians (whose specialty is one of both depth and extraordinary breadth) is accurate.

The shitty way too many people treat health care professionals, the constant threats to their bodily safety and the verbal abuse they’re expected to endure are all too accurate.

The dedicated, passionate, hard-working, imperfect people who are doing impossible, under-appreciated work under ridiculous conditions while suffering from acute PTSD and endless moral injury and are unable to get a break…are accurate.

The Pitt is great television - but I don’t think that’s why health care professionals love it.

I think The Pitt makes them feel seen in a way they just haven’t been in their entire professional lives.

• I have written a bit on why I think it is Jewish to defend trans rights.
• I’ve answered some amazingly clueless questions on the Jewish/Trans intersection
• I have written a bit about the unreciprocated solidarity Jews have always offered other minorities.

But none of that speaks to the experience of being both Jewish and Trans. From talking with Trans Jews, my impression is that they’d very much like their LGBTQ+ communities to stop being so unthinkingly and viciously hateful to Jews - but you don’t want my thoughts- you want the thoughts of Trans Jews.

Here are some trans Jews who have interacted with some of the above posts and who would likely receive a polite and sincere Ask cheerfully:

https://www.tumblr.com/kitkatsnow/794181178597982208

https://www.tumblr.com/complex-analytic-dysfunction/794561817316868096

https://www.tumblr.com/transfemgabriellamontez/795017379194241024

Your wording here is interesting.

I always want to make sure my allyship to the trans community includes trans people of all backgrounds.

Maybe it was just hasty writing, but your phrasing indicates you’re only interested in being an ally to Trans Jews. I suspect that Trans Jews would similarly notice this and call it out.

You should be an ally to Trans folks

You should be an ally to Trans Jews

You should be an ally to Jews

Legal War: An Infodump Explainer

In the framework of international law, the legality of a war is determined in one of two categories:

1. Jus ad bellum: The right to go to war

Under the UN Charter, there are two ways a war is “legal”

• Self-Defense (Article 51): A state can legally use force if an “armed attack” occurs.
• UN Security Council Mandate: Action authorized to maintain international peace (like the 1991 Gulf War).

Critics often call wars “illegal” when they believe the “self-defense” justification is a pretext or is no longer proportionate or necessary.

2. Jus in bello: Right conduct of war

This is where people often get confused. A war can be “legal” to start but actions taken in its execution are “illegal” if a party violates the Geneva Conventions (like targeting civilians).

This works the other way, too. A war can be “illegal” to start (an act of aggression) but still be fought “legally” according to the rules of engagement.

Words Mean Things - Specific Things

Anon, you’re absolutely right that In modern discourse, “illegal” is often used as a moral pejorative rather than a legal finding. It’s similar to the way the words “genocide” and “apartheid” are used against Israel not by their legal definitions, but as moral condemnation that is applied selectively.

Many modern conflicts (Iraq 2003, various proxy wars) exist in a “grey zone” where legal scholars might argue for decades - but the public simply applies the “illegal” label to conflicts they find morally or politically distasteful.

Does “legal” / “illegal” make sense for assymetrical conflicts or non-state actors?

International law was designed for uniform-wearing armies. When a state fights a non-state actor (like Hezbollah or Hamas) that 100% doesn’t follow these rules, the legal framework becomes incredibly messy while selective application applies not wildly different moral standards.

Ultimately, a “legal war” is one that fits into a specific, often narrow, treaty-based exception to a presumed global prohibition on inter-state violence.

Anon writes:

What they don’t say but usually mean is that Western countries aren’t ALLOWED to fight what they [leftists] consider to be ‘oppressed’ people, as though Hezbollah or Hamas are helpless little children and not two of the most well-funded, well-organized and well-armed Islamist organizations in the Middle East.

Funded and armed for decades by Iran, yeah.

Again, in the eyes of many modern professional havers-of-opinions, legality has been replaced by a faux morality based on relative capability and emotional resonance.

​The relative capability argument is a kind of Underdog Bias. There is a pervasive (and often non-legal) belief that the party with more advanced technology, a formal state, or “Western” backing is inherently the aggressor.

Anon is right that this framing also involves a denial of agency. By framing groups like Hezbollah or Hamas as merely “oppressed people” rather than sophisticated military entities (run by intelligent adults who are capable of moral discernment), critics effectively pretend they’re not armies/combatants. (Perhaps worse, this is also a racist dehumanization of Hezbollah/Hamas members, casting them as reactive animals instead of intelligent human beings making conscious choices.)

This creates a useful rhetorical shield. If one side is “helpless victims,” any action against them is dishonestly framed as a crime rather than a war, regardless of the actions of the supposed victims.

Under the Geneva Conventions, the status of a person as oppressed or an underdog is irrelevant to the legality of a strike.

What matters is Distinction, Military Necessity, and Proportionality.

Distinction (Is this target a combatant?):

One must seek to distinguish between a valid military target and a protected civilian object.

Combatants are prohibited from intentionally attacking civilians or civilian infrastructure.

However, a “sensitive” civilian object (like a hospital or ambulance) loses its protection the moment it is used for military purposes (like as a command center or troop carrier). At that point, the law reclassifies it as a valid military objective.

That’s why Israel was not committing a war crime by attacking Hamas in hospitals or killing combatants disguised in Red Crescent uniforms and riding in ambulances. Using the hospital or an ambulance for military purposes, as Hamas did and does, is a war crime called perfidy - feigning protected status to commit an attack. Targeting those objects after Hamas militarizes them is not.

Military Necessity (Does hitting this target help win the conflict?):

This principle allows for the use of force only if it is actually required to achieve a legitimate military goal (like neutralizing an enemy combatant or destroying a weapons cache). You can’t just blow things up for “fun” or out of spite. Hamas using a building as a command center makes that building a legit target - not the whole block. That brings us to…

Proportionality (is the civilian 'cost’ too high?):

Even if a target is valid (Distinction) and hitting it is helpful (Military Necessity), it still may be “illegal” to pull the trigger if the collateral damage is too high.

The expected loss of civilian life must not be excessive compared to the direct military advantage gained, so you can’t (for example) level an entire occupied apartment building just to take out one sniper on the roof. The “cost” in civilian lives would outweigh the “value” of that one kill.

This is some of the most nauseating math I can imagine, and that’s the root of the problem with proportionality.

The law doesn’t define “excessive” No numbers, no ratios. There’s no objective standard. Instead, it leaves that judgement to the “reasonable commander” at the time of the strike.

Critics often see a resulting tragedy and call it “illegal” out of emotional resonance, ignoring distinction, the military value (necessity) of the target, and the proportionality.

Can we name an unambiguously legal war in modern times?

You bet.

The 1991 Gulf War to push the Iraqi military out of Kuwait was unquestionably legal by all standards.

• There was explicit Security Council authorization.
• There were clear acts of unprovoked Iraqi aggression against another sovereign state.
• The US was invited into Kuwait by the sovereign Kuwaiti government
• The objectives were proportionate

That’s what a legal war looks like.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq.

• No authorization
• Fabricated self-defense justification
• Preemptive framing based on that fabricated justification

Now let’s apply the same framework to the US/Israel strikes in Iran:

On jus ad bellum, I think the US attacks on the regime seem closer to Iraq 2003 than to the 1991 Gulf War.

The US is using preemption (hitting them before they hit us) as the primary legal justification and that doesn’t hold up.

Israel’s justification, though, is easier to argue under article 51 of the UN Charter. Israel has been attacked for years by the regime’s proxies, including on 10/7/23. On OCtober 1st, 2024, Iran launched what was at the time the largest ballistic missile attack in history - at Israel. The regime has openly worked to destroy Israel for decades.

The jus in bello questions can’t really be answered yet.

To do so so would require detailed knowledge about specific strikes and specific targets.

Distinction, Necessity, Proportionality…we can’t apply any of these tools without much more information than we have.

Meanwhile, when most people say “the war is illegal” they’re not talking about any of this.

They’re just reaching for the strongest possible moral condemnation they can think of. They don’t (and can’t) articulate which provision was violated.

We can - and we should. We should do so objectively and honestly, regardless of our feelings or group alliances.

Does it matter if the strikes on the regime by the US are illegal?

Was anyone in the GW Bush administration ever held accountable for the errors and deceptions of the 2003 invasion of Iraq?

Nope.

If enforcement is weak, inconsistent, or non-existent…is it still “law”?

Some argue that law requires centralized enforcement, and International Law doesn’t have that. Those folks say that this means it isn’t truly law.

Others argue law is a system of recognized rules that states treat as binding, even if enforcement is diffuse, indirect, ot reputational. These folks say international law is real…but structurally different. Enforcement may be delayed, but not absent.

(Tell that to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, et al)

So when critics say “international law isn’t real”…are they right?

Their strongest arguments are:

• It has no central enforcement authority
• Powerful states can ignore it
• Compliance is inconsistent at best
• Courts lack jurisdiction over key actors

They’re undeniably right that enforcement is uneven and usually political - and that power seems to matter much more than “legality.”

But I would argue:

• Law does not require perfect enforcement to be real
• Many domestic laws are also unevenly enforced
• International law regularly influences state behavior

So what is international law?

International law is a system of rules that states generally follow because it is in their interest to do so, backed by decentralized and imperfect enforcement mechanisms. It’s neither a global criminal justice system nor meaningless.

• International law is real, but structurally weak.
• Enforcement is diffuse, political, and inconsistent.
• It still shapes incentives, behavior, and legitimacy over time.

So…is International Law “not real”? Is it fake?

No, that’s too simplistic to be accurate - but the people claiming it isn’t real are capturing something true about its limitations, biases, and wildly uneven/selective enforcement.

Thanks for the Ask, Anon!

TLDR: Israel tried to give them to Egypt and Jordan.

Egypt refused to take Gaza in 1979

When Israel and Egypt negotiated the 1979 Peace Treaty, Israel was actually eager to wash its hands of the Gaza Strip.

The primary goal for Egypt during the Camp David negotiations was the return of the Sinai Peninsula. Israel tried to include Gaza in the package.

President Anwar Sadat famously refused. Egypt had occupied Gaza from 1948 to 1967, but they never annexed it and did not want the administrative, security, or demographic burden of 2 million Palestinians.

Sadat insisted that Gaza’s future be tied to a future Palestinian state rather than becoming part of Egypt again. This resulted in the treaty specifically defining the Egypt-Israel border along the old Mandate line, excluding Gaza. Egypt effectively said, “We’ll take Sinai, but Gaza is your problem now.”

This freed Egypt of the security and administrative burden while continuing to use Gazans as a political tool - and that suited Sadat just fine.

Jordan washed its hands of the West Bank in 1988

The situation with Jordan and the West Bank is even more legally distinct because Jordan actually did annex the West Bank in 1950, granting Jordanian citizenship to its inhabitants.

After losing the territory to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, King Hussein of Jordan spent two decades trying to find an arrangement where he would regain control.

By 1988, two things changed King Hussein’s mind:

1. The First Intifada made it clear that Palestinians wanted independence, not a return to Jordanian rule.
2. The PLO was gaining international recognition as the sole representative of the Palestinians.

On July 31, 1988, King Hussein gave a televised speech renouncing all claims to the West Bank. He severed administrative and legal ties, essentially telling the world that Jordan is Jordan, Palestine is Palestine, and it was no longer Jordan’s business or responsibility.

None of this is going to change now

I feel like the Arab world needs to take some responsibility for their part in this mess.

Anon’s point about Arab responsibility is a common sentiment for good reasons which we won’t go into right now, but Egypt and Jordan have gone to great lengths to avoid any responsibility.

From the perspective of Cairo and Amman, taking back these territories is a strategic trap.

• Egypt views Hamas (which has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood) as a direct threat to its own internal stability. Jordan fears that absorbing the West Bank would turn Jordan into a substitute Palestine, potentially destabilizing the Hashemite monarchy. Some estimate already suggest that already 60% of Jordan’s residents are Palestinian.
• Both countries argue that if they took the territories back, it would liquidate the Palestinian cause by permanently denying Palestinians a state of their own, which would cause massive unrest in their own populations.
• Keeping the Palestinians in limbo and under Israeli control, despite the fact that they don’t want it, makes Israel look bad. Egypt and Jordan love that. The Arab league has always been happy to screw the Palestinians if it hurt Israel.

I don’t think the two state solution is viable at this point, if it ever was to begin with.

I think you’re right, but that’s too big a topic for this post. If you’re interested, I wrote a three part series on that topic.

For more on Jordan, see this post. (There’s no mature content.)

(We’re talking about this post)

I think you have it backwards, Anon.

I infodumped about something that matters to me. You’re the one who did all the work.

Here’s what you asked in June of 2025, about nine months ago:

I wanted to know your thoughts on if antizionism could be not antisemitic? Most of what I see touted as antizionism reads antisemitic to me and I was curious to know if antizionism is inherently antisemitic?

You noticed that contemporary antizionist rhetoric seemed like Jew hatred. You did that just by paying attention and thinking critically.

Despite the fact that you’re not Jewish and the issue doesn’t much impact your life, you decided to submit the Ask.

The answer was submitted anonymously, so you weren’t notified when it was answered. This means you cared enough about the topic to come back looking for it.

You took the time to thoughtfully read the very long answer.

You decided to follow up by seeking out more information from multiple sources. You chose to spend time learning more.

You saw the historical proof, understood the history, and recognized for yourself how all the contemporary far-left antizionist rhetoric comes straight from Soviet antisemitic propaganda.

You decided to look deeper, to read more, and to understand something you had been ignorant about previously. You did that.

Then you came back to close the loop and tell me what you’ve learned.

That was a gift, Anon. It gives me hope that hate can be fought with information and that there are still people who think critically and read broadly.

“Thank you” doesn’t really feel like enough, Anon - but please know this comes from the bottom of my heart: thank you.

💙

(We’re talking about this post)

That only works as a gotcha’ if female genital mutilation and circumcision were the same kind of thing.

Because they are not, you’re not exposing a contradiction, you’re just dishonestly avoiding the difference in severity, intent, and outcome.

The example in the post is female genital mutilation. Let’s be clear what that involves, mkay?

WHO classification of FGM

• Type I (Clitoridectomy)
  Partial or total removal of the clitoris (and sometimes the clitoral hood)
• Type II (Excision)
  Removal of the clitoris and the labia minora (sometimes also labia majora)
• Type III (Infibulation)
  Narrowing of the vaginal opening by cutting and repositioning the labia; may or may not include clitoral removal
• Type IV (Other harmful procedures)
  Includes pricking, piercing, scraping, or cauterization

Types I and II are direct attempts to eliminate sexual function. These cause significant, permanent harm and carries serious medical risk.

Male circumcision does not do that. It does not eliminate sexual function, it does not operate with the same intent, it causes nothing like the same level of harm.

If you flatten those into the same category, that’s carelessness, not consistency.

That said, there’s still a real question underneath your comment.

I’m not enthusiastic about unnecessary cosmetic procedures on children who cannot consent - and that includes circumcision. Moral discomfort, though, exists on a spectrum, not a false binarism of “wrong or right” as you put it in your Ask.

FGM is an easy case. The harm is severe and targeted. Prohibition is justified.

Circumcision is not in that category. You can (and should, IMO) question its ethics without pretending it is equivalent.

(Related: There are aspects of some circumcisions I would absolutely favor banning.
Metzitzah b’peh introduces a direct, preventable infection risk to infants and isn’t required by any religious standards. At that point, you’re no longer talking about an abstract cultural practice, but a concrete public health risk to a non-consenting child. That justifies regulation, including prohibition. I think it is a major failure that it isn’t totally banned in the US.)

So the framework doesn’t break.

Not all practices are equal. Some are clearly and severely harmful, and those are the ones that justify intervention.

If you want to argue about where circumcision belongs on that spectrum, that’s a real conversation we could have - but pretending circumcision is the same mutilation as the excision of the clitoris is either clueless or dishonest.