Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorist groups, even when its actions harm innocent civilians, Fordham University law professor Avi Bell told a small group of students yesterday in Whig Hall.

“I have a human right not to be killed,” Bell, who is also a professor at Bar Ilan University in Israel, said. “I have the right to call on the state to protect me from being killed.”

Bell explained that this summer’s conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah highlighted the importance of reacting strongly to terrorism, particularly against groups that seek the destruction of Israel.

Since Hezbollah’s intent is to “kill a people… because of their national identity,” Bell said, “Israel is required to attempt to take control of these people and bring them to justice as well as to foil their attempted acts of genocide.”

Bell reacted to scholars who argue that Hezbollah is a nationalist group and should be dealt with accordingly. “This is an idiotic argument” given that the organization is committing what he called “crimes against humanity.”

Bell said that the techniques Israel employs in its fight against terrorism all fall within the law, despite widespread arguments that Israel has violated the principles of proportionality and distinction.

“Distinction says you have to target combatants and not civilians,” Bell said. “Proportionality says you can kill civilians as collateral damage but only in proportion with military necessity.”

“That means that Israel could bomb civilian areas to the extent that civilian damage is proportional to military necessity,” he added.

Since “the Hezbollah guy… is never in the combatant zone,” Israel needs to “get him when [they] have good intelligence info on where he is.”

Over the summer, many humanitarian organizations condemned Israel’s actions as creating undue suffering among civilian populations.

But Israel’s need to defeat terrorism outweighed the dangers of collateral damage, Bell said.

“Every decision in war involves suffering,” he said. “There is no law of war that is perfect that eliminates suffering.”

Instead, Bell added, a government has to choose the “lesser of evils.”

“Permitting collateral damage is the right rule because it is the least of the evils.”

The lecture was sponsored by the Princeton Israel Public Affairs Committee, the International Relations Council, Whig-Clio and the Department of Near Eastern Studies.