Lawfare Daily: Lessons for Civilian Harm Mitigation in Urban Warfare, from Gaza and Beyond

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4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

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Summary

For today's podcast, we're bringing you the audio for a panel discussion that Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson hosted this past November, at a conference on Precision Lethality and Civilian Harm Mitigation, hosted by the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) at the University of Pennsylvania.

Joining him on the panel were Professor Claire Finkelstein, CERL's founder and director; Christopher Maier, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict in the Biden administration; Dr. Larry Lewis, a principal research scientist at CNA and expert in civilian harm mitigation; and Professor Geoffrey Corn of Texas Tech University School of Law, an expert in the law of armed conflict with more than two decades of experience as an Army Judge Advocate General.

Together, the panelists discussed the challenges of civilian harm mitigation in urban warfare environments, what mistakes were made in Gaza and other contexts, how civilian harm mitigation intersects with media coverage and legitimacy concerns, and what key lessons policymakers and warfighters should carry into the next such conflict.

You can view articles and podcasts published in Lawfare that grew out of a number of workshops and sessions from the conference here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I am not going to argue that everything that happened in Gaza was justified and legal.
0:07.8	You cannot fight a campaign of that scale, density, and duration without having errors.
0:15.2	And my biggest criticism of the IDF was the lack of speed and transparency in investigations and discipline for Ms. Condo.
0:26.2	It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson. Today we're bringing you the audio for panel I
0:32.4	moderated this past November at a conference on precision, lethality, and civilian harm mitigation,
0:37.1	hosted by the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania.
0:41.0	Joining me on the panel were Professor Claire Finkelstein, the center's founder and director, Christopher Mayer, a former assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict in the Biden administration, Dr. Larry Lewis, a principal research scientist at CNA and expert in civilian harm mitigation,
0:55.4	and Professor Jeffrey Korn of Texas Tech University School of Law, an expert in the law-of-arm
0:59.8	conflict with more than two decades of experience as an Army Judge Advocate General.
1:04.3	I wonder whether or not things like the principle of distinction actually continues to hold in future warfare. Because when we
1:14.5	talk about a battlefield and we think about civilians being off the battlefield and combatants
1:20.0	being on the battlefield, where is the battlefield? There's no more actual limits to the battlefield.
1:27.8	Together, we discussed what lessons can be learned about the future of urban warfare and
1:31.4	civilian harm mitigation from Gaza and other recent cases.
1:35.5	Jeff, I want to start with you for this conversation, because I think, given that we are
1:41.1	predominantly American audience, and particularly a predominantly American panel, entirely American panel,
1:46.7	it's worth starting with the American experience that has been a pretty formative one over the past few years, a reckoning of sorts with this question of civilian harm, a strategy for mitigating it.
1:57.9	You were really one of the first people to put forward a real proposal to have
2:02.6	a defined strategy for civilian harm mitigation and a set of policies, particularly oriented
2:09.3	towards commanders in the field, particularly in a piece in 2019, is the kind of place I think of this
2:14.1	kind of really coalescing in your work. Talk to us about what led you to this
2:18.0	suggestion, this idea, the operational needs and other needs you saw that you thought this might
	...

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