Are you sure you want ‘proportionality’?

[mystery-ak]

January 18, 2024
Are you sure you want ‘proportionality’?
By Walter E. Block and Alan G. Futerman

Israel is responding to the October 7, 2023 invasion of its country.  There are calls for a “proportional response” on its part vis-à-vis Hamas.  The only democracy in the Middle East is now being widely accused of engaging in a “disproportionate” reaction.

For example, one newspaper headline claims: “Turkey’s Erdoğan calls Israeli response to Hamas in Gaza a ‘massacre.’”  The Turkish president continued: “Israel’s ‘disproportionate’ attacks on Gaza could put it in global disrepute.”  According to Irish government minister Thomas Byrne, “[t]he attack initiated by Hamas on Saturday was ‘absolutely wrong’ and Israel is entitled to defend itself but the country’s response needs to be proportionate.”  Seymour Hersh mentions “Israel’s murderously disproportionate response to the October 7 attack by Hamas.”

What would it mean if the IDF were to follow this advice — check that: demands — to react in a “proportionate” manner?

If it would mean anything at all, it would that the IDF go house to house and deliberately shoot Palestinian women and children.  First, these soldiers rape the former and torture the latter.  A beheading of babies in front of their parents would not be at all amiss.  Nor should they forgo raping the women in front of their children.

more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/are_you_sure_you_want_proportionality.html

[DefiantMassRINO]

Hamas, as the governing authority in Gaza, has the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews as official policy.

Hamas needs to be eradicated for Israel to survive.

"Proportionality" on the part of Israel would be seen as weakness, and encourage more attacks on more fronts.

The real enemy is Iran, and Iran needs to be dealt with.

[The_Reader_David]

Just because the fools on the Left don't understand the concept of proportionality in warfare as the term is used in international law doesn't mean folks on our side should parrot their misunderstanding.

Proportionality in warfare does not mean that the response is proportional to the provocation, but that the means used are proportional to the military value of the objective.  If you're taking fire from the top of an apartment building, blowing off the top of the apartment building is a proportionate response, demolishing the whole complex of apartment buildings it's part of is not.  The military value of not needing to invade the Japanese home islands to obtain unconditional surrender was so great that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually exceeded the requirement of proportionality (the estimated casualties among U.S. force, Japanese forces and Japanese civilians for the invasion, each counted separately exceeded the casualties inflicted it the bombings by a factor of ten).