So, You Want Proportionality?

Thanks to Business Insider, with tunnel additons by yours-truly:

Feel better now?

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When Dayan Dissed Disproportionality

I am reading, in the Hebrew, Benny Morris book on the period of the Arab infiltration attacks against Israel from 1949-1956.

In Chapter Ten, he recounts an event on the Jerusalem front when, after the Jordan Legion opened up fire across the front (remember?  Jerusalem used to be a divided city, sitting right on the border?) on the evening of June 30, 1954,

Davar

HaTzofeh

Israel responded, using, as did the Jordanians, mortar fire.  Many were wounded and there were fatalities on both sides as well as damage to structures.

Dayan, responding to criticism from the UN observers about the use of mortars, replied:

"It was a mistake.  We should have used cannons."

In a conversation with the head of the Commission, Dayan said,

"I will return fire with everything except for an atom bomb and I will not restrict this only to the area from where fire is being shot."

Odd that we did not hear such talk from Israel during the Gaza operations when the whole issue of disprotortionality came up.

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Israel, Gaza and...Florida: Proportionality

Remember all those claims that Israel needed to act "in proportion" or "with proportionality" during the Cast Lead military operation against terrorists in Gaza targeting civilians in Israel rather than acting disproportionately?

Well, maybe Israel could learn from Florida:-

TAMPA, Fla. – A pistol-packing jogger in Florida won't be charged for shooting and killing a teenager who attacked him during a midnight run.  Prosecutors said Tuesday they are convinced Thomas Baker acted in self defense when he fired eight shots at 18-year-old Carlos Mustelier near Tampa in November .

Prosecutors say Florida's "stand-your-ground" law was a factor in their decision. The law, passed in 2005, gives people the right to use deadly force as long as they "reasonably believe" it is necessary to stop another person from hurting them.  Baker told police he reached for his gun when the teen punched him in the face. Baker has a concealed weapons permit.

Between you and me, eight is an awful lot of bullets to shoot.

But, in Florida, that's justice.

And Israel will stand its ground.

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A Cantor Singing Good Music

Eric Cantor, that is, who said:-

... he was heartened by Tuesday’s meeting between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But he continued to express his opposition to Obama’s “disproportionate focus” on halting the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank instead of adopting a policy geared toward eliminating the “existential threat” posed to Israel by Iran’s nuclear program.

“If you look at the policy that this White House has followed, it certainly does not seem as if we are dealing with a true friend” of Israel, Cantor said.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to respond to Cantor’s comments but said that securing a lasting two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians was “how you can be a true friend to Israel.”

Wow. "Disproportionate".

Judge Goldstone, you hear that?

With Appreciation to Pink Floyd

Buzzsawmonkey, a commenter at LGF, posted the following lyrics to be sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s Brain Damage.

Collateral Damage–with apologies to Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage”

The terrorist’s behind the wall

The terrorist’s behind the wall

Setting an IED trap, hoping soldiers will fall

To kill Jews is important over all

The terrorist is in the shed

The terrorist is in the shed

At the first alarm, beneath its roof he fled

He’s trying to sight his cross hairs on your head

And if Israel’s patience comes at last to end

And if it goes in to clean out the nest

There is no reason, its enemies pretend

You’ll see how loud the NGOs protest

The terrorist is in the house

The terrorist is in the house

He’s got a white flag to cover up his gun

He’ll use the first to hide the other one

That’s how it goes

As we all know

And it will be whitewashed by NGOs

And if the tapes show, and clearly reveal

Hamas uses civilian shields

Don’t think they’ll admit lies, or make a clean breast

You’ll see how loud the NGOs protest

(Kippah tip: RL)

A Matter of Disproportionality

How can the BBC use disproportionality as a weapon against Israel?

Easy.

Use three maps to explain the damage caused in the latest operations in Gaza during "Cast Lead" and have the ones showing the Arab side very big and deatiled and the one displaying Israel very small and not very detailed.

See:








Source


Here's a map that sort of helps out the Israeli side:

One More on Disproportionality

What “war crimes” is Israel alleged to have committed? One that we hear a great deal about is the supposed lack of proportionality in its war-making. But there is no requirement in international law that one nation’s casualties be equivalent to those of its enemies. If there were, the U.S. would surely have been guilty of war crimes in World War II when its armed forces killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese following the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, which killed “only” 2,413 Americans.

Max Boot

(on Boot)

My Comment Over At Contentions on Proportionality

Here, #4, at Noah Pollak's blog post where he attacks Andrew Sullivan:

The element of “proportionality” is a false measurement for another reason. It is Hamas’ intention to eliminate Israel, no matter what Israel did to Hamas. Israel’s stated and practiced intention these past 3.5 years since disengagement was to let Hamas rule as long as no rockets were fired. Therefore, one most involve in the mathematics of proportionality the intentions of the violence. For if Israel doesn’t respond harder and stronger and more powerful than Hamas, then Hamas will continue to be able to attempt the elimination of Israel and the death of as many of its Jewish citizens as they can. This is the real disproportionality most miss, and which, in the end, justifies Israel 100:1 actions.

On Disproportionality - What Do You Do?

I do not know a DavidN but he left this comment over on an article my friend Michel Gurfinkiel published at Pajamas Media

DavidN:

Allow me to propose a simple scenario to those who speak of “disproportionate” Israeli responses. Suppose three men break into your house, and kill *one* of your family members. You have a pistol, and you manage to kill one of them. You’re not certain what will happen if you leave the other two alone; they may try and kill the rest of your family, them may leave and try again later. They’ve been very clear that they hate you and everything you stand for, and they’re very clear also that they’d *like* to kill everyone in your house. Do you let them go, because you’ve already responded “proportionally”? How naive can you get?

I think that needs wider distribution and am doing my bit for the cause.

I would add to that example above this point:

If two men break into your house, one kills, God forbid, your son and the other rapes your wife, and you overpower them, and in the fight kill the one who murdered your son, do you then rape the other guy?

On The Disproportionate Debate

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has uploaded their latest report on the issue of proportionality in Gaza.

Summary:

Did Israel Use "Disproportionate Force" in Gaza?

Dore Gold

Israeli population centers in southern Israel have been the target of over 4,000 rockets, as well as thousands of mortar shells, fired by Hamas and other organizations since 2001. Rocket attacks increased by 500 percent after Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. During an informal six-month lull, some 215 rockets were launched at Israel.

The charge that Israel uses disproportionate force keeps resurfacing whenever it has to defend its citizens from non-state terrorist organizations and the rocket attacks they perpetuate. From a purely legal perspective, Israel's current military actions in Gaza are on solid ground. According to international law, Israel is not required to calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it.

Ibrahim Barzak and Amy Teibel wrote for the Associated Press on December 28 that most of the 230 Palestinians who were reportedly killed were "security forces," and Palestinian officials said "at least 15 civilians were among the dead." The numbers reported indicate that there was no clear intent to inflict disproportionate collateral civilian casualties. What is critical from the standpoint of international law is that if the attempt has been made "to minimize civilian damage, then even a strike that causes large amounts of damage - but is directed at a target with very large military value - would be lawful."

Luis Moreno-Orampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, explained that international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court "permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks against military objectives, even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur." The attack becomes a war crime when it is directed against civilians (which is precisely what Hamas does).

After 9/11, when the Western alliance united to collectively topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, no one compared Afghan casualties in 2001 to the actual numbers that died from al-Qaeda's attack. There clearly is no international expectation that military losses in war should be on a one-to-one basis. To expect Israel to hold back in its use of decisive force against legitimate military targets in Gaza is to condemn it to a long war of attrition with Hamas.

Marty Peretz, The Liberal, Uses The F Word

Marty Peretz goes gung-ho:

The government in Jerusalem had made it unmistakably clear that it would no longer tolerate this fire power aimed at innocent civilian life. It had been saying this for months to an increasingly skeptical and apprehensive, not to say, restive public. And to Hamas which didn't seem to care. Instead, it threatened Israel by word and follow-up deeds that confirmed the recklessness - as if confirmation was needed- of also this Palestinian "liberation" movement, the last in the long line of terrorist revolutionaries acting in the name of pathetic and blood-thirsty Palestine.

So at 11:30 on Saturday morning...50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews.

At roughly noon, another 60 air-attack vehicles went after other Hamas strategic positions. Israeli intelligence reported 225 people dead, mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries, besides, and perhaps 400 wounded. The Palestinians announced 300 dead, probably as a reflex in order to begin their whining about disproportionate Israeli acts of war. And 600 wounded.

Frankly, I am up to my gullet with this reflex criticism of Israel as going beyond proportionality in its responses to war waged against its population with the undisguised intention of putting an end to the political expression of the Jewish nation. Within hours, Nicolas Sarkozy was already taking up the cudgel of French righteousness and pronouncing the actually quite sober Israeli response to the continuous war on its borders "disproportionate." Enough. What would be proportionate, oh, so so proportionate apparently, are those tried-and-true half measures to contain Hamas that have never worked. Remember that in 2005 Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians waiting and hoping that they would make something of a civil society of their territory, civil for their own and civil to their neighbors. It was not to be.

Imagine, the F word and Jews in the same sentence but it sounds so good.