Proportionality

I’m always half-amused, half-disgusted when I hear the usual suspects criticize Israel for responding to the incessant rocket bombardments on its territory with a lack of proportionality. To recap: Hamas, the ruling party in the Gaza Strip and the psychopaths responsible for shelling Israel/allowing Israel to be shelled over these last few months, call in their charter for the elimination of Israel from the face of the planet. There have been, literally, thousands of rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza since the “ceasefire” was put into place. Thousands! Yet because those attacks have been unsuccessful (i.e., they haven’t killed enough people for the liking of Ezra Klein and the rest of the left), Israel should be considered moral lepers for responding in kind, with attacks of their own.*

This sort of thinking is lunacy. It’s like saying “Well, only 3,000 people died in 9/11, and certainly more than 3,000 people will die if we invade Afghanistan and depose the Taliban/fight al Qaeda, so we probably shouldn’t do it.” 

I mean, seriously: would any other country–any other country in the entire world–be criticized for retaliating against a nation that attacked its sovereign territory with the explicit goal of killing innocent civilians? Of course not. Yet Israel is in the wrong for defending her people. It’s like a sick joke in which the punchline gets more and more putrid every time you hear it. 

*I suppose some on the left would argue that the retaliatory strikes aren’t the problem, it’s the civilian deaths that are the problem. Which would be all well and good if it wasn’t for the fact that Hamas hides in civilian areas with the explicit goal of causing death and destruction that will play to the sympathies of the useful idiots in the West. If Hamas really cared about cutting down on civilian deaths they would stop the rocket attacks. But they don’t. They just care about making Israel look bad.