A Proportionate Response is Madness

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July 25, 2006

By Richard Cohen

The list of those who have accused Israel of not being in harmony with its enemies is long and, alas, distinguished. It includes, of course, the United Nations and its secretary general, Kofi Annan. It also includes a whole bunch of European newspapers whose editorial pages call for Israel to respond, it seems, with only one missile for every one tossed its way. Such neat proportion is a recipe for doom.

The dire consequences of proportionality are so clear that it makes you wonder if it is a fig leaf for anti-Israel sentiment in general. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness. For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to re-establish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.

Israel has been in dire need of such deterrence ever since it pulled out of Lebanon in 2000 and, just recently, the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, it effectively got into a proportional hit-and-respond cycle with Hezbollah. It cost Israel 901 dead and Hezbollah an announced 1,375, too close to parity to make a lasting difference. Whatever the figures, it does not change the fact that Israeli conscripts or reservists do not think death and martyrdom are the same thing. No virgins await Jews in heaven.

...

It's clear now that those boundaries -- a wall, a fence, a whatever -- are immaterial when it comes to missiles. Hezbollah, with the aid of Iran and Syria, has shown that it is no longer necessary to send a dazed suicide bomber over the border -- all that is needed is the requisite amount of thrust and a warhead. That being the case, it's either stupid or mean for anyone to call for proportionality. The only way to ensure that babies don't die in their cribs and old people in the streets is to make the Lebanese or the Palestinians understand that if they, no matter how reluctantly, host those rockets, they will pay a very, very steep price.

...

Israel is, as I have often said, unfortunately located, gentrifying a pretty bad neighborhood. But the world is full of dislocated peoples and we ourselves live in a country where the Indians were pushed out of the way so that -- oh, what irony! -- the owners of slaves could spread liberty and democracy from sea to shining sea. As for Europe, who today cries for the Greeks of Anatolia or the Germans of Bohemia?

These calls for proportionality rankle. They fall on my ears not as genteel expressions of fairness, some ditsy Marquess of Queensberry idea of war, but as ugly sentiments pregnant with antipathy toward the only state in the Middle East that is a democracy. After the Holocaust, after 1,000 years of mayhem and murder, the only proportionality that counts is zero for zero. If Israel's enemies want that, they can have it in a moment.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/...onse_is_ma.html

[Ban Hammer 13,346]

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Why is it madness?

OK so Hamas was "democratically" elected to power, which is we're hearing this wonky reasoning about how the 'collateral damage' of innocent Palestinian civilians is acceptable because the civilian population implicitly supports Hamas by electing them in the first place. This is why you hear talk from the Israeli side that all the Gaza populace needs to do to end the IDF attacks is get rid of the current government. Effectively, Israel has taken a leaf out of the US's 'diplomatic' handbook and decided it wants 'regime change' in Gaza. As I said elsewhere though - I'm not sure you really achieve regime change by blowing up five sisters in their apartment block. Its counterproductive - and Israel has tried it again and again and again. All it does is bolster up the political ambitions of hard-liners on both sides - at others' expense.

I am somewhat surprised that most of the protest against Israel's response to Hamas attacks seems to have come from outside the US (big demonstration in London the other day) - proof perhaps that the US' proud boast to be a country where free speech is protected (sometimes I hear that it's the ONLY country to have such protections) is somewhat self-deceiving at the very least.

It doesn't help that the Palestinian side of things isn't really addressed in our media - and we're content to assume simply that they're all a bunch of religious maniacs. People don't hear much about Israel's expansionist policies, fueled largely by land-hungry Jews-of-convenience (mostly Soviet settlers) - indeed this is rarely addressed at all, let alone examined in any detail; and, when they are, the authors are accused of antisemitism - even when they are themselves Jews! (as this thread and the one about "why the left hates Israel" prove).

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

Why is it madness?

OK so Hamas was "democratically" elected to power, which is we're hearing this wonky reasoning about how the 'collateral damage' of innocent Palestinian civilians is acceptable because the civilian population implicitly supports Hamas by electing them in the first place. This is why you hear talk from the Israeli side that all the Gaza populace needs to do to end the IDF attacks is get rid of the current government. Effectively, Israel has taken a leaf out of the US's 'diplomatic' handbook and decided it wants 'regime change' in Gaza. As I said elsewhere though - I'm not sure you really achieve regime change by blowing up five sisters in their apartment block. Its counterproductive - and Israel has tried it again and again and again. All it does is bolster up the political ambitions of hard-liners on both sides - at others' expense.

I am somewhat surprised that most of the protest against Israel's response to Hamas attacks seems to have come from outside the US (big demonstration in London the other day) - proof perhaps that the US' proud boast to be a country where free speech is protected (sometimes I hear that it's the ONLY country to have such protections) is somewhat self-deceiving at the very least.

It doesn't help that the Palestinian side of things isn't really addressed in our media - and we're content to assume simply that they're all a bunch of religious maniacs. People don't hear much about Israel's expansionist policies, fueled largely by land-hungry Jews-of-convenience (mostly Soviet settlers) - indeed this is rarely addressed at all, let alone examined in any detail; and, when they are, the authors are accused of antisemitism - even when they are themselves Jews! (as this thread and the one about "why the left hates Israel" prove).

Presumptious at best!

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

Must of crapped on his parade.

[mawilson 2,133]

I am somewhat surprised that most of the protest against Israel's response to Hamas attacks seems to have come from outside the US (big demonstration in London the other day) - proof perhaps that the US' proud boast to be a country where free speech is protected (sometimes I hear that it's the ONLY country to have such protections) is somewhat self-deceiving at the very least.

Because the US doesn't have as many far left loons as Europe - and thank God for that!

Nothing to do with free speech - people are free to protest, as we saw in Ft Lauderdale.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I am somewhat surprised that most of the protest against Israel's response to Hamas attacks seems to have come from outside the US (big demonstration in London the other day) - proof perhaps that the US' proud boast to be a country where free speech is protected (sometimes I hear that it's the ONLY country to have such protections) is somewhat self-deceiving at the very least.

Because the US doesn't have as many far left loons as Europe - and thank God for that!

Nothing to do with free speech - people are free to protest, as we saw in Ft Lauderdale.

Sure it is. You have a whole bunch of extremist whack-jobs shrieking their heads off about sending people to ovens, and a media that sees fit to frame the debate around those people and variously point fingers or boil the debate down to whether people are anti-semitic or not.

I don't know about you - but its a fairly shrewd guess that this doesn't encapsulate all views on the issue. Not that you'd think so - from the way its presented.

This I thought was interesting:

Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who organized the petition, has been silent, as have his co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern, and Cornell Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel’s attack on the leading university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which organized the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault.

Making making universities dependent on private donation is tantamount to controlling what they or their staffs can say or do in a way in which, if state-funded universities were similarly controlled, would be condemned.