The Proportionality of the Gaza Action

I am a little confused.  During the cease fire, the Palestinians were launching rockets against the Israelis the  whole time and also during the last 8 years.  If Canada was launching rockets into the U.S., I think we would probably use every resource we could, including nukes.

Since when do we need proportionality in war?  It just seems like there are a lot of anti semites writing this stuff.  Am I wrong?

This story appears verybiased.

Israel is making a havoc for its neighbors. Early they demolished the innocent people of Lebanon and now it is Gaza. Where is the so called Human rights groups who always willing to shout. This is a trade and only the weaker will always have to pay the price.

It is some what useless to talk about this since neither ever signed the convention. There for will not have to honour it either nor can they be tried under that convention. Further the Geneva convention is very out dated and having to clean once Bayonets before pocking once enemies is some what out of date.

Following your logic the US should be tried for using two Nuclear bomb on Japan, since the disproportionally of casualties was similar. Same for the Carpet bombing of Germany in WWII that caused 80% of the Countries to be destroyed and a far more civilian causalities the the western allied forces could ever account for. The German SS and Gestapo as well as the NAZI high command where tried not for crimes of war but for genocide. 

Same for Serbia and other cases. Japanese War criminal of WWII where never tried for what they did in China since it was agreed on in the act of surrender not to prosecute them. Germany's Wehr Macht or WM the regular Armed Forces did agree to prosecute the NAZI in their act of surrender on the 08s of May 1945. Israel is technically not committing Genocide even if it is disproportional and morally unethical, unfair and unnecessary since they could have agreed to let UN peace keeper in some year ago already.

This is the bottom line. The world should give reparations to the descendents of the palestinians whose land was taken in 1948 because the world, the UN, sanctioned Israel.

Then if Hamas doesn't lay down their arms there would be a greater moral acceptance of Israel's actions. Nevertheless, Hamas cannot win, and it is hard to know what they want. They will never be able to destroy Israel so what is the point? They should work toward significant reparations.

But it is clear that Hamas broke the cease fire for whatever reason, and they will have trouble if Israel decides to neutralize them. Right or wrong, Israel will probably neutralize Hamas or severly weaken them. The world says Israel has the right to exist and if she has the right to exist she has the right of self defense. I don't see the UN taking back Israel's existence.

The Israelis were also killing during the "ceasefire". The rockets are a response to 60 years of occupation and being treated as dirt. The destruction of Gaza and the Palestinian people is simply racism, revenge and spite.

 If Israel is the occupier of Gaza   how come it has no troops or military posts in Gaza and has not had since 2005? How come Israel spent the summer and early fall of 2005 forcibly evicting 7,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip if it is an occupier? Israeli society – including the army – was deeply divided over the removal of the settlers.

From reprimands of “disproportionate response” to condemnations of civilian casualties, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has drawn de rigueur denunciations from the international community. Less noticed is that while Israel has taken great pains to avoid innocent deaths in Operation Cast Lead, at great peril to its fighting men and women, Hamas vigilantes have spent recent days deliberately assaulting and killing their fellow Palestinians, just as they have done for years.

According to the Jerusalem Post, since the beginning of the Israeli offensive, more than 75 Gaza Palestinians have been shot in the legs or have had their hands broken; more than 35 have been executed by Hamas operatives who accuse them of being Israeli “collaborators.” Of course, Gaza is not teeming with Israeli spies and most of Hamas’s victims are not only not traitors but likely helped vote the terrorist group into power in the January 2006 legislative elections. Instead, Hamas’s campaign of homegrown terror is the latest example of the terrorists turning on their Palestinian compatriots – a brutal but seldom-discussed cycle of violence in which Palestinians emerge as their own worst enemy.

Though murdered on the accusation of aiding Israel, most were not collaborators at all. “Rather,” as Judith Miller noted, “they were women who wore slacks and other ‘prostitutes,’ as Hamas called unveiled women; they were alcoholics, drug users, teachers with whom Hamas disagreed, Marxists, atheists, a Darwinist, Freudians, members of the Rotary and Lions Clubs – which Hamas’s charter called Jewish spy organizations – and, in particular, supporters of the PLO, Hamas’s main rival for power among Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories.”

Hamas, of course, has no monopoly on killing fellow Palestinians. The death toll amassed by the rival Palestinian Authority (PA) more than matches that of its Islamist counterparts, as demonstrated by the second Palestinian intifada that broke out in 2000. Obscured by the popular preoccupation with alleged Israeli abuses was that the greatest threat to Palestinian life was once again internal. In a single week in March 2002, for example, PA gunmen killed seven Palestinians accused of being Israeli agents. The corpse of one murdered “collaborator” was dragged through the streets of Bethlehem, after which the killers tried to hang the remains from a rooftop above Manger Square. The body of another unlucky victim was strung up by its heels at a Ramallah traffic circle. Still others were abducted from a West Bank road and executed in a deserted slaughterhouse.

Still another source of internal strife is the deadly rivalry between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. As recently as 2007, the two sides were engaged in a bloody civil war that saw both commit daily atrocities. In one particularly sadistic incident in June 2007, Hamas militants kidnapped one Mohammed Sweirki, a 25-year-old officer in a PA-allied security force, and then threw him off the roof of a 15-story apartment building to his death. Fatah responded in kind with its own terror campaign, raiding Hamas-linked mosques and abducting Hamas members in the West Bank. The cost in Palestinian lives was high but of little interest to most media, which chose instead to dwell on those subjects – such as the impact of Israel’s economic blockade on Gaza’s “strawberry farmers” – that accorded with their conception of the Jewish state as the true aggressor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

 Israel’s military actions in Gaza are entirely justified under international law, and Israel should be commended for its act of self-defense against international terrorism. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter reserves to every nation the right to engage in self-defense against armed attacks. The only limitation international law places on a democracy is that its actions must satisfy the principle of proportionality. Israel’s actions certainly satisfy that principles.
 Over the last four years, Palestinian terrorists—in particular, Hamas and Islamic Jihad—have fired more than two thousand rockets at this civilian area, which is home to mostly poor and working-class people. The rockets are designed exclusively to maximize civilian deaths, and some have barely missed schoolyards, kindergartens, hospitals, and school buses. But others hit their targets, killing more than a dozen civilians since 2001, including in February 2008 a father of four who had been studying at the local university. These anticivilian rockets have also injured and traumatized countless children.
 Barack Obama reacted to what he had seen in Sderot by saying that if his two daughters were exposed to rocket attacks in their own homes, he would do everything in his power to stop such attacks. I hope and believe that President Obama will take the same position he did as candidate Obama.

Israel is the most loyal customer of US-made satellite-guided bombs and other latest weapons. Besides, the country itself produces other weapons. It appears to be demonstrating its military strength to starving Palestinian children. Fight terrorism by becoming a greater terrorist! Is this the solution? USA must take responsibility for what is happening in Gaza now. Who is provoking, nourishing and supporting with everything Israel needs? Jews need their place to live and the best place for them is USA and England. No other place can better suit them.But America and Europe have deliberately converted Palestinians into the homeless refugees. Is this just? Human rights thinkers must seek an answer?

Although there is no possibility of the immediate end of the vicious cycle of violence in the Middle East, it is a universal truth that neither Israel nor Palestine can achieve anything by indulging in blind bloodbath. Instead, they should seek solutions on their own.

Making good on its promise to try and "kill Jewish children anywhere." "Grad Rocket Strikes Ashdod Kindergarten Schoolyard," by Hana Levi Julian for Israel National News, January 5 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

IsraelNN.com) A long-range Grad-type Katyusha rocket landed in the schoolyard of a kindergarten in a northern Ashdod neighborhood at approximately 3:20 Monday afternoon -- but miraculously, only two people were lightly wounded, one by flying shrapnel.

Thirty children are normally in the classroom during the day, when the missile struck, but due to Home Front Command instructions, the building was empty at the time.

Magen David Adom medics who raced to the scene said they treated a number of people who suffered from severe emotional trauma. Eyewitnesses described the explosion as "unusually loud."

At about 3:00 p.m., a short-range Kassam rocket exploded in the Eshkol region as well. No one was injured and no damage was reported.

Hamas and allied terrorist attacked southern Israel with close to 30 rockets since 7:00 a.m. Monday, appearing to focus primarily on the coastal cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod...

I am amazed that the supporters of a terrorist organization which respects no law are quick to cite "international law" when a country seeks to defend itself from those terrorists.

Proportionality is measured by the level of risk.  If Hamas is targeting an Israeli school then the proportional Israeli response is to prevent that rocket from going off, not to wait for it to hit the school and kill the kids.

Also, Israel cares about its citizens and builds warning systems and shelters.  Does Hamas do that for its citizens?  No Hamas builds shelters for its leadership and then uses women and children as human shields. Come on Hamas whiners, let's hear more commentary on "international law".

Israel deliberately avoids targeting civilians while Hamas deliberatly targets civilian areas.  Why don't you go to Gaza and lecture Hamas on "international law"?  One can only imagine how they would show their appreciation,

Does  "international law" require Israel to supply electricity to Gaza, which Hamas uses to build rockets to attack the power plant. And none of this crap about Israel occuping Gaza, they left years ago.

But I like the proportional argument.  For every Hamas rocket or mortar round shot into Israel, Israel should respond proportionally and lob a rocket into Gaza.  Perhaps after a couple land in Gazan markets and schools the people will rise up against Hamas.

I think it's worth pointing out for those unaware, that the only governments calling for a cease fire in gaza are external governments. Hamas isn't asking for a ceasefire, and neither is Israel. Isn't it rather ridiculous for parties not involved in the conflict to expect a cease fire when neither of the combatant sides wants to stop shooting?