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A Parody of Proportional Response
The demands from the usual suspects in the UN and within our own government for a proportional Israeli response to Hamas and Hezbollah attacks is really an admission that Hamas and Hezbollah are beyond the reach of reason.
They use their own citizens as human shields as well as women and children as suicide bombers. We are seeing their advocates on our college campuses, the media, and in Congress.
There is no doubt that the loss of life is horrific, but some see it as a disturbing inconvenience to their daily life in Europe and the United States. A disturbing inconvenience that must be ended at once by the Israelis defending themselves so we can get back to handing out participation trophies to everyone and reinforcing the ‘I’m okay and you’re okay society.’
The shared image occurred amid a rising conflict between Israel and the Hamas militant group. The latter attacked Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing some 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Reuters. Israel in turn declared war on Hamas.
The New York Times’ front page was not authentic, and we even debunked it back in 2006 as a form of political satire. – Snopes
The best satire has a bit of truth in it and is relevant today as it was in 2oo6.
I would think that a proportionate response would be that the Israelis go door to door and burn families alive, kill babies, and gang rape women before breaking their legs and beheading them.
There was a time when that was satire.
No. For it to be truly proportional they would have to rape the boys, too.
Excellent satire by inimitable People’s Cube. First published in 2006. Recently re-posted on Twitter.
I commented on another post an interesting thing I learned on a interview concerning “rules” of war, etc. Apparently the constantly misused term “proportional response” is not in fact a clean way to compare body counts or structural damage. What that term refers to is the military benefit gained by an action proportional to that action. The example given was if there is a single sniper in an apartment building full of civilians, destroying that building and killing all the inhabitants in order to take out the sniper would be disproportionate. Obviously this is not what Israel is doing. If they desired they could pretty much level and kill every single person in Gaza. That would in fact be genocide and disproportionate. I think we all know what Hamas would do if they had the ability to do that to Israel……..
Fantastic satirical example too
Exactly! This isn’t a sporting event. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would a proportional response to achieve the war aims of an unconditional surrender. Leveling Gaza may wind up being a proportional response to the war aims of neutralizing Hamas. In both cases it is wrong to blame the winning side that did not start the conflict for damage done to the losing side that did. The thing is much as with the crime problem in the US leftist which to strip agency from Hamas and transfer all agency to Israel. This is for two reasons one Hamas is, as the OP notes, beyond reason. They literally can’t be negotiated with. Second the left sees the existence of Western culture as a problem, so in a real way they share Hamas’s war aims.
From Twitter,some time ago. (It’s a stupid name, Elon. Change it back.)
Amen, EJ
I’ve seen Gaza compared to the Warsaw Ghetto before, but I’m surprised to see it here.
All the times those Jews in the Ghetto launched rocket attacks into Germany for years and years … oh wait …
Comparisons like that are the modern Left’s only contribution to comedy, and they aren’t even trying to be funny.
Do you seek the destruction of Israel, the annihilation of Jews and the renaming of the entire area Palestine, a monolithic Arab state, as Palestinian Arabs do?
I do not.
I guess that’s why the PA signed Oslo.
Well, it is in the charter of HAMAS, so at least the leadership of Gaza wants that.
Zafar, I understand that you are sympathetic to your fellow Muslims, but I am fairly confident a lot of Palestinians would happily watch HAMAS murder me or any other American. They are my enemy, if not yours. They must be defeated decisively I love Japan and Japanese culture. However, if I was transported back in the bombardier’s seat of the Enola Gay, I’d nuke them gladly. The Japanese were our enemy in WWII, and we had to defeat them.
They walked it back – sort of – in their 2017 charter – but sure, I’m somewhat sceptical.
Hey, I’m sympathetic to the Palestinian Christians stuck there as well, also to Jewish hostages. I don’t think any people as a whole deserves death and destruction.
Right now some Americans are watching, if not happily at least not unhappily, while Palestinian children are being killed.
Does that make all of you their enemies?
Hamas might kill me too. But many Palestinians would not.
You speak as if the Palestinians, as opposed to Hamas, have been the only ones to choose war. If you look at events over the past three decades you see that simply isn’t the case.
Israel has sought peace over and over. The Palestinians have not. Over and over.
Any other reading of history is wrong.
Oh, good propaganda and story telling, but wrong.
But they did choose this war. On 10/6 there was relative peace. It was even noted that the mid-east was uncharacteristically quiet. Then 10/7 happened and the world changed. I watched the celebrations in Gaza for a set of atrocities and barbarism that the world hasn’t seen since maybe the height of ISIS. They had to know what the response was likely to be. It is terrible that civilians in Gaza are dying, but it is unfortunately needful to remove the death cult that is Hamas.
If the international press were not just a propaganda factory for Iranian interests in the region they would be calling on Hamas to surrender. Instead they call for the Israelis to cease fighting, so Hamas can rearm and do another 10/7 attack, which they have promised to do until…I guess they run out of Gazans to die or Israelis to kill. There can’t be a peace until Hamas is defeated. Even then it will take generations to leech the poison out of Gaza and the Palestinians.
Zafar I don’t doubt your good faith here but the it seems to be accurate that currently among all Palestinians, Hamas is the most popular “political” party in the area. This may not be the case in Gaza, where many would definitely like someone in control who actually…..runs Gaza. (I am getting this from people in Israel, including Israeli Arab journalists) Even granting the possibility of some Gazans being against Hamas, they still don’t oppose the complete elimination of Israel or even the terrorist tactics on Oct 7. This mindset has been ingrained in the population from childhood, that is undeniable.
I would recommend to you Cory Gil-Shuster and his Ask project.
Just ask them: (5) Palestinians: Why do Gazans shoot rockets from civilian areas? – YouTube
The difference between Israel and Hamas is Israel uses rockets to protect its civilians and Hamas uses civilians to protect its rockets
Hamas or the Palestinians? Hamas definitely chose this war.
But there was not relative justice.
I think it’s fair to say that this relative peace was better for one ‘side’ than the other, and that this discrepancy looked likely to increase.
The status quo ante sucked for Palestinians.
That’s why Hamas acted on the 7th of October. It knew that Israel would react the way it has.
It’s from 2014, but here’s an article about Israelis watching [and] cheering the bombing of Gaza while eating popcorn.
It’s appalling, but I don’t think it’s a reason to write off Israel or Israelis as irredeemable.
I fear you’re right.
Do these people in Israel (hopefully also the Arab journalists) take the next step and ask them WHY?
I really like his youtube channel. Sometimes I think the questions are a bit vapid, but it’s often very interesting.
Agreed Hamas started it, but a lot of Palestinians seem to agree with it.
I am not even sure what that means. What do you want to see? Seriously?
I would argue it was better for both sides. No civilians were being killed. Israel was letting larger numbers of Palestinians work outside of Gaza. There were chances for more peace deals in the Middle East. It wasn’t better for Iran or its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah but [Redacted] them.
Whose fault is that. Israel left Gaza in 2005 they even forcibly removed Jewish citizens at gunpoint to give it over to the Palestinians without any Jews anywhere around. What did the Palestinians do with their new found territory. They turned it into an armed camp to attack their neighbors. Kind of argues that a two state solution isn’t all that viable.
So they knew it would cause a lot of Gazans to die and did it anyway to accomplish…what? Bloodlust? Iran’s agenda for the middle east? to Unite the Arab world in a genocidal campaign against Israel. What were they hoping to accomplish?
Neither do I. Not really pretty but kind of a different sort of horror than what was done in southern Israel. My point though still stands. Israeli children are not taught that Palestinian children are somehow less than human. Unfortunately the Palestinians teach their children that Jews (not Israelis) and Christians are less than human. It doesn’t necessarily make the Palestinians irredeemable. It does however make them much harder to redeem.
Not quite the same thing.
I’d like them to engage with the Oslo process seriously.
If they’d done that from the beginning there would be a two state solution today. And peace.
(I dislike cross-posting, but since it’s convenient: In 1997 Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords. The PLO recognised Israel and its right to exist. Israel recognised the PLO as the only representative of the Palestinian people. The accords set out three issues to be resolved by negotiation on the way to a two state solution: (1) borders, (2) refugees and (3) Jerusalem. That is still the PLO/PA’s official position. Is it still Israel’s? wrt actions speaking louder than words, Israel’s PM for a long time has been a man who campaiged against the Oslo Accords (the PM who signed them was assassinated) running a coalition government dependent on parties who are completely opposed to any compromise on borders, refugees and Jerusalem (which Israel in the meantime annexed in whole) and whose own party platform explicitly rules out a Palestinian state.)
There was the illusion that Israel could make peace with the Arab world without making peace with the Palestinians.
That illusion has been punctured – for both Israel and the unelected despots of the Middle East.
Yet somehow Israeli children still grow up to cheer Palestinian civilians being killed. You can argue the difference, but it seems a bit theoretical at this point.
I always cheer when killers and their supporters get killed. Everyone should.
The fundamentals are that Zafar thinks Israel are the bad guys
They clearly are not. They have not baked babies.
Yes it’s interesting. He’s been doing it quite a while apparently. Unfortunately I heard an interview with him and after Oct 7th he doesn’t have much hope anymore.
Form my perspective, Israel wants nothing to do with Gaza. Gaza could be self sustaining or at the minimum supported by other Arab nations. How is it istraels fault that Gaza is run by terrorists that stockpile weapons and fuel for war instead of taking care of the populace? Seems like a classic case of screwing things up yourself then blaming a convenient scapegoat.
‘It’s all their fault’ is a common refrain on both sides of this divide. Things are never that simple.
Taking a step back, it seems like dark calls to dark and light to light. And it’s very hard for either of them to be light now.
Israel has in many ways shaped who the Palestinians are. But the Arab world has also shaped who Israelis are. the first is sometimes acknowledged, the second not so much.
If you mean that Israel could be even better if they didn’t have to be so watchful and spend so much on defending themselves from Arabs, that’s correct.
The rest is all on the Arabs and “Palestinians” too.
Not really sure your point here. Are you saying Israel should have turned the other cheek. I don’t think that would have been accepted by Hamas as anything but a point of weakness.
The PLO hasn’t exactly engaged seriously with the Oslo Accords either. They have had several opportunities to negotiate a Palestinian state; however, they never “miss an opportunity, to miss an opportunity”. Ultimately the PLO an Hamas have a similar goal they both want all of Israel not a state of their own. Hamas had both de facto and de jure control over Gaza from 2005 onward. The PLO has de facto, if not de Jure control over much of Judea and Samaria. If they were willing to negotiate in good faith they might get somewhere. What they want is all of Israel, “From the River to the Sea”. They have never agreed to one offer. Indeed when they had Gaza they didn’t try to make it a functioning state, why would we expect a broader Palestinian state to be anything other than a bigger problem.
Maybe, Maybe not. It has certainly set back the expansion of the peace; however, while I have heard some sturm and drang from the Arab members of the Abraham accords, i am unaware of any of them meaningfully changing their status on them. I don’t think most of them have any real feelings for the Palestinians at all. Also since the Palestinians have move their allegiance from Saudi to Iran. I suspect there is little overall appetite for many of the countries making peace with Israel to allow Iran a victory. The Palestinians shot themselves in the foot when they decided not to participate in the talks that lead to the Abraham accords. It exposed them not particularly interested in a solution.
I suspect they are cheering their military striking the peopling shooting rockets into their backyards. I doubt very much they are cheering the death of Palestinian civilians. It may be a distinction without a difference from your point of view; however, it isn’t from mine. Israel retaliates. It doesn’t intentionally go in to kill Gaza civilians. Apparently the ruling party in Gaza does intentionally target Israeli civilians. It also intentionally puts Gazans in the place where they are most likely to be killed in the counterattack.
Israel has made an offer Re borders – whether ongoing settlements render that insincere you can decide – but not about refugees or Jerusalem. The PA really didn’t have a partner for peace.