Are you sure you want ‘proportionality’?

Israel is responding to the October 7, 2023 invasion of its country.  There are calls for a “proportional response” on its part vis-à-vis Hamas.  The only democracy in the Middle East is now being widely accused of engaging in a “disproportionate” reaction.

For example, one newspaper headline claims: “Turkey’s Erdoğan calls Israeli response to Hamas in Gaza a ‘massacre.’”  The Turkish president continued: “Israel’s ‘disproportionate’ attacks on Gaza could put it in global disrepute.”  According to Irish government minister Thomas Byrne, “[t]he attack initiated by Hamas on Saturday was ‘absolutely wrong’ and Israel is entitled to defend itself but the country’s response needs to be proportionate.”  Seymour Hersh mentions “Israel’s murderously disproportionate response to the October 7 attack by Hamas.”

What would it mean if the IDF were to follow this advice — check that: demands — to react in a “proportionate” manner?

If it would mean anything at all, it would that the IDF go house to house and deliberately shoot Palestinian women and children.  First, these soldiers rape the former and torture the latter.  A beheading of babies in front of their parents would not be at all amiss.  Nor should they forgo raping the women in front of their children.

Some Gazan families might be hiding in their homes.  What to do upon such occasions?  Why, burn them to death, either directly by fire or indirectly by smoke inhalation.

Nor should the Israeli military forget to seize a few hundred hostages.  Helpless women, children and the elderly should be their prime targets.

The biblical injunction about a “tooth for a tooth” seems to be the philosophy underlying this call for “proportionality.”  But this, surely, is insufficient.  That would not be fully “proportional” to the damage inflicted.  A steals a car from B.  If the punishment is proportional in this sense, all B must do in return when he is caught is return it to A.  But wait.  There is something amiss in this scenario.  If A is apprehended by the police, he is no worse off than before he committed this crime.  He must only return B’s vehicle to him, not give him one of his own.  If not brought to the bar of justice, B keeps his booty.  If he is arrested 50% of the time, the statistically expected value of his depredations is one half of whatever he seizes.  This is nothing but a recipe to encourage theft.  And it does not sound very “proportionate” at all.

At the very least, when captured, A must be compelled not only to return one car, B’s, but two of them — B’s, to be sure, but also one of equal value of his own.  If he has no such possession, then it has to be the monetary value thereof.  We thus arrive at “two teeth for a tooth.”

If we employ this modification, then the Israelis would be entitled to repay not equally, as mentioned above, but twice over — all by the same logic of “proportionality.”

Let us return to A and B.  If A, immediately after his theft, turned himself into the police, apologized to B, and returned his car to him, plus one of his own, that would settle the matter at least in terms of who owes what to whom.  Then two teeth for a tooth would be sufficient.  However, if A successfully hides out for five years, brags about his theft to his cronies, gives candy to children to celebrate it, and it takes this amount of time for the police to detain him, and B’s car has been driven into the ground by that time, who is to pay, as a matter of justice, for these additional expenses and injustices?  Why, A, of course.

How do Hamas stack up on the basis of these considerations?  Not too well.  Have they apologized for their invasion?  To ask this question is to answer it.  The very opposite is the case.  They have exulted in their past invasion and have promised more of the same — not to mention the widespread destruction, murder, rape, torture, and massive rocket-launching.  Have they returned their Jewish hostages?  Only a few, out of some more than 200 hapless prisoners.

If those who speak of proportionality would follow the implications of their request to its logical conclusion, they would soon find out that it would have been better to stay silent.  True proportionality in this context amounts to revenge on a horrendous scale.  The Israelis are now entitled to quite a bit more than merely two teeth for a tooth, according to the principle of “proportionality.”

But in reality, Israel should not and in fact does not seek revenge, nor should it look for “proportionality” in the above sense.  Only justice.  In other words, the only sense in which the term “proportionality” makes sense in this context is that a country should be entitled to respond in proportion to the threat it faces, to end it.  The only proportional response is to end the threat Hamas represents to Israel’s citizens, not to engage in the sort of mass murder that only monsters such as Hamas assassins could and did in fact commit.

What those who ask for proportionality are really demanding for is deliberate Israeli weakness and therefore suicide.  Implicitly, it is a claim that Israeli lives are worth less than others, for being Israeli.  There are no calls for proportionality to Hamas murderers.

What does justice demand, then?  Destroying Hamas for good.  That is the only commensurate response in proportion to its threat.

Block and Futerman are co-authors of The Classical Liberal Case for Israel, with commentary by Benjamin Netanyahu.  Springer Publishing Company.

Image via Pxfuel.