It really is. And I condemn it! Jonathan Mark explains why in "Israel's Response Is Disproportionate" in Jewish World Review, December 30 (thanks to Doc Washburn):
I condemn Israel's disproportionate attack on Hamas because, so far, it has only lasted four days and I would like to see a proportionate response that terrifies Hamas for seven years, the years that have filled Sderot and neighboring towns with nightmares, death, amputations and trauma coming from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza.Perhaps a proportionate response would have Gaza's leaders fearful of being killed every day for the next two years, as Gilad Shalit has been terrified of torture and death every day for the last two years in his solitary Gaza dungeon.
A proportionate response would have Hamas mothers and fathers as fearful for their children's lives as Shalit's mother and father have been fearful for Gilad's life.
A proportionate response would have Gaza's children crying for their mommies and daddies, the way at a Hamas pageant earlier in December a Palestinian actor dressed as Shalit got down on his knees, mock-begging in Hebrew for his Ima and Abba while the Gaza crowds laughed.
A proportionate response would so intimidate Hamas that they will grovel and, as a "gesture," send cocoa and jam into Sderot, the way Israel has groveled in response to rockets from Hamas, sending cocoa and jam into Gaza. Imagine Churchill sending cocoa and jam into Berlin as a humanitarian gesture after - during - the bombing of London.
A proportionate response would be one that will convince Hamas there is no military solution, no solution but surrender. They can then call surrender a "peace process," if they like, just as the mostly unanswered attacks on Jews have convinced some Jews that there is no military solution but surrender to any and all demands. They suggest a euthanasia by the euphemism of "peace process," that Israel become what some are already planning to call "Canaan," a non-Jewish state of all its citizens.
A proportionate response will convince Palestinians that if they insist that the starting point to peace negotiations is that no Jew be allowed to live on the West Bank, the proportionate response will be that Israel's starting point in negotiations is that no Arab be allowed to live in Tel Aviv. Horrible to contemplate? Fine, let there be a proportionate negotiation.
A proportionate response to Hamas, one might gather from the European scolds, would be as if the United States, after Pearl Harbor, would bomb just a few Japanese fishing boats and call it a day, believing the war would have ended with that.
A proportionate response will begin to remind Jews that there is no peace process like victory, just as Israel's decade of disproportionate restraint and self-doubt has convinced young Palestinians that their victory is inevitable, like Aryan youth in 1933 singing "Tomorrow Belongs To Me."
Let it be said to Israelis and Jews everywhere, in the words of Churchill: "You have enemies? Good. It means you've stood up for something." But remember: A war (and Hamas has repeatedly said this is war) is never won if you are disproportionately kind to someone who wants to destroy you and, failing in that, demands with indignation that you not destroy him.
When meeting that enemy, be proportionate.
HUZZAH!
No comment necessary.
Plain, simple truth.
Well said.
Later
Albert
Seriously I am proud that Israel has opened a can of whoopass on Hamas.
Now if only India's government would grow some Cahones.....
-Ayo Gorkhali
"I condemn Israel's disproportionate attack on Hamas because, so far, it has only lasted four days and I would like to see a proportionate response that terrifies Hamas for seven years, the years that have filled Sderot and neighboring towns with nightmares, death, amputations and trauma coming from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza."
Well said.
Go Israel, Go Israel, let the Mohammedans pay the price of all the hell they have given humanity. Let them feel the pain.
After all it is Allah's will, so the Israelis are doing the Mohammedans a favor and the Muslims should be thankful for that.
It is disproportionate to bomb thirty prime targets in a matter of minutes when the Palestinians fire wildly inaccurate and primitive rockets at Israeli civilians just hoping to kill some Jews and rarely succeeding.
Since Israel gets no credit for the many truckloads of medicine and food they send into an enemy's war zone, how about a different idea:
Israeli experts to train Hamas rocket launcher teams, use Israeli technology to improve aim and accuracy and that way create a more proportionate death toll. Actually, it might be even easier if the Israelis just drop the rockets on themselves: sometimes poor Palestinians get blown up by accident and we wouldn't want that to happen.
Retake Gaza, and keep it. Allow Hamas and the followers of islam move in with Fatah in the West Bank.
Unconditional surrender.
It's funny you said that. I was watching CNN (I like to keep up what other side is saying) last night. They were talking about whether or not the response was disproportionate.
This whole saga just didn't happen over the last couple of weeks. Israel waited patiently - too patient, if you ask me - to respond. And, you know, the basic right that it had was to protect its citizens. What was it supposed to do? Sit there and watch all the suicide-bombers get on a bus? Sit there and watch supposed civilians chant 'Death to Israel'? Sit there and watch an arab mow down civilians with a bulldozer? Sit there and watch qassam rockets rain down on civilians? Sit there and watch a night club get blown up with all the civilians?
What is disproportionate? Terrorism. They have been acting disproportionately
"Perhaps a proportionate response would have Gaza's leaders fearful of being killed every day for the next two years...."...from headline.
Two years? That would not be a "proportionate" response given Hamas' history. According to this Hamas Fact Sheet, Hamas has been around since 1987, so how about giving them 21 years of fearfulness, not 2 years:
http://www.adl.org/main_israel/hamas_facts.htm
Excerpt:
"Since its founding in 1987 in Gaza by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, Hamas - an Arabic acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement meaning "zeal" - has been committed to destroying the Jewish state and replacing it with an Islamic state in all of Palestine."
Origins:
"Hamas was created shortly before the December 1987 Intifada as a more militant, Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious, political and social movement founded in Egypt and dedicated to the gradual victory of Islam. Since the mid-1970s, the Brotherhood had been expanding its influence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through its vast array of social services. Hamas advocacy of an immediate holy war to liberate Palestine rendered the Brotherhood's policy of gradual Islamicization ineffectual."
Ideology:
"Hamas preaches and engages in violence and terror in order to destroy the state of Israel and replace it with an Islamic state. Its virulent hatred of Jews and Judaism is deeply rooted in the anti-Semitic writings of Muslim Brotherhood theologians."
"In August 1988, Hamas issued its Covenant laying down its ideological principles and goals. Replete with anti-Semitism, it echoes the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion and charges Jews with an international conspiracy to gain control of the world. In Hamas' worldview, Islamic precepts forbid a Jewish state in the area known as Palestine, the Jewish people have no legitimate connection to the land of Israel and Yasir Arafat is a traitor to the Islamic Palestinian cause. As the Hamas Covenant proclaims, "The land of Palestine is an Islamic trust... It is forbidden to anyone to yield or concede any part of it... Israel will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it..."
Go Israel!
I am a fan of disproportionate response
http://chromatism.net/current/images/dispresponse1.gif
"Muslim Brotherhood"....from my comment above.
Should be called Muslim Mafia.
If Olmert was offered $20,000,000+ by the Saudi's to stop the war, would it stop? I wonder. That is almost as much as the Saudi's gave to Clinton (and probably Bush). I hate to think like this but given the times in which we live, it must be considered.
An Israeli representative being interviewed on the BBC yesterday was being harried about the 'disproportionate' response.
She pointed out that since 2005 Hamas had fired about 8000 rockets at Israeli civilians. And as Israel had only dropped 200 bombs so far, there were 7800 bombs to go before the response became disproportionate...
"A war (and Hamas has repeatedly said this is war) is never won if you are disproportionately kind to someone who wants to destroy you and, failing in that, demands with indignation that you not destroy him."
Very well said.
I think that reacting 'disproportionally' is the best way to retaliate. Enough is enough. Israel has the right to beat Hamas into submission, just as Muslim terrorists around the globe are trying to beat civilized societies into submission every day.
Israel should come down on Gaza like a ton of bricks ! No more room for appeasement, no more 'Mr. Nice Guy' !
Go Israel! Now head for Iran. I bet that little monkey is shaking in his boots.
Aardvark
did she *really* say *that*?
I like that. I like it a lot.
After all: Hamas' intent in firing each of those 8000 rockets, nearly all of them 'Kassam' rockets named after a thoroughly monstrous jihad gang boss/ assassin of the 1930s, was completely, purely mass-murderous; the fact that they didn't manage to kill as many Jews as they would have liked to, is immaterial.
Now they are copping Israeli bombs. The Israelis, being a non-Muslim society, with free speech, freedom of inquiry, good at cooperation, hardworking, and endlessly inventive, naturally have much bigger and better bombs than the Muslims, and are capable of firing them much more precisely.
Tough bikkies, O Muslim jihadis of Gaza. You brought this avalanche of fire onto your own heads. A good hard dose of Bedonebyasyoudid, with interest. You forgot that in the Bible it is said of YHWH that he is 'slow to anger'...but his anger, when it does come, is a terrifying thing; and His people are like Him.
You claim the right to retaliation, in excess - but you deny the principle of reciprocity, you arrogantly believe that those whom you desire to kill or enslave as dhimmis, whom you belittle as subhuman, have no right or capacity to retaliate against YOU.
Well: they are retaliating.
A bomb in return for every rocket that has been fired into Israel by Hamas...interesting idea. There wouldn't be much left of Hamas' jihad infrastructure, or of the Hamas assassins themselves, if the IAF is using that formula...
You've got to admire Western media though - they were clambering to complain about Israel's 'disproportionate response' even before Hamas and Hizbullah. Western media - certainly know who their masters are!
All of our responses, of the entire West against Islam, are disproportionate.
If the U.N. is calling for a proportionate response, then Israel should give them exactly that; random rockets aimed at civilians.