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On October 7th, 2023 – a date that will live in infamy – an army of bloodthirsty Hamas jihadists swarmed into Israel and laid waste to a reported 1400 innocent, unarmed civilians including women, children, the disabled, and old people, committing war crimes of a sickening nature that historian Victor Davis Hanson has labeled “pre-civilizational.”
In response to the terror assault, the Jewish state justifiably declared war on Hamas, with Israeli leader Bibi Netanyahu vowing that every single member of the terror organization is now a dead man walking. And right on cue, the mainstream (read: left-wing) media, left-wing politicians, and globalist institutions like the farcical United Nations Security Council that are packed with enemies of the Western world, demanded that Israel exhibit “restraint” in its response and refrain from “disproportionate violence.”
This curious notion of “proportionate response” comes up every single time Israel is hit with a terror attack. Has a single one of the aforementioned talking heads or politicos or global entities ever called for Hamas terrorists to show “restraint”?
What retaliation is “proportionate” to the burning alive of families, the gang rape of female prisoners, the beheading of babies and toddlers, the torture of old people, and the kidnapping of hundreds more who live in terror that their beheading will be live-streamed on the internet? What would the anti-Israel Left consider an acceptably “proportionate” response to those atrocities? Would they be satisfied if the Israeli Defense Force limited itself to a surprise invasion of Gaza, burning Palestinian families alive, raping Palestinian women, beheading Palestinian infants, torturing Palestinian grandmothers, and kidnapping hundreds of Palestinians? Because technically, that would be proportionate.
Of course not. The same Western leftists who celebrated the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th would have apoplectic fits of outrage if Israel ever perpetrated a single one of these war crimes. The revulsion and shock these hypocrites should have felt over Israel’s victims are reserved only for the “oppressed” so-called Palestinians. Let’s be real: the only response to Hamas terrorism which the Left considers appropriate for Israel is for the Jewish state to sit on its hands and submit to its own extermination.
Wednesday on MSNBC’s The Last Word, to name the most up-to-date example, host propagandist Lawrence O’Donnell stated that the Israeli government in the 21st century “seems to have deliberately and publicly abandoned the notion of proportionate response” and is using a response that is “in effect, disproportionate,” by taking an approach towards Hamas that “we will hit you even harder than you’d ever expect.”
During an interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof who criticized Israel’s military response to the October 7th attack, O’Donnell stated, “Nick, the phrase that used to frame these events in the 20th century was proportionate response. Whether it be the United States, whether it would be Israel responding to some kind of attack, the response was supposed to be, in theory, proportionate.”
According to whom? Since when is a response to sneak attacks or terrorism “supposed to be” proportionate? According to what “theory”? “Proportionate response” has never been an international wartime agreement or standard, 20th century or otherwise. No one during WWII ever cautioned the Allies to limit their response to Pearl Harbor or to other Axis aggression “proportionately.”
In wartime, just as in sports, the only reasonable expectation is that each combatant is fighting to win, to batter the enemy so hard that they stop fighting and surrender, or die. Did anyone ever suggest to Mike Tyson that he pull his punches in a “proportionate response” to his opponent? Why on earth would a combatant hit back only hard enough to allow his opponent or enemy to keep fighting?
This notion of “proportionate response” is entirely bogus. It is nothing more than a fake moral demand from Israel’s left-wing enemies to prevent her from defending herself. Only Israel is expected to respond “proportionately” to ongoing terror attacks from an organization whose commitment to eradicating the Jewish state is enshrined in its own charter.
“The 21st-century Israeli government seems to have deliberately and publicly abandoned the notion of proportionate response, into, in effect, disproportionate, saying we will hit you even harder than you’d ever expect,” O’Donnell continued. “This seems to be the deliberate framing that they want.”
Yes, it is the deliberate framing Israel wants, and why shouldn’t it be? Especially in the wake of the 9/11-level October 7th attack on Israel, Israel is justified in destroying Hamas to the last man, for the good not only of the civilized world but of the Palestinians themselves, whom Hamas exploits as cannon fodder. It is a terror organization that deliberately shields itself behind Palestinian non-combatants and embeds its headquarters and weapons caches in hospitals and schools precisely for the purpose of drawing Israel into the narrative trap of attacking civilian targets.
The IDF, for its part, makes a greater effort than any fighting force in history to avoid civilian casualties. This is never acknowledged or appreciated by the pompous antisemites of the media or the United Nations, who shrug off any number of Israeli casualties but who treat a single Palestinian death as a tragedy of epic proportions.
There is no negotiating with or appeasing Hamas. Ghazi Hamad of the Hamas political bureau said on October 24 on Lebanese TV that Hamas is prepared to repeat the October 7th “Al-Aqsa Flood” Operation over and over again until Israel is destroyed. He added that Palestinians are willing to pay any price because they are “proud to sacrifice martyrs,” and “everything we do is justified.” What is the proportionate response to such relentless evil, to an entity so devoted to your annihilation that they will sacrifice any number of their own people to carry it out?
If you are Israel, the only proportionate response the world finds acceptable is to sit back and welcome your own slaughter. For her sake and for the sake of the civilized world, Israel must ignore these subversive demands and exterminate her jihadist enemies once and for all.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
Exterminating the cowards of Islamic Hamas is a proportionate response.
That too was going to be my response.
Namely, since Hamas loudly announces they wish to destroy Israel and kill every single Jew, give them a mirror and destroy and kill every single one of them. Besides, they are unable to learn from history. They could have improved and made something of themselves and of Gaza. But they decided of their own free will to kill Jews. So, remove all of them from this earth.
Proportionate response is a fake military and legal notion applied only to Israel
Thanks, I suspect the leftists slipped the concept of “proportionate response” in there somewhere as a false premise. I don’t recall “proportionate response” as part of the international laws of war when I read about it some decades ago. I tried to find out where it came from recently, the closest I came was some vague reference from 1906 that might be stretched into relating to “proportionate response”.
Well, I tried looking it up again just now,and it started to give me a headache so I stopped. Apparently there are all kinds of lawyers arguments for it applying to the international laws of war.
Armchair weenies in The Hague like to collect good salaries while they pretend to be relevant. The truth is there is no such thing as international law unless you have some sovereign state (Britain, United States) with sufficient power to both dream it up and enforce it. Once globalists and woke tyrants ruin the West, the only world “leaders” remaining are tyrannical thugs—China, Russia, Iran. Good luck with that.
Indeed. A few years ago, an international court ruled against China in one of its claims to South China Sea territory. China rejected the court’s judgement and continues to do as it pleases. OK, who’s going to enforce said judgement? So much for “international law”.
So much for ANY law. Law is just noise without a gun to back it up as your China example indicates.
The Islamofascists call for the genocide of all Jews in the world- proportional would be in their extermination period. Anything less is not a proportional response
My response to an attack like this upon my family, friends or neighbors would be to seek out and destroy the killers and not care about what anyone thinks about it.
Vengeance is the only way to deal with a cancer.
What about proportional response from the mainstream news media? Beheading Jewish babies and cooking one in an oven while the mother is forced to watch provoke less outcry from The New York Times than a Hamas terrorist stubbing his toe, or a errant Qassam rocket hitting a hospital in Gaza, an act they blamed (and Rashida Tlaib continues to blame) Israel for.
Tlaib is a despicable pig. She should be removed from the House and expelled from America. That also includes her pig pal Omar and the idiot Bush. They do not merit citizenship in America.
Why isn’t she being investigated for giving aid to a terrorist organization. I saw a report where she is deeply involved in groups that promote and provide aid to Hamas. If I remember correctly, there were several people jailed for their participation in that “Holyland” thing.in Florida. The report stated she is involved in the same type of criminal activity.
It didn’t even hit the hospital, it hit the parking lot. A small corner of the parking lot.
Exactly 110 years ago… the beginning of the “conflict” with an anti-Semitic poem by Islamist in the racist Arab ‘Falastin’
1913 – Nov 8: Sheikh Suleiman al-Taji al-Faouqi [سليمان التاجي] (1882-1858) pens a vile hate poem, combining old anti-Semitic stereotypes with Islamic motifs in the influential ‘Falastin’ [فلسطين] newspaper.
Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples. (2021). Germany: Berghahn Books, p. 270.
Mandel, N. J. (1976). The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I. United Kingdom: University of California Press, p. 175.
Morris, B. (1999). Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. United Kingdom: Knopf, p. 65.
Benny Morris, The War on History, ”Jewish Review of Books”, Apr 6, 2020.
Gilbert, M. (2010). In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands. United Kingdom: Yale University Press, ch. 9.
Wistrich, R. S. (2010). A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. United Kingdom: Random House Publishing Group, chapter 21
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In 1914-15, periodical ‘Falastin’ was banned for its anti-Jewish racism, hatred by Ottoman authorities.
Janrense Boonstra, “Antisemitism, a History Portrayed”, SDU, Anne Frank Foundation,’ 1989, p. 101.
Elie Kedourie, Sylvia G. Haim: ‘Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel’ (RLE Israel and Palestine), Taylor & Francis, 2015. p. 8 *
In 1920 it was reinstated by the British and at the time 1929-1930 – it worked with Haj Amin al-Husseini to incite the Arabs. It also promoted the forgery “Protocols.”
* 1920 riot.
* 1921 pogrom.
* 1929 Hebron massacre (the Arab animalistic barbarian onslaught on non-Zionist Jews
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So much for “occupation” etc.
1406 BC: God tells Joshua to cross the Jordan and to exterminate all who live between the river and the sea.
This was God’s judgement upon the wrongdoings of the Canaanites, which seem to have included burning children alive, bestiality and a variety of forms of incest, if the Canaanite behaviours that Israel is urged not to imitate in Lev 18 are anything to go by.. Come to think of it, Hamas burns children alive too, so maybe Israel has a precedent for stepping up the campaign against them
I was disappointed to see where Ritter–whose analysis, like that of Douglas Macgregor, really needs to be a part of the general discussion–in an emotional moment called Israelis mass murderers. Don’t think that helps anything, but there are obviously lots of people who agree with him.
Unless I am misreading Col. Macgregor, he has not been in favor of Israel’s strategy towards Gaza, referring to their decision as more “emoting” than thinking it through. Nor is he a fan of Bibi, in my view.
While the Colonel is pro-Israel, his concerns lay with the killing of palestinian civilians, world-wide dissention leading to eventual destruction of the state of Israel.
As much as I respect his take (and I learn so much listening to him), I part ways with his view of Israel’s handling of the war against Hamas.
He has suggested some kind of peace brokering for lack of a better term.
I think this interview was on a Dr. Steve Turley video.
Tell me I’m misinterpreting Col. Macgregor?
In the “Wild and Wooly West” wanted posters were issued for those bandits who robbed banks and trains or murdered someone. They often stated “Dead or Alive”. Israel has informally issued such posters against the members of Hamas who murdered innocent people. There is no monetary reward but they are “Wanted – Dead or Alive”. The choice is theirs.
What exactly is the “proportionate response” to Hamas gang rape? Proportionate response is a concept dreamed up by armchair weenies.
I would say bomb all of Gaza into rubble, soak every inch of what is left in bacon fat, then bulldoze the rubble into a barrier along the border with Egypt.
Good fences would make good neighbors in that case; the peace between Egypt and Israel would hold up nicely.
What is proportionate when someone is trying to kill you and destroy your Nation?
ANNIHILATION and total liquidation of Hamas, Hezobollah and the Iranian political regime is THE only proportional response. And stop calling the Palestinians. There is no such entity of a Palestinian. That was a name given to a “region” by the Roman Empire which Jews and others once occupied. The people of Gaza are Philistines.
Not even Philistines. They’re just common Arabs, most originating in Jordan and Egypt. Their antecedents went to Israel in the 1920’s and ’30’s after the Jews had created agriculture and industry for them to steal from.
Ritter was the guy who knew there was WMD before he changed his mind and decided there wasn’t. I would also point out that WMD was found in Iraq. Sorry, there just isn’t any other way to say it. Ritter is a Mouth for sale like the rest of the lyin’ sacks out there.
True, for sure.
Ritter is only an expert in his own mind and in the minds of sheeple.
There was a multinational firm working around the globe that retained a contractor to protect the firm’s employees against kidnapping and terror. The contractor would rescue the employee, paying ransom if that were the most effective means of release. Then the contractor would recover the ransom and eradicate the offenders, their colleagues, their friends, their contacts, and their families. It was a very effective deterrent. Word spreads in the criminal community.
Some of the top leaders of Hamas are residing in Qatar like Haniyeh. They must also be eradicated!! I don’t know how that will be done but the leaders of Israel are very smart and will do it!! Great article!! Proportionate response does not apply here.
Anyone who thinks that Israel should be making a more “proportionate” response is in fact asking the IDF to show no mercy.. If the present campaign is “disproportionate” then it must be erring on the side of leniency.
Other credible reports indicate Israel has 90 nukes and 400,000 soldiers on the line.
The exact sum is not too important. Even 45 nukes are sufficient to remove the mullahs in Iran, the leaders in Pakistan, the liar in Turkey.
Betcha 5 ten kiloton air bursts would do it when they are the most vulnerable. But the Persians themselves don’t deserve that so better to let the Israelis take them out in a non-nuclear fashion.
A public and retired US Army Colonel recently advised that between 70% and 80% of the American military is overweight and out of shape. Did you notice the fat Mark Milley and the obese Sec of Def Austin are not exactly in prime condition? Have you noticed the Red Chinese Military generals. Among several of them there appears to not be one pound of fat. They appear very serious and militaristic. American generals are political animals dreaming of working for the military suppliers after their cushy retirements.
Generals have always been political animals, that is how they got to be generals.
Ain’t that the truth! I get the feeling our military leaders are depending more on the nuclear arsenal than any other sectors. A fat soldier can push “the button” so what’s the problem? It’s almost as if the rest of the military is only there to engage in local conflicts involving our “strategic allies” which never lead to permanent solutions but keep the military/industrial complex fat and happy.
A ““proportionate response” would be to engulf Gaza in a shiny sea of green Trinitite … along with Tehran.
Kill them before they kill you
20 years too late for that.
However, the Israelis can catch up now.
Turnabout is Fair Play. Proverbs 22:8. He who sews wickedness reaps trouble, and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.
Ethnic cleansing is always the objective of people who want to rob, plunder, murder, and seize the land. Look at Russia and Vladimere Putin, and Hamas. Their goals are the same.
The Great Shaking. Hebrews 12:26 At the End of the Age, God has warned that He will shake the earth and the heavens, that everything will be changed as the great shaking occurs. Everything offensive thing that has not been established by God will be shaken lose and removed from its place. Every nation will be shaken…..not one will escape this momentous shaking.
You overlook the obvious. It has nothing to do with the number of nukes or men at arms. Israel has only one Ally, and that Ally has borne her for several millennia. He might let her lose this war and lose national sovereignty for a while again, but He will never let Israel — the seed of Jacob — die. It will live forever. He keeps His promises.
Am yisroel chai!
muslims love death , oblige them !! its a win win .
As I posted on another article here (https://www.frontpagemag.com/yusuf-islams-killer-performance) on the subject of disproportional response:
Besides the absurdity of expecting “proportional response” to an attack, this statement is just false. I live in Israel, and for the past month, Hamas has been raining down missiles with explosives on densely populated civilian areas, including Tel Aviv. Only because of a combination of very expensive Israeli anti-missile defense and plain miracles has there not been a huge death toll from these continuing attacks.
I’ll add to that the fact that the original attack was anything but limited or self-limiting. The only reason that Hamas attackers ‘only’ killed about 1400 Israelis (besides wounding thousands more) on Oct. 7 and afterwards was that the IDF eventually did show up and kill most of them and chase the rest back to Gaza. The death toll could have been many times what it was. As others have mentioned here, ‘proportionality’ in this case is total war.
(That said, I am far from being convinced that the path of action chosen by Israel’s current ‘leaders’ is wise or practical. Why we should trust the same people who were responsible for the failure of defense on Oct. 7 to handle an offensive campaign without a clear achievable goal is beyond my comprehension.)
As to Hamas and its supporters in Gaza utilize the Roman “Carthago delenda est” method as the Israeli proportionate response to October 7th. Either that or there will be more such atrocities as Hamas keeps telling the world.
Defund the United Nations and we have defunded the Terrorists
Biden and Blinken have backtracked on their pledges of unwavering commitment to Israel’s security by calling for a so called “humanitarian pause” in the Israel-Hamas war, which is another name for “ceasefire.”
The More accurate term would be “Help Hamas Hiatus.”
Anyone who is really concenred about humanitarianism should be insisting that instead Hamas and Islamic Jihad should immediately release all their hostages, Period.
We knew they would.
We know they hate Israel.
How long will it be before the all the weaponry they’re sending to the Mediterranean is pointed at the Jews?
You know it’s just a matter of time.
The ‘proportional’ response to terrorism is to slaughter every damned terrorist.