The Redhunter

"You cannot invent new kinds of proportionalities. I've never heard that the threat is supposed to be proportional to the response," he said. "Proportionality is there in the law. The law has been made through generations of experience on the battlefield. If you kill more civilians than military personnel, one should not attack," he said.

Egeland reiterated his condemnations of Hizbullah's tactics. "Armed men should not cowardly hide among civilians. It will inflict civilians casualties," he said, calling Hizbullah's cross-border kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers "a mega-catastrophe."

But, he stressed, "Civilians must be protected, and when there are many more dead children than armed men, something is fundamentally wrong, not only with how the armed men behave and where they seek hiding, but also in the response."

From what I can tell, Egeland is saying that because not as many Israeli civilians have died, Israel should not be responding as vigorously. Or that they're killing too many Lebanese civilians.

Yes it should "stop on both sides." But here's what it comes down to: You go to Israel and ask, "what would it take for you to stop?" The Israeli spokesperson would say "Hezbollah has to stop attacking us." Go to Hezbollah and ask the same question, and the response you'll get is "Israel must cease to exist and we're going to fight it until we win." The only way to reconcile these differences is for one or the other to be destroyed.

Speaking of rockets, one fired by Hezbollah hit the top floor of a hospital in he Israeli border town of Nahariya earlier today. Fortunately no one was killed. Think many people will trip overthemselves in a rush to condemn Hezbollah?

The same article goes on to say that Hezbollah has fired a "new kind of rocket, which landed deeper inside Israel than hundreds of other strikes in 17 days of fighting." But according to Egeland, Israel is supposed to sit there and take it, becasue they cannot respond proportionally.

Proportionality

The proportionality is part of just war theory, something developed in the West by Christian thinkers which I think is a pretty good guide to actions before and during war. I wrote extensively about it last year, and you can find all of my posts on it here.

From the section on proportionality

"The principle of proportionality with regards to conduct in war "deals not with a whole war but with a single military action in that war. The criterion requires that the good to be achieved by the action be proportionate to the damage done. Again, this means values preserved compared with values sacrificed, not a single cost-accounting of lives and dollars."

and

In summary, then, the jus ad bellum criterion of proportion says one mustn't go to war unless the values to be preserved by the war exceeded the values to be sacrificed. Within the war, the jus in bello criterion of proportion says that when one takes action against enemy military units or installations, the values sacrificed in the attack must not exceeded the values that would be threatened by the continued existence of the target.

The application, of course, is where it get's tricky. Let's take a quick look at a few things that are going on.

1) Hezbollah rockets have turned Israel's third largest city, Haifa (pop 280,000) into a ghost town. Ditto for the border along Lebanon.

2)By dropping leaflets, Israel is warning residents who live near Hezbollah sanctuaties to evacuate.

3) Israel is using precision weapons when necessary. No these do not prevent all civilian casualties, but they do mimimize them

4) Just War Theory does not allow sanctuaries. It is impermissable to hide behind civilians and then scream foul when they are killed.

5) The number of civilians killed so far is far less than in previous wars.

6) The doctrine of proportionality does not contain a "one to one" rule. That is not how it works.

7) If Israel had done nothing, or stops short of destroying Hezbollah and accepts a ceasefire under the auspices of the UN, within a short time Hezbollah will rearm itself with more and longer-range missiles. They will return to firing them, this time deeper into Israel. Israeli civilians will be killed. At some point Israel will say "enough is enough" and respond, but this time Hezbollah will be even stronger, so the fighting harder, thus more civilians killed. It is therefore better to suffer some casualties now than more casualties later.

Creating "a Generation of Hatred"?

The idea that all Israel is doing is creating "a generation of hatred" is the strangest of all. The Arabs have hated Israel since 1948. Even before the state of Israel was created, the Jews and Muslims in the area did not always get along. Perhaps a few Lebanese who didn't mind Israel will now be turned against it, but even that doesn't go very far.

Here's the point; suppose that is was true that most Lebanese hate Hezbollah and want them gone. Suppose further that they are sympathetic to Israel, or at least don't hate it (ok, a lot of supposing, but hear me out). Wouldn't they want Israel to destroy Hezbollah even if it cost civilian lives?

The website of the D-Day Museum says that during the Battle for Normandy, "between 15,000 and 20,000 French civilians were killed, mainly as a result of Allied bombing", which fits with what a tour guide told me when I was over there some years ago. Yet the French were and are today thankful that we freed them (Yes they are. Despite policy differences since then, they do appreciate that we liberated them from the Nazis).

Any deaths are a tragedy. The question is whether it is better to suffer fewer now or more later. And I think the answer to that question is obvious.