I never understood the criticisms of Israel for its having responded to Gazan rocket attacks "disproportionately." Of course it didn't. Hamas was shooting smallish rockets into civilian communities. If Israel had responded "proportionally", they would have randomly fired smallish rockets back into Gaza. But of course their goal was to destroy all or most of the rocket sites and discourage Gazans from continuing their rocket attacks. Given that the number of rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza seems to have diminished dramatically, it looks as if this strategy of "disproportionate" response was successful.
But step back and consider other "disproportional" responses. How many Afghan and Pakistani civilians have been killed as a result of the allied attacks on the Taliban and Al Qaeda? How many Iraqi civilians were killed as a result of the US incursion into Iraq?
Another clear example is the NATO attacks during the Kosovo war. From Martin Sherman (h/t Eva):
The issue of proportionality, or rather the alleged lack thereof, has been the basis the fierce condemnation of Israel's conduct in its military operations in Gaza because the number of Palestinians casualties far outweighs that of Israeli ones. The conduct of military operations in Kosovo by many of Israel's present detractors, however, shows that this was never a consideration or constraint to which they felt bound. Quite the contrary, the very modus operandi they adopted such as high altitude bombing, demonstrates that they deliberately aspired to disproportionality. As noted, this ensured an almost zero casualty rate among their own combatants but inevitably resulted in less accurate targeting of alleged military objectives on the ground, exposing a virtually defenseless civilian population to far greater danger and far higher casualties.The blatant hypocrisy of those who criticize Israel for its lack of proportionality reflects a bias against Israel that smacks of anti-Semitism. I see no other reasonable interpretation.
