The Greatest Disproportionate Response in History: The Battle of Thermopylae - and it was a good thing.
Photo Credit: ancientgreekbattles.net

Many Americans assume that missiles being lobbed into Israel from Gaza is what provoked Israel to retaliate against Hamas this summer. That is not the case - Hamas fires missiles into Israel all the time (1): there were 36 in 2013, and 85 in the first 4 months of this year. But no innocent Gazans were being killed despite these provocations. Things were pretty quiet in Gaza this year until early June.

Then on 12 June 2014, three Israeli teenagers, hitchhiking to their homes in the West Bank, were kidnapped and then killed. In response, Israel arrested almost all of Hamas' West Bank leaders which led to a massive increase of rocket attacks into Israel which led to an Israeli air raid on Gaza on the night of 6 July which killed seven Hamas militants, leading to more missiles from Gaza which then led to Israeli ground forces moving into Gaza ten days later.

If Hamas had fired only one rocket into Israel and Israel responded by firing back at the launch site, then perhaps only one or two Gazan militants might have died. But there wasn't wasn't just one missile launch, there were thousands. What was Israel supposed to do, only take out the launchers without injuring anyone with their special pin-point-detroys-only-launchers-but-not-civilians weapon?

What do the UN and other Jew-haters want? Israel dropped warning leaflets with diagrams and instructions where it was safe to go, sent text messages, dropped fake bombs beforehand, etc. Should the IDF have personally escorted innocent civilians out of launch areas in fancy limousines?

As for the paucity of Israelis killed. Again, what should Israel have done, turned off its Iron Dome air defense system, just so the number of Israelis killed would match those of Palestinians? What is war supposed to be today, a game of checkers where each opponent takes one and only move at a time?

There is nothing as absurd and ridiculous as Disproportionate Response when applied to war. For thousands of years wars have been fought and it turns out many times that one side loses more than the other side. You do not see historians whining and condemning the disproportionate response in the following battles: the Battle of Marathon, 490 B.C. 190 Greeks were killed against 6,400 of the enemy; the Battle of Platae, 479 B.C. 1,360 Greeks killed against 257,000 of the enemy; the Battle of Issus, 333 B.C. 450 Macedonians were killed against 100,000 of the enemy.

Disproportionate Response is a Good Thing

Disproportionate responses may even help end wars sooner. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were disproportionate responses that helped end the War in the Pacific saving millions of lives, both of Japanese and the Allied Forces.

It was lack of disproportionate responses that kept the bloodiest war in American history going on and on: the Civil War, in which almost equal numbers of combatants were killed. Even at the battle of Gettysburg, where we had the largest number of casualties of the entire war, there were an even number of dead with 23,000 each. Had the Union forces mercilessly decimated the Confederate Army in the beginning months of the war, it could perhaps have led to an early surrender and mercifully saved hundreds of thousands of lives, especially in the South.

The Anti-Israel Bias

So please, spare me the bogus accusations of "Disproportionate Response," especially since they are only used against Israel.

When Pakistani Muslims killed millions of people during the Bangladesh Liberation War and lost only 8,000 of their own troops you did not hear a peep from the UN or from the whining antisemites of Europe about Pakistan's "Disproportionate Response."

In 1982, the Muslim Brotherhood ambushed and killed a handful of Syrian soldiers who were searching for Islamists in the city of Hama. In response, the Syrian army bulldozed and bombed the entire town killing tens of thousands. Did you read about the UN and Europeans screaming about "Disproportionate Response!!!" Let me save you the trouble of googling the answer: No.

Disproportionate Response only applies when Jews, in self-defense, try to stop missiles from landing on their schools, hospitals, and homes. What do you hear when Hamas launches thousands of rockets into Israeli civilian areas because a handful of their militants got killed? Are you waiting for the answer? Keep waiting.