In ginning up their accusations of “genocide,” Israel’s critics often claim that Israel’s response to October 7 lacks “proportionality.” Proportionality, though, is a principle of war that only seems to matter if Israel is a combatant. No matter how vicious, depraved, or menacing its attackers may be, Israel is expected to respond only with some unspecified “proportional” response and then leave its attackers to regroup and rearm for further attacks on Israeli civilians. ...
On October 7, Hamas launched an unprovoked sneak attack on Israel, killing perhaps 1,400 people—including some of the hostages. By Hamas’s numbers, Israel’s retaliation has killed 37,500 Gazans—27 Gazans killed for every Israeli killed in the initial attack (but not including IDF forces killed since then). Now consider a parallel situation. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched an unprovoked sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403 Americans. Retaliation by America and its allies resulted in the deaths of perhaps 3,000,000 Japanese citizens—1,248 Japanese killed for every American killed at Pearl Harbor. By this crude measure, then, America’s post-December 7 response was 46 times as “disproportionate” as Israel’s post-October 7 response. Even more telling, America contributed mightily to millions of German deaths, even though Nazi Germany had not even attacked the U.S. when America declared war.
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