Proportionality is important for assessing the justice of Israel’s response from a multitude of perspectives–the just war tradition, the doctrine of double effect, Utilitarianism. All ask whether benefits are sufficient to justify costs, though there are additional requirements for justice, depending on the view. You are employing some sort of a commonsense notion of self-defense, on which you can do what it takes to protect yourself from undeserved harm. But even there, you do seem to incorporate a bit of proportionality, as you say that killing the guy who’s throwing rocks would be going too far. It doesn’t seem like anybody could assess the situation in Israel and not in some way consider proportionality.

The concept of proportionality in international law.

http://opiniojuris.org/2009/01/03/dershowitz-on-israel-and-proportionality/

“The view generally expressed by such critics is that Israel is not responding in a proportional manner to Hamas. …I infer that they are using the concept in the usual moral sense…. suppose someone gets angry at my…views, hits me with a small rock and thus bruises my arm. If I break his arm, then I have acted in a disproportionate way.”

Proportionality as they are using it is not as you infer. They are referring to international law, the articles of the Geneva Conventions and Rome statutes. The principles involved in determining ‘proportionality’ is whether the incidental (i.e.- unintended) harm caused to civilians or civilian property is excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated by an attack on a military objective….International humanitarian law and the Rome Statute permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks against military objectives even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur.

Also, both Protocol I and Article 28 of the Geneva Convention (IV) make clear that the deliberate intermingling of civilians and combatants, designed to create a situation in which any attack against combatants would necessarily entail an excessive number of casualties is a flagrant breach of the Law of International Armed Conflict…. Targeting combatants who are mixed with civilians doesn’t itself constitute a breach of international law, only the specific targeting of civilians or the use of force that is disproportionate to the perceived military advantage is crime.

Anyway, your speculation about the use of proportionality and ‘eye for eye’ examples are interesting in their own right but incorrect in relation to the debate that is being waged.

Does intention play any part in this? I would rather talk about this abstractly than specifically, but the example given here is that I might act with more force than was shown to me because I feel this would help end the situation. And this tactic might work. But what about if I’ve acted with more force - and it does sort the situation out by stopping it - but I did it out of anger? Does that make a difference to the moral scenario?

JackOfHeart is posting with “stupidjewlover” as part of his/her email address. So I’m deleting all his/her posts. Previously he/she also used other names; I’ll delete those as well.

Update: Interestingly, his/her IP address is part of the same range of IP addresses of one of the anti-Semitic posters who descended here when we talked about holocaust denial.

The basic structure of the argument (outside of the many caveats) seems to be as follows:

1. It is better to stop a cycle of violence than to allow it to continue, even if the violence that must be brought to bear to break the cycle exceeds the violence present in the cycle of violence.

2. There is no way for Israel to stop this cycle of violence without a response that will cost a disproportionate number of lives, therefore their acts are justified as they have no other option and we fully accept proposition 1.

It seems to me that the utilitarian argument against 1. is pretty strong. One can tweak the numbers fairly easily until it becomes quite insane to accept the proposition that cycles of violence should always be broken.

If a “cycle of violence” causes 10 deaths a year (5 on either side, it is a purely proportional cycle of violence) how many lives would it be acceptable to destroy if it would break the cycle of violence? 100? It would take 10 years for the cycle of violence to produce that many deaths, so we would recoup our “violence investment” in only 10 years. What if it costs 1000 lives? Now we have to go 100 years in order to recoup those losses. What about 10,000? Now we have to go 1000 years and it seems the cost is clearly absurd if it wasn’t already at the 100 year level.

It is not directly related to the issue being discussed above but I came up a related thought experiment and I’m still figuring out if it has any direct implications here but I will run it briefly anyway:

There are two men. Each is armed with a Glock 9mm and a baseball bat. Both men intend to knock each other unconscious. There is a 10% chance whoever gets knocked down with a bat. The guns have a 25% chance causing death.

One of the men is trained in every form of martial arts know to man, stands 6 foot 4 and is 230 pounds of pure muscle. The other man is 5 foot 2 weighs 100 pounds and has no combat training. If they both use baseball bats then it is very clear who will win. Therefore the weakling has a very strong motivation to pull out his gun and use it, in fact if he doesn’t use it there is a 10% chance he will die.

The point is this: the strong man is SO strong proportionally that the gun has no meaning for him. He doesn’t require it. However, the baseball bat is USELESS to the weak man. He MUST use the gun to save himself as using the baseball bat is effectively equivalent to laying down on the ground.

The point is that when two combatants begin with disproportional resources then it would appear that the disparity between their capacities for damage actually justify one side (the weaker side) to use more violence than the other. Now I’m not trying to say that my though experiment here maps very well onto the conflict currently under discussion. Clearly the spastic rocket fire is not analogous to a well aimed gun. However, there may be some application.

If there were a shield to protect the Israelis then this would be unjust, HOWEVER, there is not.

If, HAMAS would only fire the rockets from a field OR thier own Buildings then there would not be the HUGE civilian deaths, only HAMAS deaths. But they do not. They send these rockets from civilian areas knowing and hoping that Israel would respond and they have.

Israel cannot win this in any way EXCEPT to make the rockets stop.

This may be a bit off-topic, but what is Hamas’s game? Hamas must have known that the rockets have no military effect, but would provoke an Israeli response and that many Palestinian civilians would die as a result. Is Hamas more interested in making Israel look like an aggressor than in protecting the lives of the people, the Palestinians, that they claim to govern? Is Hamas motivated by hatred of Israel or by a desire to promote the well-being of the Palestinians?

With regard to proportionality, international law was conceived under a totally different set of circumstances. The under-pinning of any international law is mutual compliance and an ability to enforce. When Germany began losing World War II, many of its officers became very concerned about their vulnerabilities to international laws and courts. Nuremburg proved they were right to worry. Today, we’re dealing with a terrorist government whose stated goal is the obliteration of sovereign country that is also a member of the United Nations. Hamas is an outlaw government who has nothing but contempt for the West, which includes all of Europe, Canada, the United States, japan, India, and several other nations. In fact, they routinely violate international law, knowing that their adversary is restrained by standards which are completely foreign to them. If Israel weren’t constrained, all of Gaza would be in ashes at this moment, and Tehran would be next. International laws are all about restraint. Terrorist organizations don’t even know the meaning of the word.

The best way to end any “cycle of violence” is through negotiation and compromise by both sides. This usually begins with a ceasing of hostilities and peace talks. That’s what many countries have done in the past to end or prevent imminent wars. The bottom line is that there have to be issues between the players that are capable of being negotiated. In the case of Hamas, it is fairly clear that no compromise, concession or unilateral withdrawal of Israeli forces will guarantee an end to this conflict. Hamas may agree to a cease-fire and discontinue rocket attacks for a short time, but in the lull it will re-arm itself with Iran’s help and re-constitute destroyed tunnels and bunkers. It will be in a constant state of preparation for the next conflict, and it will do whatever it can to foment an incident that provokes it. This discussion of proportionality is interesting, but only in the abstract. This is simply a case of one country wanting to stop incessant missile attacks, with the other country wanting its neighbor wiped off the face of the Earth at any cost. The only way to end the cycle of violence with this kind of adversary is a disproportional response. Anything short of that simply ensures a repeat of the whole scenario.

This is what Nizar Rayan, the recently killed Hamas leader in Gaza, said in an interview BEFORE the beginning of this recent conflict: “The only reason to have a hudna (cease-fire) is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don’t need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel. There is no chance that true Islam would ever allow a Jewish state to survive in the Muslim Middle East. Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God. … You (Jews) are murderers of the prophets and you have closed your ears to the Messenger of Allah. Jews tried to kill the Prophet, peace be unto him. All throughout history, you have stood in opposition to the word of God.”

How do you negotiate any kind of peace with an adversary like Rayan? It’s not possible.

“This discussion of proportionality is interesting, but only in the abstract.”

I don’t think so. Let us assume that you are correct in your characterization of events. Let us assume that the cycle of violence would go forever and ever and ever because one side is completely beyond reason and will never settle for anything less than the obliteration of the other side. Provided that the “crazy” side can be contained inside a reasonable cycle of violence, i.e. a relatively small number of deaths per year, the utilitarian argument detailed above would seem to hold, i.e. it can still be asked: is there a threshold at which the cost (in innocent human lives) of ending the cycle of violence exceeds the benefit of ending the cycle of violence. This may be an “abstract” question, but if the argument functions at the abstract (logical) level and there is sufficient correspondence between the abstract layer and the concrete instatiation of the problem then the logic will hold. That is the whole reason to think about these things in the abstract in the first place. One is looking for general principles and then applying those rational principles to the situations at hand.

My sympathies are with civilans on both sides. Hamas should definitely stop sending rockets into Israel. But they are suicidal fantacis. Can Israel do what Americans did in Falujah in Iraq? Let the civilans flee to Egypt, to West Bank, or somewhere within Israel on a temporary basis, in a controlled manner and without any arms. Then go in and confront the Hamas and take it out. Then let the civilans go back and compensate them for their trouble. Once Hamas is elminated, may be Fatah may fill the void.

FAUST, against my better judgment, I’ve just responded to you on the ‘Rockets” site. I am sufficiently restrained, however, to not jump into another intellectual quagmire here, so having read the various contributions, I’m taking refuge in a cup of coffee. Best wishes with your self-inflicted flagellations..

I know Israel end game. Is to make Gaza inhabitable for its citizens, to leave or relocate on the Egyptian side of the border, or in the West Bank. That probably will never happened. Israel will stop the rockets been launched from Gaza into what I call Israel, momentarily. In the mean time Israel will inflict as much damages to the Palestinians. Did Israel built its military with the help of the United States to be prepare for that conflict, or we are been saved a big surprise?. That big conflict is yet to come. I don’t believe that few rockets, that most of them missed their targets, will bring a conflict with that magnitute. I wonder who Israel try to pull into the conflict, Egypt, they have problem of their own. Syria, I doubt it, they don’t even want the golan heights. Iran, yes Iran will be a good contender,more powerfull than the Palestinians, they have or about to have a nuke. That I would call a propotional conflict.

Humpty Dumpty would be proud to read what’s being argued re this topic. So many (when it comes to what words mean) are adopting the philosophy Nr Dumpty enunciated in “Alice in Wonderland.” As they might say in the classics, since he did fall of that wall, “Humpty is dead! Long live Humpty!”

With apologies to Lewis?

You’ve probably seen it, but there was a good article in New Scientist in May about the way the brain works (involving prediction):
http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/040ns_005.htm

The point that you haven’t considered is the question of whether any “limited” military action by Israel, short of killing a large proportion of the Palestinian, will stop the rockets.

To take your analogy, suppose a small proportion of a large crowd are throwing rocks at you, and you are equipped with a pistol, there is only any point in firing at the crowd if you are certain it will stop the rocks.

Exactly what you could / should do is a good question.

JohnR108 said: “This is what Nizar Rayan, the recently killed Hamas leader in Gaza, said “There is no chance that true Islam would ever allow a Jewish state to survive in the Muslim Middle East.” [...] How do you negotiate any kind of peace with an adversary like Rayan?”

I am told by one who probably knows these things that the Koran states that once defeated, Israel will not return. Presumably this person is interpreting that passage in a literal sense. If you are to “negotiate peace” with such a person, I would suggest addressing his religious concepts with some kind of sensitivity, particularly as an alternative to shooting on sight.

Your other contributors seem rarely to question the “us and them” identifications of the participants, which might change the logic of the argument. I have to say, I find the mass killings of “suspected terrorists” etc distressing - reminiscent of Vietnam.

Obama fails Character Test No. 1 by not speaking out against the killing of innocent civilians including children by Israeli forces, and yes Hamas forces too.

How many more tests will this ‘becaon of hope’ fail?

I will develop the last point in my previous post in a more logical way. To be “proportionate” requires a comparison of two quantities, roughly speaking “us” and “them”. If we stop seeing the personal other exclusively in these categories, a situation can heal itself. In religious terms, this goes by the name of forgiveness, loving your enemy. Good idea?

Stephen: Yes good idea, but unfortunately it’s asking a lot. Particularly in this case. Us and Them does exist and arguably it always will as long as people can be categorised in the many ways in which they can.

A ‘realpolitk’ rather than idealistic solution will be the ultimate answer adn it will take a lng tiem methinks. Look at the Northern Ireland situation ( I know, I know it is different, but some valid analogy can be drawn) for hope though.

Richard, I don’t disagree, but as this is a philosophical thread, I might say that, speaking fro a Hegelian standpoint, I reject the dualism or real and ideal. The ideal is just the real seen from a broader perspective, but it still fits into lived experience. Maybe the universal that brings people together was just easier to come by in Northern Ireland - the walls weren’t as high, realistically speaking.

.

Must we bring Hegel into it Stephen? That ‘that clumsy and nauseating charlatan, that pernicious person, who completely disorganised and ruined the minds of a whole generation’ as Schopenhauer put it (Joke)

I seriously doubt that NI problem was resolved ‘the universal that brings people together’, sorry I cannot buy that. What is that anyway? And also I’m not convinced that the walls weren’t as high.

The starting point in NI was that the republicans conceived themselves as part of the “universal class” of Ireland and the unionists part of the “universal class” of the UK. Obviously these two exclusive claims led to conflict. The new “universal that brought them together” would be something like a combined sense of N Irish identity, perhaps with secular and religious components.

This may or may not persuade you that the old idealist terminology has something to contribute here, despite its admitted obscurity. Could some new identity grow up in the Middle East? It’s hard to say. As you say, the NI example shows it is worth aiming for.

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Michael,

You said “Perhaps there is a way for Israel to stop the rockets without killing and injuring a disproportionate number of people. If so, that would be the morally preferable approach. Unfortunately, Israel seems left with few options.”

Yeah, if they back off out of Palestine, I guarantee the rockets will stop. The whole thing started with the ideology of Zionism about a hundred years ago. Otherwise the Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace for hundreds of years. In fact, the orthodox Jews condemn Zionism and are against the state of Israel in the first place. Don’t take my word for it. Read this small article.

http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/zionism/ZionistState/elections.cfm

And to add to this, Zionists are made up of people of Jewish and also non-Jewish descent including Christians and Muslims. This is all political and there is no morality in any of this from the Zionists’ side.

So what’s the morally right thing to do, get out of Palestine and give them their land back. But that also is most likely not possible to do anymore. There is so much hate that unless every single person on both sides is educated on the truth, there will not be peace. Also, even if the Zionists back off now, that’s a huge defeat of their ego and you know people of power cannot let that happen.

In order to do what is morally right, you have to have a sincere conscience. And that is one thing that is missing in the Zionists.