Proportionality of Response

It is always preferable that reasonable beings interact reasonably. But what happens when reason absents itself and is overtaken by passion? Reason is the use of the cerebral function to recognize a dilemma and weigh its possibilities and to analyze various responses leading to a solution. Emotions have little to do with reason; they are representative of primal, visceral reactions, sans intelligent introspection.

There are many who profess that reason dictates that we turn the other cheek. Those who do so too often end up with two bruised cheeks and no settlement to show for it. Other than, perhaps, the satisfaction that a masochist enjoys in self-abnegation toward a brutal aggressor, and then we're talking about a pathological psychosis of victimhood. Most individuals react to brutal aggression by meting out their own form of self-protective aggression.

If someone is assaulted time and again, and finally decides they will no longer submit to such unlooked-for attention, their fury may be seen to be disproportional to those on the receiving end of such a response to attacks. Bullies usually shrink back in fear for their safety at the response which their aggression may have elicited from those sufficiently backed into a corner to actively assert their human rights.

Restraint is best served on light occasions, when thuggish adversaries' actions can be temporarily overlooked in polite society. When a country's, or a nation's very existence is threatened, it has an imperative to itself to struggle to survive at any cost. Humans have been imprinted by nature to conduct that struggle for survival, as have all living entities.

There are wars of annihilation, such as those conducted by the Rwandan Hutus against the Tutsi, the government of Somalia against Darfurians, Nazi Germany's sidebar war against Jews, and there are what are considered to be 'just' wars, where countries must meet the challenge of an oncoming army of conquest, or where countries intervene to halt atrocities against others.

It can be seen as 'just' for a country to engage in battle against another one whose purpose in attacking it is to gain sovereignty over it. Or to destroy the country and its people, much as North Korea now mutters is its intention over South Korea. Or the Gulf States looking on with great apprehension at the intentions of Islamist nuclear-aspiring Iran.

No less can be said for a country like Israel which has, over the entire course of its 60-year existence faced the reality of one wave of Arab or Islamist attack on it, after another. Rising each time with its own equally-determined defense to its right of existence. Israel aspires to continue existing as a sovereign state offering haven to Jews.

It intends to do so despite the most ambitiously bitter attempts of Islamist guerrilla militias who have developed a modus operandi that has them concealing themselves in the midst of crowded civilian populations, inviting violent military response to their violent militant assaults against Israel's existence. The world looks on with concern at the never-ending stale-mate.

Its concern is that Israel battles too hard for its right to exist. That it must spare innocent lives in the prosecution of its defence is always uppermost in the minds of the Israeli government, its people and its military. A sentiment not shared by those whose assaults against a civilian population represents their game-plan.

Nor do the Hamas and Hezbollah militants and their leaders concern themselves overmuch over their planned sacrifice of civilian lives representing those they claim to protect.

Every target that the Israel Defence Forces hit has first undergone an evaluation process, in an effort to distinguish it as a military base from a civilian structure; other than those structures deliberately selected representing a Hamas leader's dwelling, who has authorized deadly strikes against Israeli targets.

In a war situation there is never any way of guaranteeing that civilians will be spared the anguish of their homes being destroyed, loved ones being killed. With a strict separation of civilians and armed militias it might be possible; with the deliberate intermingling of the Hamas and Hezbollah fighters with the civilian populations, it is patently impossible.

Moreover, any war situation creates its unintended victims, as casualties of friendly fire. If a military, despite its professional training to the highest degree of accuracy and professionalism, is capable of occasionally misinterpreting its signals and striking its own, or friendly forces, how then could it not on occasion strike civilians as well?

In the final analysis, there is one single and incontrovertible value that wins wars; overwhelming force. And that single issue in and of itself happens to represent the single most impressive element of respect and deterrent in a medieval tribal, warring culture and tradition represented by much of the Middle East.

Simply put, those who celebrate hatred, bloodshed and death, respect and fear only physical force that meets their own with equal or overwhelmingly superior effect. In the final analysis the situation of attack calls for defence. In the face of an implacable enemy intent on your destruction, one who sees no value in diplomacy, violence is met with violence because no other response works.

No professional military army deliberately seeks out civilians in an attempt to target them specifically. It is those who are armed and actively engaged in war whom they seek out for it is they who do battle. To deliberately target civilians is universally recognized and condemned as a war crime. No self-respecting army would condemn itself by conducting a war against civilians.

On the other hand, for an army to embed itself within a civilian population, to use it as a human shield, deliberately exposing civilians to assault, that too is a war crime. If the defending army withholds its attacks for fear of assaulting civilians in their search for the embedded militias, they defeat themselves, and effectively reward the techniques used by the attackers, handing them victory.

The choice then becomes, logically, does the army spare the vulnerable and innocent civilians whom their government forces hide among? And in the process leave the assaulters of their own civilians free to attack again and again? Or does the army grit its teeth, cautiously attempt to spare as many civilian lives as possible, and still pursue the attackers, rendering them impotent to attack again?

For a government, a population and a military dedicated to their self-defence, the answer becomes obvious, despite lamentation revolving around being forced to make that choice; an evil and malevolent one imposed upon them and leaving them little practical option but to act as they do.