Proportionality Matters

Every person who has either participated in or witnessed a fight understands the doctrine of “he started it.” The fight begins with a provocation followed by a response. That same reasoning extends to politics and war. What has gotten lost between third grade and the septuagenarians who determine our fates however is an equally common-sense ethical norm: proportionality.

A verbal insult rarely justifies a physical attack. Even when the provocation takes the form of violence, retaliation must be proportional. Getting punched in the face once certainly justifies punching your assailant once in the face—maybe twice or three times—but not fifteen times nor stabbing or shooting them.

Victimhood is not a blank check. Being wronged does not give you license to do anything you want in response. Action provokes reaction; action never justifies overreaction.

This doctrine is codified in the laws of all 50 states. If you are assaulted, you can only use the amount of force that a reasonable person in the same situation would believe is necessary to defend against an imminent threat. Your response must match the level and nature of the danger.

Limitations based on proportionality also apply—at least when the law is adjudicated correctly—to crimes committed by individuals and punished by the state.

Punishment, we learn at an early age, should “fit the crime.” Excessive sentences undermine justice fairness and the legitimacy of the legal system whether under retributive (“just deserts”) or utilitarian (deterrence) judicial theories. In the United States, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Eighth Amendment (“excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”) to prohibit grossly disproportionate sentences. Jaywalkers shouldn’t go to prison; robbers shouldn’t be executed.

Similarly, international law as affirmed by the International Court of Justice dictates that defensive force must be roughly commensurate in scale, scope and effects with the initial armed attack and the ongoing threat it poses. It cannot go beyond what is necessary to repel the attack neutralize the immediate threat and prevent further attacks in the reasonably near future. A nation that uses excessive force to retaliate loses its status as a victim and becomes an aggressor.

“The State of Israel has a full right to self-defense,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said recently. Israeli officials and their supporters say this so often that it has become a cliché. Then, however, he adds: “We are exercising it to the extent necessary.” That is certainly not true. And it is why most of the American people have turned against the Jewish state. Even President Trump, arguably the most strident supporter of Israel since its founding with U.S. backing in 1948, has begun to openly question Netanyahu’s government’s total disregard for the principle of proportionality—and is at the brink of a possible previously unthinkable breaking point prompted by his desire to make peace with Iran.

Another political cliché is the impossibility of determining who is acting and who is reacting, in a conflict that both Palestinians and Israelis say is provoked by the other side. Even if you accept the Israeli narrative at face value, however, their refusal to acknowledge the existence of legal and ethical strictures against escalation has turned what was once touted as the only democracy in the Middle East into an international pariah.

On October 7, 2023 Hamas raided southern Israel and killed about 1200 people, mostly Israelis. Casting themselves as innocent victims of an unprovoked attack—without acknowledging its brutal 16-year-long blockade and repeated bombing campaigns against the Gaza Strip—Israeli officials quickly announced plans to inflict bloody vengeance on the long-suffering civilian population.

Frequently turning to the Holocaust to try to justify their own genocide, Israeli leaders announced that Hamas’ terrorist attack gave them carte blanche to kill every Palestinian and seize every square inch of their land.

“Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. Dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza “is one option,” said Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu. “This [bombing wave] is not enough. There should be more. There should be no limits to the response… until we see hundreds of thousands fleeing Gaza,” added an education minister.

Eighty-one percent of Gaza has been destroyed. At least 73,000 Gazans have been killed and 173,000 wounded—a very conservative estimate.

Wildly disproportionate casualty figures are nothing new to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Between 1948 and 2023, roughly ten Palestinians were killed for every Israeli. While the disparity of bloodshed is itself disturbing, news outlets and political activists should also hold themselves to account for failing to emphasize the fact that even in war there are rules—and that proportional response is an important one.

The world did not buy Israel’s anything-goes “response.”

Perhaps many of us in the West turn a blind eye to disproportionate violence because we ourselves embrace it when it suits us. On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda killed about 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. “I’m having difficulty controlling my bloodlust,” President George W. Bush told a gathering of religious leaders on September 20^th. So far, the U.S. has killed at least 4.5 million people—a retaliation ratio that puts even genocidal Israel to shame—in its “Global War on Terror” against Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Somalia.

Adhering to the doctrine of proportionality requires something exceedingly difficult. A society that views itself as an innocent victim of violence must, even while mourning its dead, calm itself, tamp down its emotions, consider a long-term historical perspective and how it will be judged—all while ignoring or overruling those among them screaming for vengeance.

When Argentina invaded and occupied the British Falkland Islands in 1982, the U.K. deployed a naval task force, recaptured the colony through targeted military operations and withdrew. It did not invade Argentina, bomb Buenos Aires, or try to overthrow the Argentine government—which might have led to a self-defeating quagmire.

Restraint is hard. But it’s worth it. Those who temper their responses earn the respect of other nations as well as their sympathy. (Who today still feels sorry for America’s losses on 9/11, or Israel’s on October 7^th?) Those who keep calm are preparing for the future. Someday, after all, they themselves may find themselves targeted for retribution. As the Bible says, those who have been merciful are far more likely to receive it themselves.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)