Proportionality.
Everyone has the right to defend themselves. Even Pope Francis, who is on the rather liberal end of many things, agrees with this.
And let us be honest. The claim, "the majority of Palestinian people do not support Hamas" is pretty much equivalent to "most Germans weren't Nazi's", isn't it? It's thin. Indeed, maybe for those in the Middle East today, it has even less credibility. Certainly here in the US, in spite of separation from the artificial boundaries of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the Great War, plenty of Palestinians and their first generation descendants have rallied to the bloody cause as so many Palestinians have in the past, demonstrating that lamenting the results of bad decisions seems to be an intergenerational habit.
Congressman Rashida Tlaib, who was quick to accuse the IDF of rocketing a Palestinian hospital that in fact Islamic Jihad, which would regard her as an abhorrent example of a woman who should be out of government, accidentally rocketed.
But does that matter?
And did it in 1945?
And let us be further honest. The concept of proportionality is a Christian one. No other culture worries about it to the same extent that Christian ones do, and if it is now a global concept, it's' due in no small measure to Christianity. Everyone protesting for proportionality does so in hopes that it reaches a Christian audience. The historical global norm, outside of Judaism and Christianity (and I'll confess ignorance on Islam), was for slaughter.
It's the Christian influence that's made it unacceptable. For pagan people, and non-Abrahamic people? Well, that was what was done.
So we are left, then, with what is proportionality?
Was destroying Berlin in 1945 proportional to the Nazi genocidal imperial regimes? Or would it have been better to say, well, not all Germans were Nazis? Or did that, with a threat like Nazism, not really matter that much?
Questions that have to be answered. And the namby pampy "let's condemn overreaction" have to answer them most of all.
Or does it?
Does staying a hand, display more strength than using it? Turn, as it were, the other cheek?
And can we, even with the descent into liberal secularism, which seems to solely involve what's under our Fruit of the Looms, avoid answering them, in real, bloody, terms, rather than platitudes?
I offer no solutions, or answers.
I'm only posing the questions. With, of course, the proviso that if you answer wrong, there's blood on your hands, one away, or the other.
