The new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, is repeating some of the errors and falsehoods of her predecessor, Josep Borrell: “New EU High Representative Kaja Kallas makes the same old mistakes,” Elder of Ziyon, March 25, 2025:
True to form, Josep Borrell criticized and condemned Israel’s escalation in Lebanon in September and October, calling for a ceasefire and for diplomacy. He condemned Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah as a violation of Lebanese sovereignty….
Borrell seemed to believe that Israel had to respond to Hezbollah in precisely the same way. If Hezbollah, for example, launched rockets into Israel that did no damage, by Borrell’s calculation, Israel need not respond at all. If Hezbollah managed to fire five rockets into Israel, killing six Israelis, Israel should send roughly the same number of rockets at Hezbollah outposts in southern Lebanon, trying always to make the attacks tit-for-tat. But that is not the way to end Hezbollah’s aggression. That required not tit-for-tat retaliation, but massive attacks to crush Hezbollah, so that it cannot continue to fight. That is what Israel has now managed to do to Hezbollah. The terror group has suffered 4,000 dead, and another 3,800 severely wounded from the “exploding pagers,” with a loss of 80% of its arsenal of rockets and missiles. And the result is a ceasefire in southern Lebanon, with Hezbollah no longer daring to launch a single rocket or missile into Israel.
What would be the point of a “proportionate” response? To win a war, you need to defeat the enemy, however “disproportionate” the response. How did the U.S. finally bring about the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan? By “disproportionally” dropping atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing in the space of a few minutes on the first raid 140,000 people in Hiroshima, and in the second raid a week later, 74,000 in Nagasaki. The total American deaths in the war against Japan was a mere 41,000. So was our bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “disproportionate”? Or was it, in fact, both entirely justified, and the only way to bring the fanatical Imperial Japanese Army to accept its defeat?
Israel is an embattled state, fighting a seven-front war. It relies heavily on its 360,000 reservists, whose military service takes them away from their regular jobs; if they are fighting for a long period, one result is major damage to the Israeli economy. The country cannot afford to fight a long war. It needs to win its conflicts quickly, in order that those reservists can return to work. In order to not drag out hostilities, the IDF has to use not “proportionate” force, but rather, what some would call overwhelming or — accurately — “disproportionate” force.
Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023. What would be an acceptable response to those atrocities? Should Israel have limited itself to killing 1,200 members of Hamas? Should it have allowed itself to torture, rape, mutilate, and then murder 1,200 Hamas members? Or should the IDF do as it has done, responding with far greater force, invading Gaza to so devastate the terror group in order that Hamas can never threaten the people of Israel again? That is what the IDF has been doing these last 18 months. It has responded with far greater force, so far killing 22,000 members of Hamas, while making tremendous efforts to minimize civilian deaths by using leaflets, text messaging, and robocalling, in order to warn civilians away from sites and buildings about to be targeted.
And those warnings have worked. Out of the 50,000 people who Hamas now claims have died in Gaza since October 7, 2023, 22,000 were Hamas combatants. Another 14,400 died of diseases and accidents. This figure has been arrived at by multiplying the pre-war deaths from those causes — 800 a month — by the number of months the war has been going on. 800 x 18 = 14,400. That means that the total civilian deaths in Gaza that are combat-related are 13,600. What do you think? Is 13,600 civilian dead a “disproportionate” response to what Hamas did on October 7, 2023? Of course not.
Kaja Kallas, the new EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, will be much better than her malignant predecessor Josep Borrell. Her heart is in the right place, but on the matter of “proportionality,” it’s her mind that needs work. I have faith that when presented with the figures as set out above, she will come round.
rick says
Proportional response by Israel to Hamas atrocities would mean Israel would have to commit their own atrocities. That would mean ( gang) raping Palestinians, beheading Palestinian infants and/or putting them in household ovens, killing Palestinian fathers and mothers in front of the families children or killing children in front of their fathers and mothers. Video taping the atrocities for later viewing and celebration.
Israel does not do these things. Palestinians do these things. Whatever the Israeli response will be cannot be proportional because doing so is uncivilized and barbaric. Palestinians find no problem committing such atrocities and Oct. 7th is the horrible proof of what they will do when they have the opportunity to do it.
Instead Israel subjects Palestinians to war. A war such as the Nazi German populations experienced in WW II. A war that the Nazi soldiers and high command experienced. It is clear that given the opportunity Palestinians lead by Hamas would be equally, if not worse, then the what the Nazis did to Jews. The German Nazis were extraordinarily cruel bu they were also organized and mechanical about rounding up and creating the Death concentration camps.
The Palestinians are less organized and their cruelty is more an expression of Nazi like Islamic hate. The torture continued after Oct. 7th by subjecting the Jewish captives to concentration type camp experiences of little to no food and near starvation. Sometimes the Hamas miscreants could not contain their anti-Semitism and killed the Jewish captives outright. The differences between German Nazis and Palestinian Nazis is merely cultural as in German efficiency vs Arab wild hot Hate.
gravenimage says
So true, Rick.
Reuven says
As I understand it the response to an attack should be proportionate to what will stop the attack and prevent it from reoccurring, not proportionate to the attack itself. By that standard the current Israeli response to Hamas is less than proportionate, and the response to Hezbullah may be proportionate. There is an additional proportionality test on whether the expected harm to civilians in an attack is commensurate with the expected military gains from it.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
That whole idea of a “proportionate response” should have been buried in one of those Hamas tunnels after October 7th, 2023. What did the EU expect – that Israelis would then go into Gaza and start raping Gazans? Incinerating Gazan infants? What exactly?
The EU is an evil organization and even more opposed to humanity than the Russians, and that’s saying something!
gravenimage says
+1
skeptiker says
“Hohe” Vertreterin von wen, von was ? Das “Hohe” ist schon eine Anmaßung und Selbsterhöhung ,die typisch für nicht demokratisch legitimierte Bürokraten sind. Das “Hohe” steht für ihr Hohes Einkommen durch Korruption und Vetternwirtschaft. Die Selbstbereicherung durch die schamlose Ausplünderung der Bürger hat hoffentlich bald ihren Zenit überschritten.
Und dann soll der Russe unsere größte Bedrohung sein. Die Propagandaschleuder der Kriegstreiber und der Woke-Faschisten drehen immer hysterischer am Rad, seitdem in Washington ein neuer Sheriff sein Amt angetreten hat. Ich denke, die werden so wie es in der Geschichte am Ende immer war, an der Realität und den Naturgesetzen scheitern.
gravenimage says
Israel, the EU, and the Perils of a ‘Proportionate Response’
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Yes–why didn’t the US just bomb a Japanse port after the attack on Pearl Harbor? Then we could have waited until they killed more Americans, rinse and repeat year after year…