Proportionality

If there’s one word that is vomit-inducing since October 7th it’s this one: proportionality.

Suddenly it’s not about good vs evil or terrorism vs democracy. It’s about which side is killing more people. And whichever side that is, they are the aggressor and therefore evil. And the world has decided it would be a great idea to get rid of them.

Problem solved. Simple as that.

With news coming at us faster than a speeding bullet, and fake news and misinformation whizzing past us even faster than that, suddenly all the uneducated people in the world have found a desperate need to chime in; people who – on October 6th – couldn’t find Israel or Gaza on a map if you paid them. People who have never cracked open a history book, or even gave a #$@* about this region before October 7th are all of a sudden enraged. Suddenly they all have raised fists, raised voices, and are calling out for the eradication of the evil Zionist entity.

And forget about Gaza: we are now the scapegoat for every ill in their world: their incapability of holding down a job, the rise of inflation and housing costs, the constant bad luck in their lives.

Piers Morgan, the trending antisemite of the moment, has not stopped talking ad nauseum about proportionality. No matter what intelligent and educated answers are given by people like Douglas Murray or Natasha Hausdorff, he is clinging to that word like a feral dog with a bone.

We, a country that was brutally attacked, had the audacity and chutzpah to have risen up to defend ourselves and to attempt to bring back our people. Shame on us for daring to succeed in removing thousands upon thousands of terrorists from our midst.

Yes, we have less deaths on our side: because we have bomb shelters EVERYWHERE, and incredibly accurate apps and a siren warning system that gives our citizens time to run toward safety. And we have invested our sharpest minds and creatives into developing a defense system that other MUCH LARGER countries only dream of having.

Yes, they have more deaths on their side: let’s even set the enormous number of terrorist deaths aside for a moment. They have taken every penny of aid they have ever received and poured it into a tunnel system that was built to protect terrorists and to smuggle weapons and to hide hostages. They fire rockets at us from hospitals and schools and densely populated areas. They have no siren system nor any kind of defense system – because they WANT more “civilian” deaths recorded. This serves their purpose perfectly.

But the world just looks at a simple scale: numbers on one side and numbers on another. More deaths in Gaza = Israel is bad.

But even this logic isn’t entirely true: let’s just imagine that we DIDN’T fight back and our deaths outnumbered theirs. We would STILL be the evil ones. How do I know this? Because it was over 2 weeks before we started fighting back. Our dead completely outnumbered theirs. But that didn’t matter – we were still vilified as being evil. Why? Pick a word, any word: colonists, occupiers, apartheid state, thieves…

So Piers, maybe shut up about proportionality and just admit to being who we all know you to be.

I shudder to think about what would have happened if the Holocaust had happened in modern times, with all the global access to media and social platforms like X, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And let’s not forget about AI and all the doctored images that are painting a picture that just doesn’t exist.

With everyone a self-proclaimed expert in history, colonization, indigenous law, Human Rights, AND warfare, the headlines might have looked like this:

“Work camps are not death camps,” announces Goebbels. Number of dead Jews unsubstantiated and rumored to be greatly exaggerated.” – April 5, 1940

“US and its allies urged to meet with Hitler to broker a ceasefire; no deal yet regarding releasing alleged Jewish prisoners from work camps.” – June 15, 1941

“Australia, Spain and France calls for the US and Britain to cease its offensive against Germany citing too many German deaths.” – September 4, 1943

“Possible deal in the works between the Axis Powers and the US and Britain: Hitler to keep control of Eastern Europe but promises not to cross the English Channel. All German prisoners of war to be released. No mention of Jewish prisoners.” – December 23, 1943

“Grand Mufti of Jerusalem signs a treaty with Hitler: Jews in the Middle East scrambling to obtain visas to the US. United States places quota on Jewish refugees.” – May 17, 1944

“Red Cross tours Theresienstadt: prisoners are receiving adequate humanitarian aid.” – December 16, 1944

“US facing war crimes for bombing of Dresden. 25,000 feared dead. Protesters in Berlin burn American flags while yelling, “Heil Hitler! America retreat!” – February 20, 1945

These headlines might seem ridiculous and unrealistic to you – but I assure you, they are not. Based on the kind of journalism and critical thinking that is being practiced today, they are definitely not.

Ceasefires in wars should never be negotiated based on proportionality. If that were the case in the 1940s, there would still be a stronghold of Nazis running the show in Eastern Europe for who knows how long, and the killing of Jews would have continued. Evil needed to be eradicated AND those responsible brought to justice. These evil people were hunted down for DECADES in order to be made to pay for what they did. There was no escaping from a lifetime in prison or the noose for those who were engaged in a genuine genocide.

Countries who are ordering us to stop fighting, and make an impossible deal with the devil, AND release thousands of hardcore criminals into our streets don’t understand the concept of what it means to win a war. Stopping us from destroying the enemy that has repeatedly stated that they want us dead simply because number-wise we’re winning, is a recipe for disaster. If the tables were turned, they would NEVER make the kind of deal they are pressuring us to make.