R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. offers this observation.

It is dreadful that Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth, is under heavy aerial bombardment from Israel. Yet Hamas, the governing entity in Gaza, has been lobbing shrapnel-filled missiles into Israel on a regular basis for months. Two weeks ago, Hamas arbitrarily broke its six-month ceasefire with Israel, and the danger to Israeli life and property has gotten worse. How many missiles is Israel to suffer before it is warranted to defend its territory and its people?

Now that word "disproportional" is being raised among foreign policy elites. Israeli air strikes since Saturday have killed several hundred Palestinians and injured several thousand. So we are hearing that the Israeli actions are "disproportional."

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I have no idea how many Hamas strikes against civilians warrant how many Israeli acts of retribution. Frankly, such calculations seem to me as beside the point. The real question is how many Israeli strikes are needed to close down Hamas? That is what is necessary. The Israelis have at their border a violent, unprincipled enemy that has vowed to destroy Israel. Hamas not only vows to destroy Israel, it bombards Israel and expects the world to object when Israel counterattacks.

Now let me begin by noting that the very concept of proportionality in warfare is absurd. Following Pearl Harbor, the US was not limited to a "proportional response" against Japan and its Axis partners. Following 9/11, no one expected the US to stop fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban after we inflicted three thousand enemy casualties (and no one tried to calculate the military equivalent of four hijacked jetliners so that we didn't exceed the force initially used against us).

Besides, Tyrrell is correct in noting that he (and, by implication, we) do not know what a proportional response is. Indeed, it would appear that the Terorstinian leadership of Hamas is the only group that does know what a proportional response is -- for when it is reached, Hamas will stop firing missiles into Israel, indiscriminately hitting homes, schools, and shops with no military significance. Given that Hamas continues to attack despite over 400 dead this week, it is clear that Israel has yet to inflict sufficient damage for the response to be proportional to the goal -- the end of Terrorstinian rocket attacks on civilians. It may be that the proper proportion is 100, or even 1000, dead Terrostinians for every dead Israeli -- but it is only Hamas that can set the figure, not Israel or the international community.