Responses

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The ABC is reporting that the group Independent Australian Jewish Voices has issued a statement describing Israel's attacks on Gaza as disproportionate, contrasting with a statement by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Zionist Federation of Australia which claims that:

Israel’s response is also proportional to the threat to its citizens. In international law, proportionality is not measured by comparing the number of casualties on each side or the extent of the force used by each side.

i would be interested to know how proportionality is therefore measured; and regardless of international law, what about the Torah's injunction that thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe (Exodus 21:23-25)? The number of civilian Gazan lives being ended by the current operation has already easily exceeded the number of civilian Israeli lives lost to Hamas-originating rocket fire since Israel's 'official' withdrawl from Gaza in 2005.

Then we have the comment by the deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Canberra, Eli Yerushalmi, that:

people who are not in Israel are not well placed to comment on the action.

"It's very easy to sit down in cities, in the safety of Australia or other countries, and criticise Israel," he said.

i feel this comment is a bit disingenous, when thousands of Israelis protesting the Israeli government's actions (as per, for example, this and this), and the mayor of Netivot is calling for negotiations with Hamas . . . .