Photo Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
A miracle, and instructions from Home Front Command, saved hundreds from death when a Grad missile fired by Gaza's ruling Hamas terrorist organization struck a gas station in Ashdod. Most civilians were in their bomb shelters at the time. July 2014

International condemnation of Israel is beginning to mount for its supposed “disproportionate response” to Hamas’ latest and escalated missile and rocket war on Israel, but Western leaders do not state what exactly is a “proportionate” response.

The United States, United Nations and the European Union constantly take the lead in pleading for Israel to show “restraint” and not to “escalate” violence after Palestinian Authority attacks, whether from Judea and Samaria, controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, or from Gaza.

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What really ruffles the feathers of the Western bleeding hearts is that Israel kills more terrorists and civilian shields in Gaza than the number of Israeli citizens and soldiers who are killed by rocket and missile fire from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other “unity government” allies.

“The rising death toll has sparked international concern over the proportionality of Israel’s response to rocket fire from Gaza,” The LA Times reported Sunday. “The rockets have struck deeper into Israel than in past conflicts, but have caused only one serious civilian injury. There have been no Israeli deaths as a direct result of a rocket strike.”

It simply is not a fair fight, according to the media establishment and the bleeding heart lefties. Hamas fires inaccurate missiles while Israel uses pinpoint aerial bombing raids to eliminate terrorists.

According to that logic, when Hamas fires rockets that land in open areas in Israel, Israel should fire at open areas in Gaza.

Hamas got “lucky” on Sunday when shrapnel from a rocket seriously injured a 16-year-old boy in Ashkelon. Presumably, Israel should have responded by seriously injuring an innocent 16-year-old Arab.

When Hamas terrorists kidnapped three Israeli yeshiva teenagers a month ago in the Hebron area, Israel promptly clamped a curfew on dozens of Palestinian Authority villages in a search for the boys, who more than two weeks later were found murdered.

Before their bodies were discovered. Israel was vilified for inflicting supposed  “collective punishment” on the Palestinian Authority by looking for the murderers. Days after the bodies were found, Jewish hoodlums barbarically kidnapped and burned to death a 16-year-old Arab from Jerusalem.

The depraved crime was a wrenching punch in Israel’s collective gut, but according to Western logic, the Israeli government itself should have carried out the unthinkable act of kidnapping three Arabs and killing them.

No one would suggest such a horrid thought.

And no one should anyone suggest that Israel react to every missile and rocket attack on its citizens by responding with the same number of rockets and the same results.

A proportionate response to the intention to kill is to kill before the intention is fulfilled.

Why don’t police in American cities, or in any other civilized place in the world, shoot and kill someone trying to kill them? Shouldn’t they wait until the killer “succeeds” before responding?

Of course, then it is too late, but that is a small detail that would ruin the principle of a “proportionate response.”

The real reason that “proportionate response” applies primarily to Israel is the world cannot stand seeing Jews have the upper hand.

Some of the worst condemnations come from American Jews, for whom Israel is supposed to be a nice doggie that woofs when his master, not God but the American liberal Jewish community, says, “Sit.”

They can’t stand Israel being anything that is not an expression of their own attempt at being good Americans by encouraging a State of Israel that doesn’t upset the apple cart of the “loyal American Jew” who needs to be trusted by his non-Jewish government. Israel must not do anything that jeopardizes American Jews’ standing as good loyal Americans. Israel is supposed to be nothing but a safe haven for other Jews who suffer from anti-Semitism in Russia and France, among other countries.

Israel must not be too religious, lest it make it difficult for the top-heavy non-Orthodox American Jewish community to identify with it and according to the American Constitution.

Israel as a nice doggie makes the liberal Jewish American establishment feel safe from anti-Semitism.

A disproportionate response by Israel would make Israel too strong for any American administration, whether headed by Obama , Reagan, Clinton, Bush or whoever is next, to call the shots in the Middle East.

And what would happen if Israel played nice doggie and refrained from killing those who try to kill Israelis?

The Israeli Air Force has eliminated thousands of rockets in Gaza. If they were still in the terrorists’ stockpile, it is more probable, and still is possible, that one or two would kill Israelis. Lots of us.

And you know what the international response would be?

Gee, you see what happens when you don’t sit down and make peace with Hamas.

Arf, arf.

(In the CNN clip below from 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, then-New York Mayor Bloomberg said at 1:00 in the video, “There is no such thing as a proportionate response to terrorism.”)

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Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu is a graduate in journalism and economics from The George Washington University. He has worked as a cub reporter in rural Virginia and as senior copy editor for major Canadian metropolitan dailies. Tzvi wrote for Arutz Sheva for several years before joining the Jewish Press.