A sense of proportion

The Israeli Defence Forces’ ethical standards are different from, and in some ways higher than, the British army’s, says Paul Robinson, but in the end the question is not whether IDF actions are moral, but whether they are wise

This week David Cameron joined his shadow foreign secretary William Hague in denouncing elements of Israel’s operations in Lebanon as ‘disproportionate’. This view has not gone down well with some on the hawkish Right, but it has been met with approval among the Conservative Arabists and lefty humanists who think that everything Israel does is disproportionate. Very few of the hawks, or lefties, or Arabists, however, seem to know what proportionality in war really means, or how Israel, in particular, understands it.

‘Proportionality’ is an element of Just War theory. This body of thought, which has evolved in Western philosophy from Augustine through Aquinas, is the framework through which almost all Western leaders, consciously or unconsciously, view warfare.