The Spectator’s Notes | 29 July 2006

As the conflict deepens in the Lebanon, the word on many lips is ‘proportionality’. Israel keeps being told that her actions are ‘disproportionate’. Proportionality is, indeed, a key moral concept in wars, but how is it to be calculated? The question becomes more complicated in an age in which opponents often prefer terrorism to formal military engagement. The regular army fighting the irregulars can almost always be made to look like a sledgehammer taken to crack a nut. In this case, it is probably right to argue that Hezbollah does not, as a fighting machine, pose a threat to the territorial integrity of Israel. But it can and does train lethal rockets on a great many Israelis. It is impossible to imagine any democratically elected government allowing this to happen and staying in office, so Mr Olmert had to act. In a wider sense, the disproportion may lie the other way.