Neat Response to "Disproportionate"

More on the empty arguments about allegedly excessive Israeli force, from the January 26th National Review on dead tree (subscription only):

Israel’s attacks on Hamas are being widely condemned as "disproportionate" since Israel has inflicted more damage than Hamas has. The criticism is a bizarre distortion of traditional just-war theory, which requires (among other things) that military actions be proportionate to the evils they seek to prevent, e.g., the slow-motion extinction of Israel. If the new tit-for-tat standard were applied to its conduct during World War II, the U.S. would be guilty of war crimes for going beyond the sinking of Japanese ships after Pearl Harbor. So far, however, the standard has been applied only against Israel -- because it is not a standard at all, just a rhetorical weapon.

See also David Bernstein on The Volokh Conspiracy:

One might think that when the battle is between Israel on the one side, tacitly supported by the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, and Jordan, and Hamas on the other, supported by Iran and Hezbollah, one would at least hope for an Israeli victory, even if one is dubious about its prospects. But I get the feeling that for many, it's more important that Israel, and the world, learn a lesson about the "limits of military force" than that a violent, fanatical, backwards, illiberal, anti-Semitic terrorist organization be humbled defeated.

As I have said:

Let's see: Another one-sided cease-fire, land for no peace, ever-escalating demands, and attempted child labor (you know, the kind lefties abhor when it's Nike). Somehow, Palestine's never wrong, or even a sweatshop.

How many more clues, and killings, before anti-Israel zealots see the real Palestine: contempt, chaos and chutzpa.