Israeli Ambassador Heres What Proportionality In War Really Means
The Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, challenged critics of his country's military operation in Gaza Tuesday morning, saying they don't understand the legal definition of "proportionality" in wartime. Speaking to reporters at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor, Dermer, a former top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, argued that many are unfamiliar with the "rules of war" when they charge that his country has been disproportionate in its attacks on Gaza. "We have to understand first of all what the rules of war are, because people don't know them," he said. "They throw around words like disproportionate without any understanding of what that actually means. A disproportionate response, from what I can gather in the interviews that I go to and the questions that I'm asked, disproportionate is believed to be what is the body count on both sides. So therefore if there's 600 and something Palestinians who were killed and 25 Israelis, or a few days ago when there were 200 Palestinians and one Israeli, that is deemed to be a disproportionate response. That's how most people deal with it.", But Dermer said those assumptions were wrong. Dermer laid out the calculus that the Israeli government makes to justifying actions that may injure or kill civilians. He continued, To date, more than 500 people have died from the fighting, according to a count by the Washington Post Tuesday morning. That includes 25 Israeli soldiers, 2 Israeli civilians, 86 armed Palestinian militants and 406 Palestinian civilians. Of those Palestinian civilians, 129 were children.