[Hakan]

From Gwynne Dyer:

But Israel’s actions in the past two weeks, since an attack on a military outpost left two Israeli soldiers dead and one a prisoner in the hands of Palestinian militants, have clearly “violated the principle of proportionality”, as the Swiss put it. On Thursday, for example, the death toll was one Israeli soldier and 23 Palestinians, close to half of whom appear to have been unarmed civilians.

Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the soldier who was taken hostage, is no more to blame for the mess he inherited than any other 19-year-old Israeli or Palestinian, and he certainly does not deserve to die. But it is hard to see how blowing up the Gaza Strip’s main power-generating station or arresting eight cabinet ministers and 34 legislators of the democratically elected government of the occupied Palestinian territories in simultaneous night raids on their homes furthers the cause of Cpl. Shalit’s freedom. There is no sense of proportion here.

Israeli columnist Gideon Levy, writing in the newspaper Ha’aretz, put it best: “It is not legitimate to cut off 750,000 people from electricity. It is not legitimate to call on 20,000 people to run from their homes and turn their towns into ghost towns. It is not legitimate to kidnap half a government and a quarter of a parliament. A state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organization.”

http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=19032