What does "proportionality" means under international law?

[Anglojew]

Israel is often accused of acting "disproportionately" against terrorist groups such as Hamas. So what does "proportionality" mean in International Law?

There are two definitions: One is that the expected civilian casualties from a specific attack must be proportional to the military value of the target. Israel is adhering to the principle of proportionality. This is the jus in bello definition - how to act once a war already starts.

The other definition, jus ad bellum, to take proportionality into account when deciding on the right to go to war initially. It is sometimes called macro-proportionality. In brief, it says that "The anticipated benefits of waging a war must be proportionate to its expected evils or harms."

By definition, macro-proportionality can only be defined before a war starts. Given that Israel was responding to rocket attacks and was acting in self defense, the decision to go to war was clearly legal; the question is whether their initial choice of how to go about the war - how many airplanes, how many drones, how many gunships - would be proportionate to what they were trying to accomplish.

It is certain that the test of jus ad bellum proportionality cannot be taken by doing a simple count of civilian victims after the war starts. That falls under jus in bello. To violate macro-proportionality, it would have to be proven that Israel was acting in ways that were completely overkill for the original goal of stopping rockets. Given that the rockets didn't stop until the current cease fire, it is obvious that Israel's response was less than that allowed by this proportionality test. It has nothing to do with body counts.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com.au/...es-part-3.html

[Kale]

Depends how the judge is feeling that day (diarrhea, gonorrhea, logarrhea, etc.)