The President of France, Sarkozy practically tripped over his underwear rushing to call Israel's Gaza incursion a
The number one obligation of any government is to protect its people.
"disproportionate" use of force. David Miliband, Britain's Foreign Secretary, said Israel was causing a "dangerous and dark moment." He went on to say "that any innocent loss of life is unacceptable." Doing his best to imitate Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon complained about the "the disproportionate use of force" on the part of Israel and condemned "excessive use of force by Israel in Gaza." Even Israel's "friend" India was disappointed that "the use of disproportionate force is resulting in a large number of civilian casualties on the one hand and the escalating violence on the other."

So let us examine that for a second. How many Jews had to die to make Israel's response proportionate - five, ten, 100? Should the United Nations develop a system that gives a value to each life and determines when they could be protected? How many Israelis equals the self-defense "tipping point"? How many English? Since they never have the guts to fight, would the French be more or less?

The number one obligation of any government is to protect its people. In his book The Leviathan the philosopher Thomas Hobbes said, "To escape this state of war, men in the state of nature accede to a social contract and establish a civil society." According to Hobbes, society is a population beneath a sovereign authority, to whom all individuals in that society cede their natural rights for the sake of protection.

Hobbes never mentioned just how many individuals could be protected.

John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were classic philosophers whose work formed the theoretical groundwork of democracy. They suggested that any government which does not protect the life, liberty and property of its people should be overthrown.

At the expense of its people, Israel has not been fulfilling its end of the social contract, the basis of which gives a government the right to rule. Finally, after 8,000 rockets and mortars fired into the country, Israel has decided to stop the rocket fire and protect her people.

So I ask again: How many rockets make it okay to protect your citizens? Was America's response to the
How many bombs can land in Britain before the British can respond?
bombing of Pearl Harbor "disproportionate"? What about England's response to the bombing of London during World War II? The Nazis were trying to destroy England in the same way Hamas is trying to destroy Israel.

Before other democracies start calling a response "disproportionate", maybe they should define what is "proportionate". How many bombs can land in Britain before the British can respond? How many terrorist attacks in Mumbai can occur before India can try to stop them? If Paris is bombed, can the French surrender right away? If Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's home country of South Korea was bombed from the north, would the South Koreans be allowed to put a stop to it?

Those are the questions that need to be answered before anyone attacks Israel for protecting her citizens.