It's cute that leftists seem to have finally learned how to spell the word in the last few months; but, the radical left seems to have had a lack of conceptual understanding of proportionality for a few centuries now.
If I had to assess the leftist rhetoric over the last several years in regard to self-defense cases and particularly global conflicts, I would assume that they heard, "Eye for an eye." and stopped thinking about it.
If I've learned anything from their commentary about the high profile self-defense cases, it seems clear that they think proportionality means letting the bad guy kill you first before fighting back. It makes sense -- that was the old Soviet policy.
When it comes to Israel, it's like talking to a bunch of blank walls, because most of these people thing that the proportional response from Israel would be to just take it on the chin and like it.
A perfect eye for an eye from Israel wouldn't be pretty. I don't think anybody wanted the IDF to rape the exact same number of women and children as Hamas did. I don't think we wanted Israel to take a few hundred Gazan hostages and rape them.
None of these people seem to have a philosophy of proportionality. I've been trying to get somebody -- anybody to weigh in on the bombing of Dresden at the end of WWII. Most of them won't say crap about it. When they do, they usually get their history terribly wrong, and male dumb claims like that we were considerably more careful in avoiding German civilian casualties than Israel is being now.
Hamas murdered and raped 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children with the soul desire to kill as many Jews as possible. The proportional response is to wipe out Hamas.