On the 9th of April, 1731, Spanish Captain Juan de Leon Fandino, master of the Spanish sloop San Antonio, boarded the English privateer Rebecca. The Spaniards found no contraband but, according to the account given by its captain, Robert Jenkins, years later, a Lieutenant Dorce severed his ear with a cutlass and said “Show it to King George and tell him that’s what’s in store for him”. Jenkins carefully preserved the severed ear and his enmity.
In March of 1739 Jenkins displayed the preserved ear before the British Parliament. Jenkins’s story inflamed British public opinion and, when, the Walpole government declared war on Spain in October of that year, the hostilities were called “The War of Jenkins’ Ear” both in Britain and in the American colonies.
The war wasn’t about the indignities suffered by Captain Jenkins.
Conflict between Britain and Spain had been brewing for a generation. The Spanish were jealously guarding their monopoly on trade with their American colonies; they interfered with the British slave trade; British privateers harassed Spanish ships in the Caribbean; Spain was seen as vulnerable.
Seen as vengeance for Jenkins Britain’s response was disproportionate. And absurd. Seen as the culmination of years of tension and sporadic hostilities, it’s at least comprehensible.
On June 28, 2006 Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. A few days ago Hezbollah terrorists replicated the incursion and kidnapped two more Israeli soldiers. Israel’s response first in Gaza and now in Lebanon, if viewed solely as a response to these two incidents, is, indeed, disproportionate. If viewed in the context of the Palestinians’ and Lebanon’s outright refusal to bring Hamas or Hezbollah to heel even as the terrorist groups make frequent incursions across Israel’s borders and fire rockets into Israeli cities, it’s significantly more understandable.
A government must enforce its monopoly on the use of force or a claim of sovereignty is a sham. Lebanon and the Palestinians inter alia must choose one.
