It is in our national interest to widely broadcast that we are taking strong measures to discourage Israel from using brutal methods in self defense.
Why ? Because the kind of action Israel has been taking over the past week – bombing, killing hundreds of Muslims, destroying property, invading Gaza – angers the whole Muslim world and turns them against Americans if the United States fails to take highly visible and effective steps to halt the violence against Muslims.
Why is it in our national interest to avoid further inflaming Muslim and Arab sentiment against us? Because, very simply, anger of this kind increases the likelihood of attacks on American life and American property, both in the United States and abroad. For some years now, our country has been morphing more and more into a national security police state in order to prevent terrorist attacks, increasingly invading our privacy and eroding our civil liberties.
The lesson of the 9/11 attack
A crucially important fact that remarkably few Americans know is that according to page 147 of the 9/11 Commission Report, led by ex-Congressman Lee Hamilton (D) and ex-Governor Thomas Kean [R], the reason that the 9/11 attack occurred was because Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the person who instigated and masterminded the attack, who went to Osama Bin Laden for funding, was angry at the United States for its strong support of Israel while ignoring the interests of the Arab and Muslim side. It was not because “they” envied our way of life, as folks like Donald Rumsfeld were saying. It is because a single Muslim individual hated our foreign policy. And as a consequence we embarked on a war in Iraq that would never have occurred if 9/11 had not happened, that has cost us well north of a trillion dollars and many lives, American and Iraqi. And as another consequence we entered into a war on terrorism that has yet to end. And as another, we have created a vast national security bureaucracy.
Obviously we do not want another 9/11. And what the Israelis are doing now, without any loud American objection or effective opposition, is precisely the kind of thing that will whip up Muslim and Arab sentiment against the United States to do things like the Boston bombing last year, and maybe much worse, and to turn us more and more into a police state, with baggage inspections at airports and signs posted in many places to report suspicious activities and NSA monitoring of phone calls and emails.
It is therefore supremely important to widely broadcast that we are taking strong measures to discourage Israel from employing brutal methods in self defense.
What should Israel do ?
In the first place, do not respond to the launching of a homemade rocket with no guidance system and that injures no one with a missile strike that kills large numbers of people. Instead, quietly go after the individual(s) who actually launched the rocket. And even if the rocket does hurt or kill an Israeli, report this loudly, and then go quietly after the launchers of the rocket, with the aim of capturing them and trying them for murder. To accomplish these goals, use informants and collaborators.
In the second place, abandon the Israeli doctrine of attaching responsibility for any attack to the government of the territory from whence the attack came, and then launching massive attacks against the infrastructure of that government, because it is extremely destabilizing. It means that the peace can be shattered at any moment by a rogue actor who is not under the control of the government.
I have a strong impression – correct me if I am wrong – that the rocket attacks which began the latest round of violence were not ordered by the leadership of Hamas. I have a strong impression that the attacks came either from a dissident faction within Hamas, or else from actors who were quite external to Hamas. If this is the case, our mainstream media have failed the American public in implying that Hamas leadership is responsible for the rockets, and that it is therefore reasonable for the Israelis to crush Hamas.
In any event, it is in our national interest to lean very hard on Israel to cease disproportionate responses to minor attacks.