Respond­ing to a war crime by com­mit­ting one doesn’t bring jus­tice, it cre­ates equals. Aid­ing, abet­ting or con­don­ing one side mere­ly adds anoth­er guilty par­ty. All but the most ardent­ly naïve know that Israel’s vengeance on Gaza will be fero­cious. Unless those with the pow­er to make changes start think­ing about the after­math now, it will also be pointless.

Vow­ing to turn parts of Gaza “into rub­ble” in revenge for a “black day”, Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu told his coun­try­men: “This will change the Mid­dle East.” 
The ques­tion for Israel’s friends and allies to ask and demand an answer for, is “How?”.
The con­cept, threat if you will, of “Mutu­al­ly Assured Destruc­tion”, fin­gers close to but not hov­er­ing per­ilous­ly over, nuclear but­tons, is cred­it­ed with hav­ing kept the Cold war cold.
Cre­at­ing “Mutu­al­ly Assured Hatred”, how­ev­er, will have the oppo­site effect. In perpetuity.
The 2.3‑million belea­guered civil­ians impris­oned in Gaza, an area rough­ly twice the size of Wash­ing­ton DC, have lit­tle to no rea­son to love Hamas, but have no way to do any­thing about it. Street protests, like the ones against the Netanyahu gov­ern­ment before the lat­est round of atroc­i­ties, are impos­si­ble at the best of times in the impov­er­ished enclave.
Using col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment in the form of cut­ting off vital sup­plies of water, pow­er, food and med­i­cine to civil­ians who’ve endured degrees of imposed depri­va­tion for 16 years as a weapon is not – to use a term the mil­i­tary loves –  “a force mul­ti­pli­er”  for Israel, but for who­ev­er pops up once Hamas has been reduced to mil­i­tary insignificance.
And any­one who thinks killing Hamas’ lead­er­ship and dec­i­mat­ing its mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties will be the end of it, hasn’t been pay­ing attention.
Ter­ror­ists, jihadis, call them what you will, are Hydras.
Shov­ing al-Qae­da off the stage and blow­ing away the ISIS’ “caliphate” in ter­ri­to­r­i­al terms hasn’t elim­i­nat­ed the influ­ence of their ide­ol­o­gy. It’s made them more of a prob­lem by spawn­ing offshoots.
Hamas may be hum­bled, weak­ened or forced to change its name, but it will be there as long as there is no peace to which both Israelis and Pales­tini­ans can claim a share of author­ship and own­er­ship, in both psy­cho­log­i­cal and ter­ri­to­r­i­al terms.
So far, each suc­ces­sive war has only man­aged to abet the rise of  increas­ing­ly recal­ci­trant zealots, on both sides. 
What’s the dif­fer­ence between a Hamas offi­cial who denies Israel’s right to exist, and Israeli Finance Min­is­ter Beza­lel Smotrich, who told an audi­ence in Paris: “There is no such thing as a Pales­tin­ian nation. There is no Pales­tin­ian his­to­ry. There is no Pales­tin­ian lan­guage.”?
Nat­u­ral­ly, both sides claim God is their co-pilot. The bat­tle cry of Hamas gun­men is “Allah hu Akbar” (God is Great).
Israeli set­tlers cite the bib­li­cal belief that God promised Pales­tine to the Jews as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for seiz­ing land in the occu­pied West Bank. 

                     GUT REACTIONS AREN”T HELPFUL

As the estimable jour­nal­ist Mort Rosen­blum put it in a col­umn this week: “Across the world, peo­ple are befud­dled by con­tra­dic­to­ry sources, mis­tak­en impres­sions and unshake­able bias at oppos­ing extremes.”
Yet Pres­i­dent Joe Biden was will­ing to par­rot unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that Hamas behead­ed Israeli children.
The doc­u­ment­ed atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by Hamas forces who poured into Israel are enough for charges and con­vic­tions of war crimes and crimes against human­i­ty. Unproven accu­sa­tions only detract from that.
The White House “walk­ing back” the behead­ing mis­state­ment is irrel­e­vant. Biden of all peo­ple ought to know that a quote on social media is truth eter­nal for any and all who want to twist it for their own ends.
On a more imme­di­ate lev­el, did Biden’s vow of “rock sol­id and unwa­ver­ing” sup­port for Israel, includ­ing more mil­i­tary aid, take his­to­ry into account?
Accord­ing to Israeli intel­li­gence, in 1982 between 700 and 800 peo­ple main­ly women, chil­dren and old peo­ple, were mur­dered in the Sabra and Chati­la Pales­tin­ian refugee camps out­side Beirut. To quote the Jew­ish Vir­tu­al Library: “The Lebanese Chris­t­ian Pha­langist mili­tia was respon­si­ble for the mas­sacres that occurred at the two Beirut-area refugee camps on Sep­tem­ber 16–17, 1982. Israeli troops allowed the Pha­langists to enter Sabra and Shati­la to root out ter­ror­ist cells believed locat­ed there.”
The “ter­ror­ists” were nei­ther root­ed out nor deterred. Israel gained more ene­mies and no friends. Instead, Israel’s inva­sion of Lebanon in 1982 sowed the seeds for Hezbol­lah on the north­ern border.
Hamas is their cat’s paw.
The ter­ri­ble sim­i­lar­i­ty between Israeli and Gazan civil­ians is that all-out war brings sol­i­dar­i­ty that over­rides polit­i­cal persuasions.
For Israelis it’s the his­tor­i­cal  knowl­edge of what it takes for Jews to sur­vive as a nation. Pales­tini­ans are unit­ed by their desire to have a nation. Smash­ing their lives will only build more hatred for Israel, leav­ing what­ev­er col­lec­tion of zealots suc­ceed Hamas as the only alternative.
Israel and its allies need to heed that when the reck­on­ing comes at the end of this lat­est and most hor­rif­ic – to date — round of sense­less carnage.
No mat­ter how much those of good will try to make the out­come a sen­si­ble and viable sce­nario, it will be total­ly depen­dent on think­ing about it now.
Will the les­son be learned?
Don’t count on it.

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