Israel, The Bad

For years, I used to maintain that Israel was 'the good guys' in the fight with the Palestinians, because when they would conduct operations against Palestinian terror groups, Hamas, etc., they would take precautions to attempt to protect the lives of civilians. They wouldn't always be successful, in large part because the terrorists would conduct their operations from bases located in residential areas, often located inside civilian residential buildings.

This is still mostly the case, I believe, although the Israeli Defense Forces were quite hamhanded in Lebanon last summer, and quite unsuccessful in keeping their hands clean. However, by comparison with, say, Hamas, who specifically targets civilians, the IDF are absolute saints.

Unfortunately, I don't think it really matters anymore. It used to be the case that it was acceptable and unavoidable for there to be some 'collateral damage' in such military operations. Never a good thing, but acceptable. The trick was to keep the populace from getting so angry that true civil conflicts could be ignited. Unfortunately, with Al Jazeera, video cell phones, and the internet, this kind of anger, which might have been kept in check historically, has a way of percolating, gathering, and building its own momentum.

Add into this the fact that, whereas it might have once taken tens of thousands of people to cause serious damage, it now might take hundreds, or even dozens. And, someday soon, you can envision a few biogeneticists locked in a room unleashing something much, much worse. These conditions combine to make a world where it's no longer a functional strategy to bomb a house with 3 terrorists and 9 civilians. If the PR fallout ends up pissing off 5 people enough that they want to become suicide bombers, you've lost.

The good news is there are strategies and smart ideas floating around as to how Israel might defend herself in more productive fashions than they have been. The bad news is, she hasn't seemed too interested in finding out about them just yet.