The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides.
In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London Blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do.
But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians.
I agree with him, but I think it's not hard to find the wormhole to this alternate universe. As discussed here previously, many people's concept of "proportionate response" is precisely the opposite of the true meaning. They think it means don't kill more of them than they kill of you --which turns the whole concept precisely on its ear, since the idea is to discourage killing as such altogether, and get countries to focus on tactical achievements --doing no more than is necessary to defend themselves.
However, "proportionate response," in order to be morally justified, must also have a reasonable prospect of success, and that's where the two sides hyper-jump to alternate universes. Israel (and her defenders) wants to live in peace with her neighbors --and believes it is possible to do so.
I don't think her critics ultimately do believe in peace. Not that they don't sincerely wish for it (those who aren't mere manipulators of public opinion anyway), but they don't see any end to Arab hatred of Israel (and vice versa), and therefore conceive of "peace" not in any ultimate sense, but something analagous to getting little children to stop bickering. You break it up, try to minimize the damage they inflict on one another, and concentrate mostly on keeping them from accidentally hitting the baby --because you know it'll flare up again sooner or later; this is what childen do. Peace process as paternalism: if you see everything in the Middle East through the lens of the "cycle of violence, " the "protracted Arab-Israeli conflict," then Israel's response really is disproportionate. You get hit, you hit back and then you drop it until next time. That's all that's allowed.
Israel wants something different. It's at peace with Jordan. It's at peace with Egypt. Maybe the Jews & Arabs within the respective countries still don't really like or trust each other, but there aren't open hostilities, and that's a start. There was a time when if one of these "flare-ups" occurred every Arab state could be counted upon to denounce Israel and get involved in the conflict in some way. No more. Egypt, Jordan --even Saudi Arabia-- want no part in this. The lesson is: real peace is possible, not just ceasefire peace.
I note that of the two views of reality, it's the Israeli version that treats the Arab brother with most respect --as an equal in dignity and moral status, of whom much is expected. I never get the impression that the realpolitik crowd ultimately thinks much of Arabs, nor cares much what kind of lives they live under their terrible regimes --as long as they don't hassle us. We in the West historically have "helped" them by playing footsie with tyrants when it seemed to serve our purposes and trying to make sure there aren't so many of "them" --tying all our foreign aid to disgusting population control programs that offend religious and cultural sensibilities and tell them exactly how little we think of them. Where was the concern for the dignity of the human persons living in the Middle East in those policies?
Following the news for the past few weeks, I always keep in mind the Arab Christians I met in Israel this past February, and their insistence that the Western press fundamentally mistakes matters by reducing everything to "the intractable hatred between Arabs & Jews." Indeed they begged us to spread the word that the fundamental problem in the Middle East right now is not Arab-Jewish hatred, but Islamic fascism versus everyone else. When we stop seeing everything through the prism of Arab v. Jew --the paternal lens-- we get a different sense of what is happening. And we also get a different sense of what is possible.
