Fanaticism dominates in Israel

News bulletin: Israel is a foreign country.

Foreign countries have their own interests, which aren?t necessarily those of the United States. It?s not our obligation to fight their battles, particularly when their actions are brutal, rash, foolhardy and appear calculated to force a wider war that?s definitely no good for Americans, nor, ultimately, for Israelis.

Which is not to indicate sympathy for the tactics of Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that scarcely existed until Israel?s abortive 1982 invasion ?radicalized? the beaten-down Lebanese peasants on the Israeli border. Nor of Hamas, its Sunni counterpart in Gaza. Terrorist strikes against Israeli civilians are morally abhorrent and politically stupid, engendering contempt and rage.

So are bombing strikes against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, like those Israel?s been conducting with great ferocity. Advocates for both sides claim the imprimatur of almighty God, whom fanatics often invoke when killing children.

The Israelis claim they do everything they can to avoid civilian casualties. Evidently, they?re quite bad at it, because for all the publicity given what their enemies call ?martyrdom operations,? Palestinian deaths outnumber Israeli deaths by more than 10-to-1.

It used to be more like 20-to-1, but as Hezbollah?s successful raid on an Israeli army outpost showed, the militias are getting ever more ?professional.? Ironically, attacks on purely military targets started the latest round of reciprocal atrocities in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel.

Remember the ?Cedar Revolution?? How long ago were Bush loyalists enjoining us to hail the advent of democracy in Lebanon? Now we?re to applaud its destruction. Many of the same neoconservative thinkers who sold President Simple on bringing democracy to Iraq now envision an even more grandiose project.

Writing in the Weekly Standard, the neoconservative house organ, editor William Kristol argues ?It?s Our War.?

?While Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. The right response is renewed strength ? in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.?

Ah, regime change! How?s that going in Iraq? In Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, masked attackers with machine guns mounted on pickup trucks massacred more than 40 civilians at a crowded street market. ?They did not spare anyone,? an Iraqi policeman told The Washington Post. ?Not the children. Not the elderly. The Iraqi army did not interfere.?

Neither did the American Army, which many Iraqis now bitterly call ?the Jews.? U.S. commanders said they refrained from acting because Mahmudiyah?s the responsibility of Iraqi forces, which requested no backup, allowing lunatics with machine guns to move about at will. The Post also reported that 628 people were killed in Baghdad last week, ?a figure that far exceeded the numbers previously suggested by news reports.?

Since President Simple?s famously averse to reading, somebody ought to put a world map in front of him before he signs off on World War III. After all, a map?s a kind of picture. Check out your own Mercator projection: attacking Syria and Iran would put the United States in the position of simultaneously fighting every nation between the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the Himalayas.

To be blunt, that would be simply insane. The anvil, metaphorically speaking, would eventually break the hammer. If this crisis teaches us nothing else, it should be that our president is being advised by crazy people.

Americans have countenanced Israeli extremism far too long.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner. You can e-mail Lyons at [email protected].