Can You Say, "Overkill"?

If Fred Rogers were alive today – and spoke fluent Hebrew – would he be saying this to the Israeli government?

I don’t begrudge Israel the right to defend itself, but you can’t tell me there isn’t a proportion problem involved in its response to the Hamas-fired rockets coming from Gaza. This is the most densely populated place on Earth, so it’s said, and Israel’s “surgical” air strikes to damage Hamas can’t help but kill civilians. The sheer number of them seems to have another purpose, what we in the U.S. call shock and awe. And if there isn’t enough awe inspired, Israel might launch a ground invasion.

Does Israel think that its military response is somehow going to liberate Gaza from Hamas domination? It’s more likely to have the opposite effect: uniting the Palestinians and drawing in support for them from other players in the region.

What has Israel offered to Gaza as an alternative to Hamas? During a discussion I heard on CNN this week, it was noted that while Gaza is firing rockets at Israel, there’s been no such aggression from the other Palestinian enclave, the West Bank. According to the commentators, this is because the West Bank actually has something resembling a middle class, for whom revolution isn’t top-of-mind.

Perhaps the Israeli government believes that Gazans deserve their misery for electing Hamas as their own leaders in the first place, so the place is left to fester. I once compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, which, of course, is seriously unfair. Even so, you would think that having the Warsaw Ghetto in its experience might make Israel a little more sensitive to what happens to millions of desperate people crammed into a small space.

At what point will Israel finally conclude that its message has been sent? We can only hope that point comes soon.