Israel, over and over again, fights two wars. The first,
the military war, it does with great force and tactical victories, but ultimately equivocal results. The second, the
media war, it loses repeatedly, invariably strengthening its enemies, and diminishing, if not eliminating, all of its tactical gains.
The suspense about Israel's massive attack on Gaza is not about the military outcome but about where public opinion comes out. Is the state of Israel, once again, monstrous, or, in a positive turnaround, astute? (It is way too much to hope that it might ever be seen as sympathetic.)
There are two historic pillars to Israel's media strategy from which, in all its history, it has not deviated. In the first, it assumes that military might and victory will, as it did at the dawn of the Jewish state, scare and impress the rest of the world. In the second, it assumes that the media war doesn't matter if it continues to win it in the United States.
The fact that Israel has repeated this approach in a fashion that is nearly surreal suggests a pathology that can only be missed by the state of Israel itself, and, likewise, US politicians and media.
Indeed, Israel's decision to once again do what it has always done may well have something to do with its worry that
Barack Obama has a lot of people thinking that this might be a time for change in American foreign policy when it comes to Israel-Palestine.
Hence, now is the time to launch a war, when it can still be under George Bush's auspices, and Barack will inherit it as a fait accompli.
Israel's other point seems to have something to do with the power of constancy and risk management. After all, Israel still exists, therefore it must be doing something right, no? If you experiment, if you negotiate, if you accommodate, no telling what unknowable results you encourage. So, continue to do the same thing, trusting that a broken clock is right twice a day.
Curiously, there are some signs, or at least an ever-optimistic belief, that Israel has found an advantageous circumstance for its current conflagration. That is, the established regimes in the region will show some appreciation to Israel for having knocked back a peg an increasingly-powerful Hamas. This is nuts, of course, and, as likely, Hamas emerges with, at the very least, a renewed mythology.
And Israel is left once again, in the department of nothing changes, as a weird exception to sense and logic to which the US has, long ago throwing up its own hands, acceded.
