Roma 2014. (Photo: Denis Bocquet / Flickr Creative Commons)There is an art to war and there is an art to selling war—to one’s own people and the world at large.
Israel is a master on both tracks. When we speak of the “only democracy” in the Middle East, it is often forgotten—perhaps deliberately—that the country is run by a War or “Security” Cabinet. It is, and has been a military regime with as many powerful religious fanatics as its Iranian nemesis.
Since proclaiming its “independence” in 1948, Israel has remained dependent on a large, now over-$3-billion-per-annum-and-counting "foreign aid” payment from the United States—far, far more than many poor countries receive that desperately need that aid.
Supplementing this subsidy, Israel has its own advanced military industrial and technology complex, upgrading and customizing weaponry in military and aerospace industries.
Israel's current escalation of the war on Gaza is only the latest, following on the heels of seven “recognized” wars, two Palestinian intifadas, many reprisal operations and countless covert operations including interventions and assassinations.
Israel's capacity to punish and its willingness to use advanced weapons in areas dense with civilians like Gaza is terrifying and by design. The U.S. may have used “shock and awe” in Iraq to launch its war there, but Israel has routinized it with 2,360 air strikes in its 2008-2009 “Cast Lead” campaign in Gaza alone. So far there have been l,000 in this bloody blitzkrieg. Is it any surprise that, of all Israel's military branches, it is the Air Force that is dominated by extremists and West Bank settlers?
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