The IDF is a true citizens’ army. Look, my rabbi’s son was injured. I am only in the country 9 years and I can’t list just how many people I know who were in the heat of the conflict. So, there is overwhelming support for “keeping the boys safe.” That meant, in this conflict, that overwhelming support was used to protect soldiers in the field. There was widespread condemnation of the Army’s upper echelons after the Lebanon War in 2006 for not protecting the soldiers. I know for a fact that many soldiers were left in Lebanese vilages with little to eat and drink – and few ways to defend themselves. Israel received an unacceptable number of casualties. So, training was revised and doctrine was revamped.

However, there is also an acceptance that casualties will occur. One woman with a son in the conflict said on a TV show during the fighting that the government cannot make decisions based on the gut feelings in a mother’s belly.

That said, there is a great deal of remorse in mainstream Israeli circles about the extent of the Gaza casualties.

The “final”(and I say that only in quotes) moral issue now is whether you can fight your way to peace. Many say no, yet the long-term truce overtures by Hamas seem to indicate that Israel made its point emphatically. The independent media reports of declining enthusiasm in Gaza for Hamas’military/terrorist adventurousness suggests public opinion in Gaza may push Hamas to some sort of conciliatory stance. The question there is whether Hamas’ Gaza people will be able to withstand the pressure from Syria and Iran to keep to the “three No’s” of an earlier generation of Arab leaders: no negotiations, no recognition and no peace.

There was an excellent article in the New York Times today that looked at two of the points you raise: that Hamas fighters physically locate themselves and their arms in a way that endangers civilians, and that Israeli soldiers were at times apparently less discriminate in their targeting than they ought to have been. Ethan Bronner and Sabrina Tavernise, “In Shattered Gaza Town, Roots of Seething Split,” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/world/middleeast/04gaza.html?hp.

That said, I also heard anecdotally from friends about experiences of their sons in the war who said they did order attacks against targets when they saw or felt threats coming – and did not necessarily take care to make them as “surgical” as possible.

Further, I saw no discussion of the Hamas effort (cynical? calculated?) to embed its soldiers/fighters/gunmen/terrorists (call them what you will) in the civilian population in a seeming effort to help cause as many civilian casualties as possible in order for them to play the “victim” card with the global media and international community.

You steered clear of accusations and rhetoric, which I appreciated.

As you didn’t make blanket judgments or conclusions, let me say that if you place the justness of the war more on what Hamas MIGHT do if left unchecked, I think the past is something of a guide – but not wholly. Several years ago, when I worked at the Jerusalem Post, we received a briefing from Avi Dichter, then director of Israel’s Internal Security Agency (Shin Bet/Shabak). He told us how the range and accuracy of Palestinian missiles was increasing and predicted their growing ability to hit further and further into the Israeli heartland, and not just into the Gaza settlements that once were the “front line.”

You can believe intelligence officers or not, but clearly, the 40KM range of the rockets was 4x the original 10KM they could reach – and the almost unchecked pipeline of weapons from Iran, Syria, whomever – suggests that the “effectiveness” was increasing. And the supply was seeming unending, and the lack of response seemed to embolden Hamas to keep going.

Finally, the open cheering for Hamas from Syria and Iran suggested to Israelis just how much Hamas is a proxy for Iranian adventurousness. It has been stated since the war by serious thinkers here and elsewhere that the force and effectiveness of the Israeli response did, in fact, restore deterrence and achieve most of Israel’s “justified” goals.

So, while it seems from your perspective that purely punitive actions not intended to “correct” or limit potential future behavior are not justified, Israel, I believe, was moral and proportionate in its response to the threats from the future. Of course, if nothing ever happens (hah), then we will never know just how effective Israel was – or will we?

Some additional resources (if you don’t mind a plug) from the Shalom Hartman Institute (http://hartman.org.il) in Jerusalem, a Jewish policy/ethics think tank, one of whose senior fellows, Moshe Halbertal, was among the authors of the Israeli Army ethics policy. Plus several pieces by Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman before (worried about his soldier/son and facing his own dilemma of patriotism and parenting), during (the war’s ethics and the ethical conduct of Israel’s Army), and after (what to do now that the shooting has – mostly – stopped).