Jonathan Levy said the following:

“Your suggestion (”convey the impression that the Qassam rocket attacks have been nothing but inconsequental pin pricks”) would certainly be the way to go against Hamas. However, this is impossible for several reasons. The damage of the rockets must be stressed, not deprectaed, in order to:
1) Justify the attacks to the outside world.
2) Justify the Palestinian casualties for the Israeli audience.
3) Justify Israeli casualties (soldiers) for the Israeli audience.
4) Internal cohesion. Israelis (myself included) feel terribly guilty for living their lives calmly while their brothers in the south are under fire.”

Jonathan sums up the political situation nicely, i.e. it’s multidimensional. Israel’s problem with its Arab neighbors is much more complicated than America’s problem with Islamic fascism.

Immediately after 9/11, it seemed so obvious, i.e. locate the Islamic fascist enemy and promptly destroy them with minimal American losses. Unfortunately as we got deeper into the process we realized that we were actually fighting two enemies, i.e. the Islamic fascists and our own moonbats. Dealing with the Islamic fascists was actually easier because we only had to kill them. Unfortunately with moonbats, killing them wasn’t an option (they were often times neighbors, coworkers and family members). We had to reason with the moonbats and justify our actions while attempting to kill as many Islamic fascists as possible. This was a ridiculous situation. Despite our successes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the moonbats won in the end (Obama will soon be President). Again, Israel’s situation is much worse than what we have in the United States. We Americans might eventually lose a couple cities to the Islamic fascists but still survive as a nation. Israel does not have that option.

How does Israel manage this political balancing act and survive? I’ll be watching with considerable interest.