Americans generally have little appreciation for Israel’s situation, mindset, or importance. This lack of understanding causes Americans to underestimate the lengths and costs that Israel will (and should) go to in order to protect themselves.

Israel is a small country with a relatively small population surrounded by hateful neighbors who explicitly call for the eradication of Israel and all Jews. Against such enemies, the only possible posture is the ability to bring overwhelming force to bear on a conflict.

Unlike the USA, which mistakenly doesn’t seem to understand or care about being viewed as weak, Israel knows that its very existence depends on maintaining actual and perceived strength.

So, claims by the Russians that Israel’s response to the murder of its soldiers in southern Lebanon is “disproportionate” or cries by Kofi Anan about his being “deeply alarmed at the escalation of violence” fall on deservedly deaf ears in Tel Aviv. The Israeli leaders know that a military response of any sort will generate criticism from the perma-anti-Semites. But more importantly they realize that paying attention to the critics risks their world.

Hezbollah was probably trying, at Iran’s urging, to help Hamas by distracting Israel. But the lesson Israel learned instead was that “they (Hizbollah) misinterpreted our restraint for the last six years.” In other words, no more Mr. Nice Guy.

Hezbollah’s reputation and funding, i.e. its existence, requires that it not back down from this confrontation. Conversely, Israel’s existence as well as the confidence in its military (both from within the military itself and within the civilian population) requires merciless retaliation against the terrorists, no matter what that takes.

It is thus likely that Israel will go further into Lebanon, do tremendous damage to Hezbollah-controlled areas, and then maintain control of enough of southern Lebanon to buffer against rockets attacks on Haifa and northern Israel.

Stratfor notes the following in their analysis:

Most important, Israel is calling up its reserves. This is never a symbolic gesture in Israel. All Israelis below middle age are in the reserves and mobilization is costly in every sense of the word. If the Israelis were planning a routine reprisal, they would not be mobilizing. But they are, which means they are planning to do substantially more than retributive airstrikes. The question is what their plan is.

The most interesting question is whether Syria will get involved. If they do, their army and air force will be destroyed within a matter of hours, and it is likely that Israel will try to kill the worthless Bashar Assad. When Syria’s military is destroyed, that will cause Iran to consider whether to get involved. While Iran will realize that it is militarily a terrible idea to get involved, they have repeatedly used such aggressive rhetoric that they will look quite bad to their Islamic radical followers if they do nothing. It will be a difficult decision for them. If Iran attacks Israel, I would expect the US to retaliate from Iraq.

As my friend Christopher noted, Iran went through many years of war with Iraq without ever suffering a serious military reprisal on its home territory, i.e. an attack which at least temporarily wrecked the lives of a significant number of Iranian people. “The joy of carpet bombing by a B-52” is a lesson the Iranians might have to learn in order to take more seriously the risk of their actions. I truly hope it does not come to this, as much as I would like to see Iran take a beating.

In any case, I expect the situation in Lebanon to get much worse before it gets better, and if Syria gets involved we could be looking at a conflagration much larger than most Americans might imagine possible.

Finally, it is a minor thing, compared to the life and death significance of events in the middle east, but I would mention that these events are probably good news for the Republicans in upcoming elections. The more that Arab countries demonstrate the true hateful and dangerous nature of the region’s Islamic regimes, the better it is for the party that the public still views as more effective against terrorism even while they view the GOP less favorably on most other issues.