I know it's rather pollyannish to say something like, "Deep down we're all the same." But what if such a sentiment were actually conducive to a hard-nosed, realist foreign policy? Besides, when to be pollyannish if not New Year's?

The U.S. and Israel share a language about terrorism, and the most common refrain is, "Every country has a right to defend itself." And indeed, who can argue with that? Here's NYC Mayor Bloomberg, in a gratuitous media availability with Israel's Consul General at City Hall Tuesday, delivering the Israel/U.S. position:

Until Hamas stops lobbing rockets into Israel, I think Israel has an obligation to its people, just as the U.S. government would have to its people, to respond and do everything possible to end the threat.

Alright, Mr. Mayor. But is Israel doing "everything possible" to end the threat, to keep its citizens safe? After all, more Israelis are dying now that Israel has escalated the conflict. Putting aside one's feelings on who's at fault, or who's more right, in this conflict (and I don't personally have a cut-and-dried view - as my late stepmother used to say, "They're all meshugah over there"), I don't think it's clear that Israel's actions even accomplish its ostensible immediate goal: ending the threat and protecting its citizens.

I understand the attraction for Israel of using overwhelming force. Quick, massive shows of force served the country well in its earlier history. But the current strategy in Gaza - much like the "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq - is implicitly premised on a view of the Palestinians as fundamentally different from "us."

The desired outcome of overwhelming force is that the enemy will recognize the hopelessness of further resistance and give in to the demands of the superior force. But both the U.S. and Israel are countries whose national mythologies are built on the battle cry of resisting superior, but unjust, forces. We understand better than most the mindset of Palestinians whose will to fight Israel is only cemented by further Israeli attacks. Yet Israel bases its military strategies on the premise that the Palestinians will at some point see that their position is untenable and give up.

Said Defense Minister Ehud Barak over the weekend about the Israeli operations in Gaza:

I don't see any other way for Hamas to change its behavior.

Barak may not be able to see any other way - but his government has chosen the one way that has consistently, without fail, not caused any Palestinian group to change its behavior - that has, in fact, consistently caused them to redouble their commitment.

I'm not suggesting that Israel is wrong on moral grounds. My argument here holds whether or not you think Israel is right. If the goal is to be right no matter how much more violence and bloodshed is involved, then Israel can do whatever it wants. But if the goal is less violence, Israel would do well to consider its opponents as more like Israelis.

Many if not most Israelis and Americans believe, and have every right to believe, that Palestinians' fight against Israel has nothing whatsoever in common with their own nations' fights for independence and security. But it does nothing for Israel's security to refuse to acknowledge that Palestinians see themselves that way.

Speaking on On Point on New Year's Eve, Aaron David Miller said there's a rigorous logic to the Israeli/American position: Gazans will realize that Hamas is bringing this destruction on them and that they must throw their support to a government willing to negotiate on Israel's terms. But this willfully ignores all the evidence that the vast majority of Gazans have always, and almost certainly will always, side more forcefully with Hamas when attacked. As Miller put it (paraphrasing), "Americans are experts in seeing the world as we'd like it to be, rather than seeing the world as it is...and the Israelis are getting pretty good at it too."

After all, American supporters of Israel's current actions like to pose the hypothetical, If we were being shelled from Canada or Mexico, wouldn't we do the same thing? Most likely - but they refuse to acknowledge that, if we were we militarily outmatched by, and being bombed by, Canada or Mexico, we would respond exactly as Hamas has. Any policy that fails to take this into account - that the Palestinians are essentially "like us" - is doomed.