Glenn on Friedman's latest:

The war strategy which Friedman is heralding -- what he explicitly describes with euphemism-free candor as "exacting enough pain on civilians" in order to teach them a lesson -- is about as definitive of a war crime as it gets. It also happens to be the classic, textbook definition of "terrorism."

Two things. One, perhaps the thing that irks me most about Tom Friedman is that everything - everything - is an abstract, academic exercise to him. It's not just that Friedman is endorsing state-sanctioned terrorism; it's the detachment with which he considers whether Israel's aim is "the education of Hamas or the eradication of Hamas" and the carefree way he "hopes" Israel is killing civilians for the right reason. We can all hope for the day when Friedman's uncanny optimism in the face of horror no longer holds sway over our public discourse.

Secondly, and more importantly, I reiterate that the belief among many Israelis and Americans, that Palestinian opponents of Israel can be "taught" to accept their permanent defeat, is disingenuous and counter-productively dehumanizing.

Take the comments of American journalist and former Israeli government official Zev Chafets on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show on Monday:

I think if I were a Palestinian I might feel some animosity toward Hamas [rather than toward Israel]. .... Hamas after all was elected by the Palestinians. That was their choice, and they knew what Hamas was about...It's in their platform. So if I elected somebody who wanted to shoot at an enemy that was ten times or a hundred times stronger than me, and I pissed off that enemy so much that that enemy responded with real force, I think I might blame the idiot that started firing at the enemy in the first place.

Yes, you might. I blame the Bush administration for provoking a whole host of damaging actions by other countries and extremists around the world. But if the Bush administration had succeeded in provoking a war with Iran, and Iran then unleashed unfathomable destruction on the United States and bombed us into helplessness, it is absolutely ludicrous to suggest that I would then willingly submit to the will of Ayatollah Khamenei because I blamed my government for "starting it."

Of course, that would never happen, because Iran lacks the military might to best the United States in a war. But that's precisely the point. Only powerful countries are able to make the argument that the weak will one day recognize and accept their fundamental weakness...because we equate our power with what we believe to be our fundamental goodness.

Every powerful country in history has subscribed to the belief that its power comes from its goodness. Both the U.S. and Israel were once weak, matched against powers perceived as infinitely stronger. We celebrate our ancestors' determination to stand up against those powers - indeed, the idea that we fight for what's right no matter the odds is a central tenet of Americans' national self-perception. To suggest that, were we Palestinians, we would "learn the lesson" of Israel's massive use of force, is the height of disingenuousness...and only serves to illustrate an inability to see the Palestinians as equally human.