Quandary for Liberal Jews

I have quite a few friends who fall into the "liberal Jewish" political activist lexicon. The situation between Israel and Lebanon seems to be giving them fits of anxiety as they sort through their feelings, beliefs, and emotions.These aren't easy days for my friends. After working against the pre-emptive war policies of Bush and Cheney for five+ years all of a sudden they see Israel adopting similar strategy and it creates an inner conflict.

I think there are definitely similarities between what Washington and Tel Aviv are doing. Taking the attitude that any potential threat must be eliminated with decisive, pre-emptive military action Israel attacked Lebanon with undue force, just as the US did in Iraq. Being against the Iraq war then watching Israel adopt this same tactic seems to be sincerely distressing these folks, understandably. They want to support Israel unilaterally and without question.

Of course Israel's position is if it's ok for America to do this it's ok for us also. Hard to argue. I've warned for several years that this would be one of the unintended consequences of this foreign policy. How long until some country uses it against us?

I believe the best method of resolving this conundrum is to look at the leadership. Rather than criticize Israel criticize its leadership. Ariel Sharon has been engaged in a brutal siege of Gaza for years and his successor Ehud Olmert has continued the policy. Of course all this arose from the Palestinians' refusal to sign a peace accord in 2001, and you can go back tit for tat for decades. The Mid-east situation is quite complex and everything is inter-related, but the Israeli response to the kidnappings was completely based on U.S. doctrine.

My friends need to resolve their inner conflicts by continuing to oppose the One Percent Doctrine regardless of which country's irresponsible leadership adopts it, whether that is Israel, Iran, Russia, or North Korea.