Oren: One of the principal mistakes was the assumption that you could take out rocket fire with air power. You may recall that in 2006, Israel waited really until the last days to send in its armies, by which time it was too little, too late. Now, Israeli ground forces have been actively engaged for several days, and they are reducing rocket fire. It’s a very, very difficult task. These rockets can be fired from tripods basically anywhere. Hamas has fired them from schools, from neighborhoods, very difficult to get—so they really have to go in there and ferret them out. In addition, another lesson of Lebanon: don’t make great pronouncements about your goals. The Israeli government in 2006 said its goal was to destroy Hezbollah, to disarm Hezbollah, and was unable to do that. Israel had captive soldiers in Lebanon; so the goal was to release those captives. And we have a captive in Gaza, Corporal Gilad Shalit. He’s been there, oh, for two-and-a-half years now. But the Israeli government has not said that the explicit goal of this operation is to free him. It has not said that its explicit goal is to crush Hamas. It wants to deal it a defeat but not eliminate it. That’s not the goal.

And so they’re being much more modest. And I think there’s also a sense that from Lebanon that Israel doesn’t have all the time in the world. There is an international diplomatic dynamic that is set into motion the minute fighting breaks out here. And eventually, the international community will step in and impose a ceasefire. So Israel’s also working against the clock. That’s a lesson of Lebanon.

Hewitt: Now another thing you wrote in The Australian column is that in response to all of these arguments that Israel is using disproportionate force, since it’s going to be condemned for it anyway, you wrote, why shouldn’t Israel smash Hamas promptly and massively, and reap the benefits in terms of self-respect, deterrence, and a respite for its embattled citizens? Is there a calculation, is Israel holding back right now? 

Oren: Well, Israel is always holding back. We have a very, very large army. We have many hundreds, perhaps even thousands of tanks and cannons and aircraft, and we’re using only a small fraction of that tonight in Gaza. We often get accused of using disproportionate force here, and that D-word appeared on the first day of the war. Force is only disproportionate if the army had achieved its goals and was still bombing Gaza. We haven’t achieved our goals yet. We have to use the requisite amount of force to try to end the bombing of our cities. And Israel also has invested very, very heavily in civil defense. It’s one of the reasons our casualties are so low. The Palestinians have not invested a dime in civil defense. They have no bomb shelters. They have no air raid sirens. And Israel probably shouldn’t be penalized for having invested so heavily in the safety of its citizens. So there’s that feeling here.

Hewitt: There’s an argument made on this program by Glenn Greenwald of Salon that, look at the slaughter—you’ve got of hundreds of Palestinians versus a handful of Israelis killed. It’s got to be disproportionate. That’s from his articles. What do you respond to that? 

Oren: My response is if you used that argument in World War II, America would have lost it. America had to use a massive amount of force to win the war. If it hadn’t used that force, it wouldn’t have won the war—and it was overwhelming force. There was no complaint about it, I think, among the American people at the time. The same thing is true here. We will use the amount of force that is necessary to stop rocket fire on our civilians….