"It'll be 1945 Germany all over again, I swear it or my name isn't Reuel Marc Gerecht"

Via Jeffrey Goldberg, Reuel Marc Gerecht defends Israel's recent foray into Gaza. As for the move itself, I'm not going to comment just now; I have heard many competing speculations as to Israel's goals and motives, and an honest exploration of them would require its own post.

I do, however, take issue with Gerecht's reasoning. Broken down, his argument runs thus:

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"Islamic history is full of examples where terrorists/bandits/outlaw zealots were neutralized only through overwhelming force."

"This mechanic continues to hold true. Whether the Americans and the Israelis can bring themselves to use the amount of force necessary here is another matter, but it would work just as well now as it did then. It worked in Germany in World War II too, didn't it?"

"[vague hints at violence inherent in Islam], Israel had better be prepared for a long fight."
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Gerecht is framing things incorrectly, whether by accident or design, I won't speculate. You can trot out all the Islamic history you like, but the issue here is a much more basic one: forcing a people to collectively accept their defeat, thereby allowing themselves to be defeated.

His mention of Germany is the closest he comes to touching on the real issue, and not coincidentally it throws his errors into particularly harsh relief. Germany was defeated because the German people realized they stood alone on the brink of existential collapse. Her allies were either defeated or nearly so, and enemy armies occupied every inch of her territory.

Obviously, there are key differences between Germany in 1945 and Gaza in 2009--the religious aspect of the current conflict, plus the fact that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people as a sovereign state, and I'm sure there are many more. But Gerecht's comparison has already run off the rails in the area that counts most. The Israelis can crush Palestinian fighters in every battle they fight from now until eternity, but as long as the people of the surrounding Arab states remain sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, the Palestinians will never stop fighting. The moral support provided by fellow Muslims and Arabs, be they Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Saudi, Iraqi, Yemeni, etc. enables the Palestinian cause to easily endure the most crushing assaults Israel is willing to mount against it.

In effect, the Israelis are trying to make the entire Arab world accept defeat by repeatedly crushing a very small part of it. A more apt World War II comparison would be Germany's siege of Leningrad; no matter how much they pounded the besieged city, its inhabitants never gave in while there was a Soviet Union out there still fighting. Germany knew this, of course; they counted on the U.S.S.R.'s eventual defeat, rather than a costly direct battle for the city, to compel Leningrad's eventual surrender. They exhibited somewhat less wisdom in their incursion into Stalingrad, and paid dearly for it.

Now, Gerecht can easily align his 'overwhelming force' proposal with reality, as you readers may already have guessed. However, I doubt Gerecht himself would have the stomach to propose, let alone carry out, what would truly be necessary for an Israeli 'victory.' There are actually two routes Israel could take, both of them equally impossible in 2009.

First, they could massacre every single Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza. Aside from the difficulty of the logistics of this (NBC weapons would affect Israelis and Israeli land; conventional weapons would be very hard pressed to do a sufficiently thorough job), modern communications plus international politics--and, one would hope, basic human morality--rule out this approach.

Second, Israel could invade, occupy, and isolate every single Muslim Middle Eastern country. 'Isolate' meaning the total communications and media blackout necessary to engender the sort of hopelessness-inducing loneliness required to properly pacify a conquered population. Again, even if the Israelis had the manpower to make this approach work, international opinion renders it a non-starter.

If it's a military solution you want, anything less than either of these is doomed to failure from the beginning. I hope Gerecht is simply wrong rather than purposely deceptive; I can't imagine why anyone would deliberately advocate for a policy using reasoning they knew to be faulty and incorrect. If he still believes in it, I'd like to hear a proper reason.