Gershom Gorenberg writes that both the Israeli government and Hamas made choices that led to bloodshed, and neither side was able to see its full range of options:
In war, I thought after I left them, the mind focuses like a telephoto lens. It sees a small picture, without depth, in sharp detail. Any panoramic view is lost. The pictures are stills, without before and after. This is the way people think when a rocket launched from Gaza hits an empty school in Beersheba, an Israeli city that until recently was out of range, or when an Israeli bomb hits a house in a Jabalya refugee camp, killing at least 15 women and children along with a Hamas leader. An e-mail I received from an Israeli human-rights group, based on phone calls from Gaza, described incidents in which Palestinian medical crews were struck by Israeli fire. Each story was reduced to a single sentence of horror. They left no room for Israeli mistakes (though most Israeli combat deaths, so far, are due to mistaken Israeli fire) or for an Israeli reason for going to war.
Read the rest here. --The Editors
