Turns out Israel's attack on Gaza was worth it! -Jackson Diehl

Monday's op-ed page in the Post brought "Israel's Gaza Vindication" by deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl. Diehl is a big hawk, particularly on all things Latin America, and Iraq, too. On Israel, he is sometimes less than 100% crazy, though not that much.

Today's column was a re-examination of Israel's attack on Gaza. Turns out the war was worth it! It did lots of good, says Diehl, and the costs weren't really that bad:

But what of the grievous Palestinian suffering in the invasion -- Israel itself counted 1,166 dead Gazans, including more than 450 civilians -- and the international backlash that has caused? Just last week a U.N. commission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone condemned what it called "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," and suggested that responsible Israelis be hauled before the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.

Israel's leaders worried a lot about losing the war that way. But as they see it, they suffered only scratches. Egypt, which quietly collaborates with Israel's blockade of Gaza, came under pressure to change its policy but held firm. No Arab country toughened its stance toward Israel: According to the Obama administration, as many as five may be willing to offer diplomatic and economic concessions if Israel freezes its West Bank settlement construction.

Perhaps most significant, Hamas's rival for Palestinian leadership, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, is considerably stronger than it was before the war. Probably it will renew peace talks with Israel within weeks. As for the Goldstone report, the heat it briefly produced last week will quickly dissipate; the panel was discredited from the outset because of its appointment by the grotesquely politicized U.N. Human Rights Council.

So there you have it. The feared costs turned out not to be!

So what are the lessons learned here, for talking about, hypothetically, attacking Iran?

As they quietly debate the pros and cons of launching a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel's political and military leaders no doubt will be thinking about that history. That doesn't mean they will discount American objections -- Iran would be a far harder and more complex target, with direct repercussions for U.S. troops and critical interests in the region. But, as with Gaza, even a partial and short-term reversal of the Iranian nuclear program may look to Israelis like a reasonable benefit -- and the potential blowback overblown.

So there we have it, an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation is now termed "a short-term reversal of the Iranian nuclear program" -- a program that, remember, US intelligence does not, as of last update, believe to have a weapons purpose.