What we are witnessing in Israel’s deadly attack on Gaza today is really at the intersection of many different things.

First, it is a particularly deadly campaign stunt. Israel’s current government is led by the Kadima party. Kadima started out as the personal political vehicle of Ariel Sharon. Sharon was known as the Butcher of Beirut and was a notable hawk in Israeli politics. He eventually came to the view that the best way to deal with the Palestinians was to wall them off from Israel and to forget about them. This walling off process necessarily entailed taking a fair amount of what little land remained to the Palestinians. It says a lot about America’s political elites and media that they considered these views not only moderate and reasonable but clear evidence that Sharon was a man of peace. It says even more about Israeli politics that Sharon’s plan was criticized by his country’s right.

This brings up my second point. Although it is hard to imagine, Israel’s political leaders are even more intellectually and morally bankrupt than our own. After Sharon had a brain hemorrhage, most of Kadima’s raison d’être disappeared but such was the dearth of leadership that it continued on as the principal party in Israeli politics. Sharon was replaced by Ehud Olmert. It was he who decided to initiate the disastrous bombing campaign and invasion of Lebanon in July-August 2006, which devastated that country to no purpose and led to Israel’s strategic and embarrassing defeat by Hezbollah. Yet despite widespread charges of incompetence, the absence of any saner alternative to Olmert allowed him to hold on to power for two more years until a long simmering corruption scandal finally brought him down. With elections approaching, Kadima’s principal rival was Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, a well dressed Israeli fascist. As for the Labor party, it is largely a spent force and was further weakened by its participation in inept coalition governments with Kadima.

Israel’s right which makes up most of the country’s political spectrum is a strange and deeply unsettling place seldom visited by American politicians and media precisely because of the great ugliness that resides there. It has a religious component which begins somewhere around Sarah Palin and goes to places that we would think they were kidding except they are not. It also has a neocon wing. Even Labor which is often thought of (mistakenly) as left of center on national security issues is filled with them. Those in Kadima are, as Sharon was, even harder line. And then there is Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu even beyond them. Netanyahu does not see Palestinians as people but as enemies. He is not interested in peace but in defeating those he sees as his enemies. His is a vision of endless war because the alternative for him would be to actually acknowledge the rights of the Palestinian people but these he sees as an existential threat and is completely unwilling to address them. With Netanyahu in power the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran would greatly increase as well. Since conventional forces would be ineffective, there is a real risk that such a strike would be nuclear in nature. Now this may sound crazy, and it is, but as I said before this is the nitty gritty of Israeli politics that our politicians and media refuse to look at because it would be hard to defend even for them.

Kadima killed 155 Palestinians today to show to potential Likud voters that they can be just as tough on the Palestinians as Likud. This wasn’t a military strike about some inaccurate and largely ineffective missiles. It wasn’t even about Hamas and its control of Gaza. This was, in fact, a murderous form of political advertizing and electioneering.

Third, this brutal and unnecessary attack raises larger issues. There are always larger issues. The US financial meltdown as well as fallout from the Madoff scandal will hamper traditional financial support for Israel by Jewish Americans. Israel’s own economy will likely be hit hard by the global recession. Given the kneejerk backing by our political elites, Israel should still receive its current support from the US government but this will be insufficient to make up for the shortfalls in other areas. Less money means that divisions within Israeli society are likely to increase as various groups try to hold on to their pieces of a shrinking pie. One of the principal ways Israelis have managed to avoid dealing with the issue of Palestine is because they have been largely insulated from the consequences of their policies there. They have lived in a bubble of prosperity. With the world recession this will become increasingly difficult for them to do.

Today’s attack also shows just how worthless Bush and Condoleezza Rice’s policies with regard to Israel-Palestine have been. I have chronicled for years Rice’s ridiculous and absurd announcements on talks for talks about talks to begin discussions leading to the creation of a framework to begin talks on by this point who knows or cares. As for Bush his interest and effectiveness was made manifest in the November 2007 Annapolis peace conference. It lasted all of a day. Bush showed up briefly to give a speech and even after being President for 7 years still managed to mispronounce both the names of Olmert (Ehud Elmo) and Mahmoud Abbas (Mahoomed Abbas). The problem is that our policies will remain heavily skewed toward Israel. Despite Israel having 200 nuclear weapons, Obama, Biden, and Clinton have repeated their determination for the US to defend a country that can defend itself. This is underlined by Obama’s Middle East adviser Dennis Ross. Ross is a Jewish American neocon with strong ties to both Israel and its lobbies in this country. It would be hard to imagine someone less even handed than he. But that is another blind spot of our elites. They think he is. Yet can anyone imagine a similar acceptance of a Palestinian American if one held a similar position with Obama? This lack of balance has led along with Iraq to a loss of credibility, loss of prestige, and general failure of policy in the region. The Israeli attack on Gaza was just another example of this.

Finally, Israel’s attack today shows again that the two state solution is dead. Israel is in a classic colonizer’s paradox. It would like to put in place a political and security structure in the territories it occupies, that it can deal with on its terms. But for any political leaders and security forces to have any legitimacy in the eyes of the subject population, they must be willing to oppose the colonizer. As a result, the colonizing country always ends up destroying genuine homegrown leadership and is left with either a group of collaborationists with no credibility or an increasingly radicalized opposition –as each succeeding group of leaders is done away with. Yet Israel has persisted in replaying this paradox over and over again for decades. It has steadfastly refused to allow any distinct leadership to form in the Territories.

At the same time, it is unclear if the Territories ever could have been economically and politically viable on their own but it is evident today that they are basket cases and that their viability is now impossible. Beyond this are the demographics. Israel is effectively incarcerating a huge and growing fraction of the population that lives on the land it controls. It has been doing so for 40 years but at some point the apparatus of that prison system will become too expensive or too shameful to maintain and it will collapse. Pressures on this system will only increase with the worldwide economic downturn, the relative drying up of American aid, and the sheer number and wants of Israel’s subject population. Israel like our own state is based on a fatally flawed premise. As we found out in our own history, we could not exist half slave and half free. Nor can they, half prisoner and half citizen. At some point, Israel will have to come to terms with itself and this will include the acceptance of the fact that the Palestinians of the Territories are Israelis too. I do not expect this to be easy or painless, but, as the fairy tale of the two state solution fades in the light of reality, it will be this or a charnel house.