'Who is the David here?'

The following quote, buried near the end of Ethan Bronner's New York Times story on the Israeli perspective on the war in Gaza, pretty well captures the conundrum posed by this and all modern asymmetric warfare. Bronner quotes Moshe Halbertal, whom he describes as a "left-leaning professor of philosophy":

“Rockets from Hamas could eventually reach all of Israel,” he said. “This is not a fantasy. It is a real problem. So there is a gap between actual images on the screen and the geopolitical situation.

“You have Al Jazeera standing at Shifa Hospital and the wounded are coming in,” he continued, referring to an Arab news outlet. “So you have this great Goliath crushing these poor people, and they are perceived as victims. But from the Israeli perspective, Hamas and Hezbollah are really the spearhead of a whole larger threat that is invisible. Israelis feel like the tiny David faced with an immense Muslim Goliath. The question is: who is the David here?”

He's right. That is the question. Who is the David? Is it Hamas? The Palestinians in general? Israel? What about in the conflict between the United States and its adversaries in the "War on Terror"? I think the answer is that the Davids are civilians everywhere who have little to no control over the military-industrial complexes of wealthy nations like the U.S. and Israel, on the one hand, and homicidal mad men armed with dangerous weapons like the leaders (and most devoted followers) of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda on the other. Like Andrew Bacevich, I'm very skeptical about our ability to alter this dynamic in any meaningful way. As in Israel, the majority of Americans seem to be perfectly comfortable with the notion of inflicting massive civilian casualties on the populations of other countries. Nations whose people think in this manner have truly lost their way.