The current conflict between Israel and Palestine has brought all of our betters off of their couches to tweet about the injustice. Many of those in the twittersphere tend to align with the Palestinians, who they see as the oppressed underdog. They are forced to fire rockets (provided by Iran), and fly flaming balloons into Israel in their attempt to cause damage. One of the questions that comes to mind is “What the hell do they think they can achieve?”

They know that Israel is most likely going to retaliate, and the Palestinians know they cannot match the Israeli forces. So the only thing they can be fighting for is sentiment. They want Israel to attack, which will bring the elites out in droves to condemn the Jewish nation for using their overwhelming might against their enemy. The elites believe that like policing, there should be a sense of justice, of proportionality. However, in warfare there is no such thing.

Unlike policing, war is fought on several levels. There is the political, where diplomats and national leader maneuver. The strategic, that seeks to ensure resources and plans are in placed to support the political. The operational, where the planning of campaigns and placement of fronts occurs. And finally the tactical where engagements happen and blood gets shed.

Israel and the Palestinians are engaged in the same conflict, but trying to achieve victory on different levels. The Palestinians are merely using the tactical to influence the political. They know that they are destined to lose actual engagements. At least their leaders do. That is why they push their followers out into the streets to cause chaos, incite a response, and ultimately die. If children and other non-combatants are caught up in the fighting, so much the better. Their plans rely on the blood and gore making it into the press. The elites jumping on twitter to talk about justice, proportion, and the poor children is simply part of their planned effort.

The Israelis know this so they have every incentive to crush the Palestinians as harshly and quickly as possible. The shorter they can cut off the kinetic portion of warfare the less propaganda can be fed into the news cycle. They also have an interest to not only remove the weapons of the Palestinians, they need to also impact their will. They understand that this will look bad in the short term, but they don’t want to end up back here in the near future.

That is why any argument about the mighty crushing the weak is just part of the Palestinian effort. The elites may not know that they have been enlisted in the conflict, but they have.

That is also why Israel is right to ignore that front for now, and work quickly to dismantle the fighting network in Gaza. Until that part is over, the Palestinians can continue to wage their war with the obliging press, and the and gullible useful idiots on twitter.