Syndicated columnist Richard Cohen declared in the Washington Post on Tuesday that an-eye-for-an-eye would be a hopelessly wimpy policy for the Israeli government.

“Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness,” he wrote. “For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy’s back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to reestablish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.”

Cohen likes to sit in front of a computer and use flip phrases like “punch out your lights” as euphemisms for burning human flesh and bones with high-tech weapons, courtesy of American taxpayers.

In mid-November 1998, when President Clinton canceled plans for air attacks on Iraq after Saddam Hussein promised full cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, Cohen wrote: “Something is out of balance here. The Clinton administration waited too long to act. It needed to

Special interests, lobbyists, pay to play...  64 percent of California's voters say that campaign contributions have had a negative effect on public policy decisions and 78 percent believe that the state government benefits special interests more than our citizens. Apparently, the other 22% have never read a newspaper. 

If you’re sick of politics as usual, then Proposition 89, the Clean Money and Fair Elections Act is for you.  Prop 89 gives candidates a choice in financing their campaigns:  Either do what they do now, which is solicit large donations from wealthy individuals and corporations or, collect only small donations and receive public financing.  This proposition gives us voters a choice too.  We will be able to vote for candidates who spend their time begging for campaign money from those who demand expensive favors in return or for candidates who do not.

The “Clean Money and Fair Elections Act” is a dividing-line issue pitting the extremely rich, who want to keep politicians in their pockets and the rest of us, who want our representatives free from their control.  

As I write, Israelis troops are massing on the Lebanon border. I feel a deep sense of deja vu, not to mention about equal measures of frustration and exasperation. I suspect that many Americans share similar feelings. There is nothing new, here, after all. We’ve seen it all, before. Is there no end to the conflict?

Still, it’s important to realize that this war did not need to happen. There was nothing inevitable about it. There could have been peace. Few Americans probably remember, but in 2002 Saudi Arabia offered Israel a full peace treaty.

“What?!” You are probably reacting. “You must be joking!”

No, I am not joking. Back in 2002 Saudi Arabia offered Israel a full peace treaty. The offer was extraordinary in that it went much further than any previous Arab peace initiative had, before. The Saudis offered not only to recognize Israel, they offered normalized relations, including full trade, economic ties, cultural exchanges: in short, an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The only condition was that Israel must abide by UN Security Council resolutions on Palestine.