We’ve learned that at the end of the cease fire Israel rushed to renew the bombardment of Gaza. We’ve also learned that Israeli intelligence knew all about the planned Hamas attack a year ago and that that Hamas’ preparations for the attack were reported more recently. We’re hearing that the big bugs in Israeli intelligence decided not to take this evidences of Hamas’ fanatic ambitions seriously, because they did not believe that Hamas could achieve what Hamas was planning and preparing to do. This excuse for the intelligence failure makes Israeli intelligence seem not negligent, but virtually criminal.

Or is there another way to view this? Could it be that Israeli intelligence knew all along about the planned attack by Hamas and chose to allow the attack to happen? The attack by Hamas provided Israel with a casus belli for a war against Gaza, a war the goal of which is to expel the Palestinian population from Gaza and annex that region to Israel. To be sure, Hamas is an irredeemably bad lot, but wiping out Hamas is not Israel’s main goal in its aggression against Gaza.

Am I being too suspicious of Israel? The death of that cynical butcher Henry Kissinger reminds of the need to be endlessly suspicious of devotees of Realpolitik.