[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]

Gideon Levy says that...

1. The deficiencies in Israel's firefighting capacity shown up by the Mount Carmel fire are firm evidence that Israel has no military option against Iran.

But might not the opposite argument - that the weaknesses shown up by the fire are now likely to be addressed and Israel will therefore soon be better placed to strike than it was before the fire - be just as valid?

2. In any future war with Lebanon and/or Iran the enemy's focus will be on firing thousands of rockets at Israel's population centers.

That's not exactly news to anyone who takes an interest in these matters and Amos Yadlin, the former head of military intelligence, recently said as much in his farewell speech. Like so many others, Levy doesn't regard it as worthy of comment that having despaired of defeating its armed forces, Israel's enemies are now planning to destroy it by killing its civilians in massive numbers.

3.

Ah, integrating into the region. How exactly? By establishing an absolute monarchy, either de facto or de jure? By executing gays? By establishing a one party state? By banning all forms of dissent? By denying the existence of minorities?

Another problem with this argument, from Levy's point of view, is that he and many who share his opinions think that Israel is already well on the way to abandoning democracy and becoming a fascist dictatorship. If they really wanted Israel to integrate into the region then that's something they should be applauding instead of bemoaning .

4. The dog that doesn't bark in Levy's piece is deterrence. If you think that your enemy can inflict so much damage on your civilian population as to make the price of war unacceptably high then you have two options: seek terms or convince your enemy that his civilians will suffer as much as yours, if not more, in the event of hostilities and thus give him serious pause for thought before attacking you. This way of avoiding catastrophic warfare is known as deterrence and, from the Israeli side, is embodied in the Dahiya doctrine. Given the views that Levy regularly expresses in his column it's hard to imagine that he finds deterrence to be a way of keeping the peace that is acceptable to his conscience.