That thousands of Israel’s Arab citizens have attacked Jews means that Israel is engaged in a civil war.  This war should remind Jews of the 15-year civil war between Moslems and Christians in Lebanon, which took the lives of perhaps 100,000 men, women, and children.  Israel is also engaged in a war with the kinsmen of its Arab citizens, the so-called Palestinian Arabs.  Some 50,000 of these Arabs have deadly weapons, supplied, for the most part, by the Rabin-Peres and Netanyahu governments.
Judging from the Barak government’s supine reaction to Arab violence, one thing is clear:  that government must be replaced as soon as possible. What is also clear is that the leadership of any new government must be utterly
 ruthless if Israel is to survive.  Bearing this in mind, I offer once again the lessons on war by one of the greatest military scientists, General Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831).
Clausewitz’s magnum opus, ON WAR, is carefully studied in military schools to this day, for its principles are as valid for nuclear as well as for conventional and even guerrilla warfare.
 Clausewitz defines war as "an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.  Violence is the means; submission of the enemy to our will the ultimate object."  For as long as the enemy remains armed, he will wait for a more favorable moment for action.
The ultimate object of war is political.  To attain this object fully, the enemy must be disarmed.  Disarming the enemy "becomes therefore the immediate object of hostilities.  It takes the place of the final object and puts it aside as something we can eliminate from our calculations."
If the object of war is the total destruction of the enemy, then the military object coincides with the political object, in which case there is  no theoretical limit to the violence that may be used.  Unlimited wars are
 usually animated by unmitigated ideological hatred that cannot be assuaged  until the enemy's population is enslaved or annihilated.
This does not necessarily mean that limited wars--wars having limited political objectives--involve limitations on the types of weapons used in combat.  For again, the immediate object is to disarm the enemy, which means to destroy his military forces and this may require great bloodshed.
Clausewitz warns: "Philanthropists may readily imagine there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War.  However plausible  this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are the worst."
This being so, the distinction between civilians and soldiers becomes questionable, for the former provide the arms for the latter.  A "nation in arms" suggests that every citizen is a soldier.  Not that Clausewitz advocates indiscriminate slaughter.  He warns, however, that "he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the bloodshed involved, must
obtain a superiority if his adversary uses less vigor in its application."
Thus, if, from humane considerations, the United States refrained from using non-conventional weapons in retaliation against their use by Saddam Hussein, the latter would obviously be at a military advantage.  But even if Saddam were not to use non-conventional weapons, their use by the U.S. might be appropriate--and not only to win the war but to shorten the conflict and thereby minimize death and destruction.
 Writes Clausewitz:  "Let us not hear of Generals who conquer without bloodshed.  If a bloody slaughter is a horrible sight, then that is aground for paying more respect to War, but not for making the sword we wear blunter
 and blunter by degrees from feelings of humanity, until someone steps in with one that is sharp and lops off the arm from our body."
 It follows that moderation as a principle of war is absurd.  The correct military principle is PROPORTIONALITY.  Thus, to defeat the enemy the means must be proportioned to his powers of resistance.  But above and beyond military considerations is STATECRAFT.   For in the last analysis, war is never an isolated act.  The military commander is subordinate to the statesman.
The statesman must take into account not only the forces of the enemy.  He must also understand the character of his own people as well as the character and the interests of his allies.  His first concern is national morale and unity.  He must solidify the confidence and determination of his people.  They must believe in the justice of their country's cause and
understand the importance of victory as well as the consequences of defeat.
 The statesman must display wisdom, decisiveness, and clarity.  Needless to say, severe losses or a protracted war undermine the morale of the home front.  It may depress the troops and disrupt any alliance.
Above all the statesman must have, in his own mind, a clear view of his post-war goal or political object.  The political object takes war out of the realm of abstraction.  Belligerents are no longer mere conceptions but individual states and governments having distinct political characteristics and economic interests.  The political object, which is the motive of the war, will determine the aim of military force as well as the amount of force or effort to be used.
War, says Clausewitz, is a continuation of political intercourse by other means or by a mixture of means.  Stated another way:  War is not an independent thing.  The dichotomy of war and peace is fallacious.  War changes its appearance because the means change.  And the means may not only be military but economic and diplomatic.
Although peace is the proper object of war, the deplorable fact is that the norm of international relations is war and not peace.  A Stockholm study  indicates that during the 23 years following World War II, there were not more than twenty-six days in which there was no war of some kind somewhere in the world.  Indeed, about twelve wars were being fought on an "average" day.
It follows from this data, as well as from Clausewitz, that the choice is not between peace and war but between war with victory and war with defeat.
Postscript:  Can Israel produce a government with courage enough to face the truth about the implacable nature of Israel’s enemies AND to deal with them accordingly?