“In dreams begins responsibility”

(Yeats, Schwartz, Creeley)

Whereas the Israeli missiles carry an altogether different sort of message, it seems; check this link:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1153291980307

I completely agree – the US soldiers could have come to Israel, hang out a bit in Tel-Aviv’s bars, spend some time on the beach in Eilat, and go back, completely unharmed. Much better than what happens to them in Iraq.

“You are more evil than me,
    and so I will kill you …”
The ancient pond
Reassembled the apes

In Israel the tax for importing goods to the country is very high. A person wanted to bring to Israel an extremely expansive white elephant that he bought (in London of all places). To save money on taxes he painted the elephant grey. (Grey elephant are considerably cheaper than white elephants. Their price is only 15%-20% of that of white elephants.)
At his home in Israel this person started to scrape away the grey color from the elephant but then he scrapped also the white color.

and induce much less excitement
and (yes, let’s face it) fun

“than supplying young people with arms and motivating them to kill one another.”

Without asserting that a Spinozist solution is feasible in practice, my understanding is that a Spinozist solution is at least well-defined:

Spinozist Step I: refrain from relative moral judgments, replacing them instead with absolute moral judgements. As the conclusion to that most Spinozist of novels, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped states: Whatever befell them, it was not dishonour, and whatever failed them, they were not found wanting to themselves.. This defines a Spinozist state of grace which all participants in the Middle East conflicts can hope to share.

Spinozist Step II: Ensure that adequate resources and a good family-supporting job are available to every young person. The alternative being, the global dominance of “hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos” that Nobelist George Marshall identified as the great enemy of humanity.

It goes without saying, that the above Spinozist objectives are considerably more difficult and costly to achieve, than supplying young people with arms and motivating them to kill one another.