The day after I returned from a three-year stint reporting in the Middle East, while war raged between Israel and Hezbollah militants, I turned on the news back here at home. It was eye-opening.

At the time I was jet-lagged, culture-shocked, and feeling seriously withdrawn from the controversy from which I had so suddenly removed myself. It was a difficult time to return. The first story I saw on TV was a pro-Israel war rally taking place here in New York. Would-be presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave the keynote address. She told the crowd of thousands, "We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing for American values as well as Israeli ones."

A day or two later, still glued to the television set, I caught one of Pat Buchanan’s several MSNBC appearances. With the blunt candor he is known for, Buchanan said, with regard to presidential hopefuls and the Israel-Hezbollah war, "Let's face it: there are more people in America who will vote for you because you are pro-Israel than those who will vote for you because you are pro-Arab."

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Israel's deadly response on Hamas and an already beleaguered Gaza Strip is increasingly looking like retaliation for the unexpected resistance campaign headed by Hezbollah in 2006 and less like a strategic counterattack against Hamas militants. The timing of the attack, when U.S. President George Bush is leaving office, the global economy is in crisis, and many in the Western world are celebrating the new year, suggests that Israel waited to choose an ideal time to wage this unforgiving show of strength.

It can be suggested that the build-up to this crisis in the Middle East began in 1967, when Israel earned itself a reputation - regionally and globally - as a military power to be reckoned with. In just six days, Israeli Defense Forces advanced to the edge of the Suez Canal, and in one foul swoop, gained control of Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, and the whole of Jerusalem.

It was not until the Yom Kippur War of 1973 that Israel's military would fall from grace, not by a decisive defeat or loss of land, but more symbolically in the face of a somewhat attenuating Arab military resistance.

In 2006, Israeli forces launched an unforgiving attack on Hezbollah strongholds in Southern Lebanon responding to the abduction of IDF officers both in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip. The savvy and unexpected resistance campaign orchestrated by Hezbollah fighters during the month-long war earned the group global recognition, with the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah hailed a hero across the Muslim world.

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