Speaking of Israel...

[Pannonian]

Israel deliberately destroyed the infrastructure in Lebanon "we will bomb them back to the Stone Age". Lebanon was a functioning pluralistic democracy, Sunni, Shia, Christian, Druze...

sure, they made accommodations with Hamas, but it was still the Hamas military wing - not Lebanon's army - that was attacking Israel. By destroying the Lebanese military and political structure Israel made Hamas stronger in the long term for what was, frankly, a very limited short term advantage.

AFAICS this is just another good old punitive campaign to demonstrate Israel's overwhelming military power and willingness to use it, in order to cow the other side into submission or at least a quiet period. Nothing wrong with it if that's the way you roll. Us western powers moved away from that by mid-20th century at the latest, but Israel isn't a western power. They're more westernised than most middle eastern countries, but they're a middle eastern country and they operate by those rules.