Dear Secretary Panetta

Please pose this question to your students at Panetta Institute of Public Policy, in Monterey Bay, California in your next lecture:

What should the United States policy be if Canada had 5,564,516 missiles pointed at the USA 3.7 miles north of Detroit while 2,518,248 Americans on the northern border were refugees in their own country for almost a year because of Canada’s missile and invasion threat?

While I admire your moral steadfastness in the face of politics when you continued to work toward school integration, against Nixon’s directive (risking your career letting ethos not politics drive your work), I hope that your students do not subscribe to your current conception of the Middle East. A conception that puts the United States and the rest of the free world in acute danger.

This week, you did the world an unforgivable disservice, and I am personally offended and flabbergasted.  Let me set the scene for you: Yesterday, I took my son to his soccer game in a town 30 miles south of Haifa. I read that Israel had sent messages on the radio, in text messages, and other broadcasting systems to residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate. This population lives in areas where Hezbollah stores their missiles within civilian homes and infrastructure. Israel had plans to bomb the missiles pointed toward her civilians which would then in turn create retaliatory attacks by Hezbollah that target Israeli civilians.

I decided I would stay at my son’s game, so that if there was a missile alarm I would simply lie on top of my son, protecting him with my body if a missile got through our Iron Dome system and hit.  I hope that either you or your children never have this experience.

While watching and following the news I came across your NBC interview in which you called the detonation of pagers belonging to Hezbollah terrorists an act of terrorism. I would like to be clear that Israel has not taken responsibility for this action, yet most assume Israel was behind this mission.

Leon Panetta called that terrorism? WHAT?

I couldn’t believe what I had just read. Panetta, under which the CIA used drones to kill al Qaida terrorists, is calling a pointed attack against terrorists terrorism? True, you had already disappointed me with your interview regarding the falsely reported famine in Gaza which has since been completely debunked, but this was a new form of delirium.

Just to remind you: in regard to the expanded US drone targeted killings under your leadership, when interviewed in the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 2013 you said “We have an obligation to go after those who attacked our country…. We’ve used whatever technology and weapons to go after our enemy, an enemy that has total disregard for innocent people.” You continued in this interview regarding drones, “I believe it is a precise weapon that we have every right to use against those to attacked our country.  In an NPR interview that same year a U.S. official told NPR that a strike around civilians would only happen in “exceptional circumstances against very high level terrorists.”

In consideration of your experience,  how dare you call the beeper/walkie talkie operation terrorism?

Firstly terrorism, by definition, which I’m sure is clearly taught at the Panetta Institute for Public Policy,  per the Oxford dictionary is “the unlawful use of violence and intimidations, especially against civilians in pursuit of political aims.

The communication device explosions were a targeted method of hurting terrorists. Only Hezbollah members had these devices. This operation significantly limited civilian deaths while pinpointing the terrorists to save lives.

After a car bomb in the Beirut embassy that killed 60, suicide attacks on barracks that killed 305 French and  American troops, another deadly car bomb on the US embassy in Beirut, a bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, and the 1994 car bombings at the Jewish community centers in London and Buenos Aires, in 1997 the US classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. That means Hezbollah operatives are terrorists. Hezbollah operatives were the individuals carrying the devices. Killing terrorists while minimizing civilian impact is most certainly not terrorism. Shame on you.

Allow me to remind you that when the US killed al Qaida operatives it was not due to an imminent threat of attack. It was to kill those responsible for 911 and ensure no future attacks. Al Qaida did not pose a clear, existential threat to the USA when targeted drone strikes increased under your leadership in the CIA.

The terrorists targeted were mostly in Pakistan which is 7,560 miles from the USA. Hezbollah is armed and is continually firing into Israel, to kill civilians and is 3.7 miles from the Israeli town of Metula.   Since October 7 Hezbollah has fired over 7500 rockets at Israel, such as the rocket that killed 12 children in the Israeli Druze community of Majdal Shams. The 7500 does not include unmanned aerial vehicles also being sent into Israel with the purpose of killing civilians.

It is estimated that Hezbollah has 150,000 rockets pointing at Israel, though some estimates are even at 200,000. Israel’s population is 9.4 million. (Remember that is 7.4 million Jews and 2 million others that have full equal rights including Moslems, Christians, Druze, and others.) If we use the conservative 150,000 missile estimate, we are talking 1 rocket for every 62 civilians. This ratio is the equivalent of Canada having 5,564,516 rockets pointing at the USA 3.7 miles from Detroit!

Terrifyingly,  Hezbollah has serious plans to take over Israel’s north, just as Hamas invaded the communities close to Gaza, the pure evil and barbarism of which are indescribable.

Since October 7, there are 68,500 residents from the north that cannot live in their homes due to the Hezbollah threat and continuous missile barrages. Bear in mind that the number is higher, as not all evacuees are officially registred as such. Yet again, using the conservative estimate, this amounts to 1 out of every 137 citizens of Israel. Today, 1 out of every 137 Israelis are refugees in their own country. If we take this same ratio it would be as if 2,518,248 people in the USA could not live in their homes due to a mortal danger that a neighboring country posed. Further still,  Hezbollah continues to murder Israeli civilians forced to stay and tend to what is left of their fields and farms which provide food for Israelis. Please also ask your students: What should the US government do if the farms that provided most of America’s sustenance were destroyed and virtually untenable?

This reality is confounded by missiles from Iran’s other tentacles being continuously fired at Israel from the Houthis in Yemen, Iraqi militias, and from Hamas in the Gaza strip. Israel is under attack from the North, South, East, and West.

Israel is fighting an unfathomable,  violent enemy that targets civilians, uses human shields, digs terror tunnels under homes (often even in children’s rooms), hides weapons in citizen’s attics, and has no regard for the innocent no matter what religion. Just as you said about al Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas have total disregard for innocent people. They are terrorists, Hamas with fanatical Sunni Islamic aspirations, and Hezbollah with Shiite Islamic fanatical aspirations whose roots are the struggle for a radical Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and beyond.

Since your interview Israel has also started operation “Northern Arrows” to remove the existential threat of Hezbollah’s weapons on Israel.  The international community has failed to implement its own demand that Hezbollah disarm via UN resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1701 (2006).  Israel is forced to act alone to protect itself while receiving condemnation for fulfilling the exact goal the international community committed to, yet abandoned in practice.

Faced with these realities I do not believe the United States would fight any differently for its survival than the State of Israel. Modern wars are with terrorists armed with advanced weaponry, hiding behind the innocent, forcing freedom loving countries to make impossible and excruciating decisions. Tragically the warfare of the future uses our democratic values as ammunition.  This is what your students need to understand.

The most important lesson any teacher can teach his students, is that even teachers make mistakes. You, Secretary Panetta, have gotten it beyond wrong in Israel’s case. I sincerely hope your students see your mistake, the free world depends on it.