Last week, much of the world press reported a story out of Gaza -- tragic as so many stories from Gaza often are -- in which a Palestinian family having a picnic on the beach was killed by errant Israeli shelling. The Israelis, ever contrite about the accidental deaths of civilians, immediately offered an apology. Hamas then seized on the PR opportunity and announced the end of its "16 month truce." With no sense of irony whatsoever, it threatened to resume the killing of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings inside Israel. While this sordid chain of events might seem par for the course in the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the problem is that the event to which everyone made such a fuss turned out to be untrue.

No one disputes that 8 Palestinian civilians died on a Gaza beach on June 9th, however it turns out that it was not Israeli shelling that killed them. Following an IDF investigation into the deaths, Amir Peretz, the Israeli Defense Minister announced that there was no chance that they could have been caused by the IDF. When Israel issued its condolences to the Palestinians for the "accident" it was because an Israeli naval vessel was shelling a part of northern Gaza that had been used for firing Qassam missiles into Southern Israel. The investigation showed that the explosion on the beach occurred between 4:57 pm and 5:10 pm according to time-stamped video footage of the area from the Israeli vessel. The problem is that the naval vessel's shells were all fired about 30 minutes prior to the deaths. Furthermore, when some injured family members were taken to Israeli hospitals for treatment, the shrapnel taken from their bodies was not consistent with Israeli munitions.

Despite the personal tragedy of those that died on the beach that day, the incident has sparked an intense debate within Israeli society about how a Democracy should deal with a violent insurgency, a debate not unlike that in the United States over Iraq.

One of the basic tenets of counter-insurgency warfare has been that of "proportional force." At its heart this means that an organized army should not indiscriminately drop bombs on civilian populations in response to, for example, a suicide bombing of a market. The problem is that in the absence of a social-moral framework against the use of violence, proportional force often fails to accomplish its goal, namely the cessation of insurgent violence. Instead, the precise opposite often occurs, exacerbating a new round of tit-for-tat killings often referred to as a "cycle of violence."

When Jordan's former King Hussein faced a Palestinian insurgency in his country in the 1970's, he responded rather disproportionately, killing 3,000-5,000 Palestinian men, women, and children and expelled the Palestinian leadership to Lebanon. When Syria's former President Hafez al-Assad faced an uprising of the Muslim Brothers in 1982 he dealt with it rather disproportionately by razing the city of Hama (their stronghold) to the ground, killing an estimated 10,000-25,000 people. While both events were called massacres, there is no disputing that each achieved their desired aim and the insurgencies ceased completely.

Clearly authoritarian and autocratic regimes, not accountable to their people, have the power to deal with insurgencies very differently than Western-style Democracies. Do the values and morality of Western Democracies doom them to failure?

Since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, over 1,000 "Qassam" rockets have been fired from Gaza into Southern Israel, 176 rockets in the last month alone. Israel has been attempting to deal with the problem by targeting the mobile rocket crews doing the firing, with extremely limited success. As it takes literally just a few minutes to fire a few rockets and leave the scene, many of the terrorists firing the rockets have managed to escape. Worse, many of these crews have begun firing the rockets from within civilian population zones and daring the Israelis to fire back and risk killing innocent civilians. Either way, as far as the terrorists are concerned, they win: If Israel does nothing, they continue to kill and maim Israeli civilians with impunity. If Israel retaliates and hits civilians unintentionally, they have a PR victory to exploit.

These cynical games being played with the lives of innocents are precisely what makes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so exasperating. How do you separate yourself from a neighbor that wants you dead? If you build a wall to keep them out, what do you do when they lob rockets over it? How do you protect your own civilians without harming theirs? If the Palestinians summarily fail to form a government responsible to and for their people, who can govern in their stead? Can Western-style Democracies really deal with zealot insurgencies?

Many experts on and from the region have proffered theories to answer these questions. In the next column, a few theories worth considering...

We have become a society of freeloaders. In an ever increasing attempt to make life better for the indigent in our communities, we have created a welfare state that has not only failed to reduce poverty, it has actually in many cases made things worse. One of the reasons for this is one of the most basic principles of economics: People respond to incentives. When you provide "money for nothing" there will always be long lines of people ready to take it.

While our economy has grown to be the envy of the world, some disturbing trends have emerged. One of the most basic is that approximately 20% of the population pays almost 80% of Federal Income Tax. Of course that statistic is only part of the story, the top 10% in the US also control almost 70% of the total wealth. Why have things become so skewed?

First the obvious: Working and earning a living is difficult. If money is offered to people so that they can survive without needing to go through the trouble of finding, keeping, and working a job then rest assured, many will do just that. Worse, the "crutch" provided by this assistance serves as a disincentive to work and serves to exacerbate the number of poor. Rather than functioning as temporary assistance, these programs become welfare for life.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the French author and statesman that famously traveled and commented on American life in 1831, wrote a "Memoir on Pauperism" arguing against "the trap" of public relief. Chief among de Tocqueville's concerns are the unforeseen consequences of the good intentions that inspire any system of large-scale state-sponsored relief to the able-bodied poor. He argued that the "entitlement" to public charity ultimately traps its claimant in a degrading system, that it produces an overweening and oppressive bureaucratic state, that it weakens the poor's incentive to work, and that it severs the essential moral ties between giver and receiver that exist in private charity.

Though de Tocqueville's work was written 175 years ago, it reads remarkably prescient today. Prior to the 1930's and the Great Depression, there was practically no expectation by an individual that "government" would step in to help if things got tough. The choices were simple: 1.) Pick yourself up, get a job and survive on your own. 2.) Rely on family to help you out 3.) Private and religious charities ran services for the poor. Either way, America had a culture of self-reliance, not a culture of entitlement. Today, it seems that many of America's urban poor believe that they do not have to work and that government will take care of them regardless of the poor choices they make.

One of the most egregious examples of people becoming dependent on government handouts is the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)'s Section 8 rental assistance program. In 1996, Section 8 made up 26 percent of HUD's budget. By 2004, it accounted for 55 percent, a growth rate of 18% a year!" Today, HUD subsidizes nearly 5 million housing units, of which 1.4 million are through section 8. If this trend continues unabated, HUD will very soon simply be an agency that only pays rent and will no longer have any resources to achieve its goal of making housing more affordable throughout the country.

So what can be done to reduce "entitlement" and dependence on government charity without giving up on the poor? The answer is simple, even if its implementation would be complex: We must require certain responsibilities in exchange for assistance. We simply must change the culture of entitlement to a culture of service.

Imagine how things might look different if anyone receiving a dollar from the government was required in turn, to give something back to society? In exchange for assistance during a tough time in one's life we could require a period of military or civil service. Need help with this month's rent? No longer can you rely on Section 8 for the rest of your life, instead you'll need to spend 15 hours a month volunteering as a local fire fighter. Need help with the groceries? Here are some foodstamps, and please sign up for your 10 hours of volunteer teacher's assistance.

We already have successful examples of incentive structures that work this way. The Army's GI bill grants money for college in exchange for military service. Why not extend this principle to many other forms of federal grants?

John F. Kennedy famously asked at the end of his inaugural address "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." If we change the incentive structure of government transfer payments, we could achieve the dual goal of reducing dependence on transfer programs while at the same time creating more involvement within our communities. Why not change the system so that getting public money is no longer an entitlement? Why not demand that able-bodied people receiving assistance provide some assistance back to society?

Currently the only "price" associated with public assistance is the price paid by the taxpayer to fund it -- a price paid by fewer and fewer in order to support larger and larger groups of relatively unproductive citizens. By putting a price on this assistance directly to the recipient in the form of required service, we effectively shift the incentive structure and no longer provide "money for nothing." It is time to change our culture of "rights" and "entitlement" to a culture of "service" and "responsibility" and we will surely see the income gap shrink as more of society is welcomed into the ranks of the productive.

How many of us heard our parents utter the phrase "While I pay the bills, you live by my rules?" This basic trade off of freedom vs. responsibility is de rigueur growing up in the United States. A child is expected not to have the basic freedoms of an adult because a child does not yet have the basic responsibilities of an adult. While this is a normal and essential part of adult maturation, it appears that a similar relationship is taking hold between our government, our businesses, and ourselves.

More and more we are abdicating our freedom to make decisions affecting our households to legislatures who are trying to protect us from each other, and increasingly from ourselves. One case in point in California is the 1992 motorcycle helmet law. The state legislature mandated that anyone operating a motorcycle must use a helmet or risk paying a fine or losing their license. This might seem like an obvious (and innocuous) safety issue, however prior to 1992, many bikers considered it a "right" to ride as they wished without government interference. Of course, driving is considered a privilege -- not a right -- and therefore its regulation is not subject to the same constitutional protections. More broadly, however, the legislature made the case that because society ultimately bears financial responsibility if a helmet-less biker injures themselves and ends up in a hospital, society is entitled to require use of the helmet. In other words, "While I pay the bills, you live by my rules!"

The principal of "I pay, so I must have a say" is deeply rooted in the US. Remember the Boston tea party and "No taxation without representation?" As our tax money is being used for programs that invariably encompass larger and larger segments of society, society is demanding a larger and larger say into personal decision making in order to look after that money.

Once upon a time it would have been an unthinkable affront to personal liberty to demand that a person sitting on a park bench stop smoking. Yet in Calabasas, California it is now a right. The city council decided that second hand smoke poses enough danger to the citizenry that you can no longer light up in public. These rules are not only limited to small municipalities.

In late 2005, a Michigan insurance consulting firm fired two of its employees for smoking. The owner, Howard Weyers, said "I pay the bills around here. So, I'm going to set the expectations." Weyers made the case that smokers cost more to insure and as he was paying for his employees' health care, he has the right to keep his costs down and a Michigan court agreed. The problem is that many factors can contribute to higher premiums including drinking, junk food, extreme sports, and especially obesity. Med ical costs for obese employees are 77 percent more than for normal-sized workers, according to the RAND consulting firm. Can someone be legally fired for simply being fat? Believe it or not, that turns out to be a little tricky. Many states allow the firing of an individual in private business for almost any reason, but a number of recent lawsuits by obese employees have succeeded in claiming protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That's right, according to this definition, 2/3 of Texas adults are now disabled.

The desire to craft policy around minimizing financial liability extends to many seemingly unrelated issues. The battle throughout the Southwest over illegal immigration is often framed in terms of the services provided to illegals from the public treasury. Increased pressure on local hospitals, schools, and prisons is squeezing budgets throughout many states causing many citizens to cry foul. In California, there is currently an uproar over tuition grants for high school dropouts. Many students who are unable to pass the recently reinstated high school exit exam have worried that they would no longer qualify for tuition grants from the state that require a diploma. State Senator Deborah Ortiz has proposed legislation to get rid of the diploma requirement further eroding any significance that certificate may have still had. Of course many California parents are demanding precisely the opposite, stricter standards and fewer benefits for those that don't meet them; once again, "if I'm paying the bills, you had better play by the rules."

This conflict between personal liberty and acceptance of limitations for the sake of financial assistance has been with us since the birth of the nation. Jefferson warned that "A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." Technology and increased urbanization have brought us closer together and with that the need to protect ourselves from poverty and one another. As we consider ever more social programs to try and alleviate poverty, we must not forget that with every dollar we spend we are tempted to restrain the liberties of our neighbors and ourselves. In building a welfare state, we truly run this risk of becoming our brother's keepers.