Two days ago, Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev
presented Israel's case regarding Gaza to the UN Security Council. She made some crucial points:
For eight years the citizens of southern Israel have suffered the trauma of almost daily missile attacks from Gaza. For eight years more than 8,000 rockets and mortar shells have targeted Israeli towns and villages. For eight years the residents of these towns have had a bare 15 seconds to hurry, with their children and their elderly, to find cover before rockets and missiles land on their houses and schools. 15 seconds, Mr. President, would not give the members of this Council time to leave this room. No State would permit such attacks on its citizens. Nor should it...
Let it be clear. Failing to respond to terrorists simply because they are using civilians as cover is not and cannot be an option. To do so would simply broadcast an invitation to every terrorist group in the world to set up shop inside a hospital or a kindergarten...
There is no - and can be no - equivalence between Israel and the Hamas terrorists we are confronting.
There is no equivalence between a State which equips civilian homes with bomb shelters and a terrorist regime that fills them with missiles.
There is no equivalence between military commanders who struggle daily to ensure that their operations are conducted in accordance with the requirements of international humanitarian law, and the terrorists who flout this law by keeping Corporal Gilad Shalit captive, without even allowing the International Red Cross access to see him for 930 days.
There is no equivalence between a State using force in exercise of its right of self-defense and a terrorist organization for which the very resort to violence is unlawful.
We listened when you promised us that acting with restraint during the period of calm would give us the credibility to fight back should the rocket attacks resume. Now is your time to make good on those promises.
In the clash between life and death, between building societies and destroying them, Hamas has taken its side. Now there is no choice but for the international community to take a side itself.
It seems like Israel's Hasbara (PR) efforts have improved this time around, with a more effective use of the Internet coupled with more traditional approaches.
