[Kaveh]

برای من جالب است که چگونه جو افکار عمومی نسبت به اسراییل در دنیا در حال تغییر است. گزارش AP در مورد درگیریهای اخیر را می خواندم. خبرنگار به وضوح بی طرف بود و هیچ رانتی برای طرف اسراییل قایل نبود. حماس با وجود پشت گرمی مصر نیروی تازه ای گرفته. از طرفی انتخاب اوباما هم به نوعی شرایط را به نفع فلسطینیها هموار کرد. در این شرایط آنچه ریشه این درگیری هاست گویا داستان انتخابات پیش رو در اسراییل است و حفظ قدرت تا خون مردمان غیر نظامی دو طرف... همچون که سابقه تاریخی این را نشان می دهد:

In June 1981, weeks before a vote he seemed set to lose, Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the air force to destroy Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak in faraway Iraq. The strike was successful, Begin won the election by a whisker, and as a bonus the world even came to appreciate the elimination of Saddam's potential nuclear weapons.

Fifteen years later the man Begin defeated, Shimon Peres, found himself as caretaker prime minister and saddled with a electorally inconvenient reputation as an overzealous advocate for peace. First, Peres ordered the killing of Hamas' key bombmaker, leading to a series of ferocious revenge bombings that badly sapped his support. And in April 1996, two months before the vote, he ordered a massive air campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon which many considered to be at least partly politically driven. The campaign ended with Hezbollah still in place and Israel halting the operation ignobly after mistakenly killing dozens in a U.N. compound. Peres lost by a whisker.

Four years ago the man who defeated Peres then, Benjamin Netanyahu, was staging a comeback after a few years out of office, and surging in the polls. The government of Ehud Olmert, far more moderate than Netanyahu, ordered an operation against Hamas.

The reason will be familiar to anyone watching the news today: Israeli public opinion was fed up with rockets from Gaza.