Israel's media offensive has spread to Britain, where Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor wrote in the London Independent, "Israel has tried everything to bring calm" and asked, "What would Ireland do" if it were under rocket attack?
Prosor is also scheduled to speak Wednesday at a college campus at Warwick, where anti-Israeli protestors are planning to demonstrate. Violent protesters in London and elsewhere earlier this week clashed with British police, including mounted forces.
Prosor previously has written in British newspapers to staunchly back Israel against harsh criticism in Britain, where a growing Muslim population has intimidated a large number of Britons and political leaders.
He wrote in the Independent that this week's increasingly powerful terrorist rockets killed two Israelis and wounded more than a dozen others. "These incidents are only the tip of a huge iceberg of suffering," he wrote. "The rockets which killed these people are only three of 8,000 rockets and mortars which have been fired at Israel since 2001…. For almost eight years, Israeli citizens have been under daily attack from Gaza by Hamas and other terrorist groups."
Prosor pointed out that rocket attacks have escalated since Israel agreed three years ago to "withdraw all its soldiers and all 9,000 Israeli residents from the Gaza Strip for the sake of peace.
"Israel has tried everything to bring calm without using force. We agreed to a six-month truce brokered by Egypt last June. Despite violations of this by Hamas, which continued to attack Israel and smuggle in weapons and ammunition, we held to the truce. We also made it clear that we were interested in renewing it. It was Hamas that formally brought it to an end and intensified its attacks."
He pointed out that the attacks on Israeli civilians do not differentiate between Jewish and Arab or Bedouin victims.
"How would Irish people react if a similar situation existed here?" he asked rhetorically. "Let us suppose that the people of the border counties were under relentless missile attack, year after year, from a terrorist organization based across the border.
"Would an Irish government sit idly by and refuse to carry out the first duty of every state - to defend its citizens? I think an Irish Government would be under extreme pressure from its citizens to exercise the right to self-defense - the same right enjoyed by every sovereign state."
He also explained to British readers that both Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the Egyptian government have blamed Hamas for forcing the current violence.