Tel Aviv - Most Israelis strongly support their country's
deadly and destructive offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
The Israeli campaign against the radical Islamic movement ruling
the strip, as well as its reprisal rocket attacks against southern
Israeli cities such as Ashkelon, Ashdod and Beersheba, are at the
forefront of the Israeli media's reporting.
The large number of Palestinian civilian casualties, while
mentioned, are pushed to the background.
Some critical voices can be heard, but they are a marginal
minority.
According to an opinion poll published Friday in Israel's Ma'ariv
daily, over 93 per cent of Israelis support the Gaza offensive, while
only 2.2 per cent 'fairly' oppose it and another 1.7 per cent are
'very much' against it.
Backing for its ground component is less broad: Under 42 per cent
of Israelis support it, according to the Ma'ariv poll.
As past experience teaches, public opinion could well turn around,
if the ground invasion - begun Saturday after more than a week of
relentless airstrikes - starts taking a high toll among Israeli
soldiers.
While the Palestinian toll stands at well over 500 dead and at
least 2,500 injured, the Israeli toll has so far been minimal - four
Israelis died in rocket attacks and one soldier died in the ground
fighting by Monday afternoon. Dozens were wounded.
Both the Palestinian and Israeli media focus all but exclusively
on the casualties and suffering on their own respective sides, with
Israeli television channels broadcasting exhaustively about the
impact of each rocket which lands in the south of the country.
The grisly footage shot for example by the Palestinian Ramattan
news agency of Saturday afternoon's deadly airstrike at a mosque in
northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya was aired also on Israeli television, but
only briefly and in between lengthy reports about the Palestinian
rocket attacks and analyses by Israeli experts commenting on the
offensive.
Israelis widely feel the Gaza assault is justified: Israel did not
want this war, but Hamas asked for it. Gaza's civilian population are
now also paying the price for voting the radical Islamic movement
into power, is a much-heard opinion.
After Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the strip
could have had a flourishing seaport, as well as an airport. Instead,
its militants fired rockets and mortar shells into Israel on an
almost daily basis and as a result brought a paralyzing economic
blockade on themselves and the entire strip, many argue when asked.
Gaza's former Jewish settlements could have seen high-rise
residential buildings providing housing for many of the
densely-populated strip, but are instead used as training camps and
rocket launching sites by Hamas, they point out.
Former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon would turn in his hospital bed
if he knew what was going on, decries one Israeli in Tel Aviv, Yaffa
Uriel: 'He gave Gaza back without taking anything in return. 'Here,
take,' he just told them. And what did we get? Rockets.'
She continues angrily: 'The world shouldn't only watch when Israel
attacks. The world should have watched also when for eight years the
residents (of southern Israel) suffered.
'I do feel sorry about the innocent civilians,' she acknowledges,
speaking from her office supplies store. 'They are the ones who
suffer in the end. Under conditions like those in Gaza, it is almost
impossible not to harm them - out of a lack of choice, not because we
want it. It's so crowded there.'
Efi Sharabin, 37, agrees. 'It's good that (Israel) is doing this.
It had to be done.' He speaks from a nearby fast food restaurant,
whose owner, Aviv Shalabi, plunges into the discussion uninvited:
If Israel did not do it today, it would have had to do it
tomorrow, argues the 49-year-old. 'It is about time they (the army)
went in and crushed them (Hamas).'
At least it will buy us a few years quiet, he sighs, arguing that
if left unchallenged, Hamas could have acquired rockets reaching as
far as Tel Aviv. 'They are already reaching 40 kilometres into
Israel. It's just another 20 kilometres.'
Some criticism can nevertheless be heard. Reporters Gideon Levy
and Amira Hass of the left-liberal Ha'aretz daily are among the few
who report extensively about the Palestinian suffering, with Levy
accusing the Israeli media of providing disinformation.
'The media is failing abysmally,' says Levy. 'It has enlisted
voluntarily to brain wash and to hide what needs to be hidden. They
systematically show how once again we are the only victims.'
On Saturday night, some 1,000 Israelis - waving both Israeli and
Palestinian flags and some of them wearing Arab head scarfs -
attended a protest on Tel Aviv's central Rabin square, organized by
Hadash, the only mixed Arab-Jewish party in Israel's parliament. Some
600 people attended a counter-demonstration nearby, waving Israeli
flags and chanting slogans in support of the Israeli military.
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