Missile attacks on Israel are a daily reality

The international media has much to answer for in the conflict between Israel and Gaza in their failure to report consistently on the issue.

Even during supposedly quiet times earlier this year, there was on average more than one missile attack per day against Israeli towns and villages, but this has been almost universally ignored by news sources who only pay attention when people are killed.

I’ve yet to hear one member of the legion of anti-Israeli critics put forward a proposal that would in the long term deal with a terrorist threat that launches its attacks from the civilian areas of a city.

Even with prior warning of retaliation from the Israelis — unprecedented in a war — casualties are hard to avoid and Hamas and its associates can then reap the propaganda value of images of dead and injured Gazans.

No one holds Gaza’s leaders up to any moral scrutiny or asks them why they’re putting their own people at such risk; all we get is the unspoken “underdog” inference that those who are enduring the greater number of casualties are de facto in the right.

What is a sovereign state supposed to do? Would the Irish government tolerate such a situation? Would we, the Irish people, meekly accept a state of affairs in which every county north of Offaly was regularly targeted? I think the answer to the latter two questions is a resounding ‘no’.

Meanwhile, I would like to offer a backhanded compliment to the protest leaders in Dublin on Saturday last for whom a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 ceasefire lines clearly isn’t enough.

Shouting that its borders be “From the river to the sea” involves wiping Israel from the map and leaving eight million Israelis stateless. That they would even consider — never mind call for — such an appalling scenario lays bare their true agenda for all to see. However, I do applaud such rare honesty from them.

Ciarán Ó Raghallaigh

63 College Street

Cavan

Co Cavan