And the world is silent…

Three events, occurring over the same 48 hours, in three different locations:

In New York, the UN General Assembly endorsed the Goldstone Report into Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’ against Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

In the waters off the coast of Cyprus, the Israeli navy intercepted a vessel containing 300 tons of weaponry and explosives destined for Hizballah, dispatched by Iran.

In Iran itself, mass crowds gathered to curse the ‘Great Satan’, the United States, on the 30^th anniversary of the US Embassy hostage crisis which followed the revolution that overturned the Shah’s secular autocracy and ushered in the Islamist reign of the Ayatollahs.

And so it is war...

The Israeli public has rarely been a dutiful amen chorus for its political leaders, to say the least. Israel’s hyper-active democracy involves frequent demonstrations attacking the government of the day from the left and the right. Public opinion led to commissions of inquiry into the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and more recently, the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Twenty-five years ago massive public protests against government policy during the First Lebanon War led to the removal of Defence Minister Ariel Sharon.

All of this makes the overwhelming public support for this campaign against Hamas in Gaza all the more notable. A few days before the attack began, the left-wing Meretz Party – unwaveringly committed to a negotiated two-state deal with the Palestinians – called for military action against Hamas.

Israel has had enough.