In some ways, Israel is always at war.
Even when we’re not at war – there are those who war against us.
And when we are at war – officially, like now – we’re fighting more than one war at once.
There’s the physical defensive war against whatever branch of Islamic Jihadists are attacking us at that moment.
Today that war is against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Hamas and Hezbollah supporters inside Israel, within our borders.
The second, simultaneous war – the one that fires pot-shots all year long is the war of public opinion.
Admittedly, we don’t have a great track record here.
We haven’t totally figured out a way to surpass Islamic Jihad and its branches at the optics game.
And it’s no wonder…
It’s hard to look like you’re on the right side of history when your enemy stock piles their women and children in war zones. When they fire missiles at us from their playgrounds, their hospitals, and their mosques, and then say: “Look what you did!”
So not only are we busy risking our own lives – our actual lives – to stop the rockets, stop the stabbings, stop the shootings, stop the car rammings, stop the roadside bombs, we also have to deal with the story that the mainstream media will spin when we defend ourselves.
It’s more than a little disheartening.
It makes my stomach churn.
Sometimes I actually gag when I come across the world-wide buy-in to the lies told in the name of our people.
And.
Then we just take a breath. Shake it it off. And move forward.