Operation Protective Edge was a milestone in history: it was the first time lawyers were attached to commanders on the battlefield. They practically sat at the command centers, monitoring their every move and making sure that the war was being waged in accordance with international law. While this fact is justifiably a source of national pride, it does not bolster Israel's image abroad. Anti-Semites will forever ignore the facts. Even the well-respected publication The Economist made sure to besmirch Israel over the small number of Israeli civilian deaths compared to Palestinian fatalities (the ratio stood at six to 1,462). The Economist apparently believes the lives of IDF soldiers are not worth that much and must not be counted; it could not accept the fact that some of the Palestinians killed were actually terrorists. Such factual misrepresentations are just part of Jewish history; this is just part of Jewish fate. Israel must wage a global war to make sure the truth comes out everywhere. We must always set the record straight and undo the damage inflicted by those who bend the truth. Hamas killed three teenage boys. Israel went out of its way to show restraint. It wanted to avoid a flare-up and to spare Gaza from its much-deserved punishment. It was willing to de-escalate even after eight days of fighting, as it was the only party to accept the cease-fire Egypt had proposed. We must never cease uttering these talking points. Only we in Israel accept these facts; the rest of the world prefers to look the other way. We must also recall the intense debate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon had with then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and then-Economy Minister Naftali Bennett over whether Israel should go all in and reconquer the Gaza Strip. That was a worthy debate to be had. One side realized firepower can only take you so far, where as the other side insisted on fighting to the end, hoping that the war would culminate with a glorious victory, as if Israel was in some kind of a Hollywood film. Netanyahu and Ya'alon realized that operations such a Protective Edge cannot end in a knockout victory. Former Defense Minister Ehud Barak and former IDF chief Lt. Col. Gabi Ashkenazi understood this when they oversaw Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. Such operations are nothing but temporary victories. Their primary goal is to create a period of calm that would last as long as possible. Of course, a full Israeli takeover of the Gaza Strip would have been an entirely different ballgame. Many of the Israeli casualties in the Second Lebanon War were unnecessary. But in Protective Edge, and in Cast Lead, the operations were waged better and similar mistakes were avoided. Had Netanyahu and Ya'alon acted with full force like Israel did in Lebanon, the Israeli war dead would have skyrocketed, but the end result would have not been that much better. What emerged was the best possible outcome; nothing could have produced a better result, short of a full-fledged occupation of the Gaza Strip. The fact that Hamas leaders in Gaza have (so far) gone out of their way to clamp down on rogue groups who fire rockets on Israel proves that the post-operation reality is the optimal one. Hamas has also chosen to turn its aggression against Egyptian forces in Sinai, and it has its reasons. But critics have yet to be disabused of the notion that Protective Edge was a failure. If Hamas eventually agrees to a five-year hudna (truce), perhaps they would reconsider. Perhaps they would agree that Protective Edge and Cast Lead were a double Israeli victory.
