The PR campaign

Israel has been forced to revise their story of late through a concerted public relations campaign.

Just last January, Olmert told the Knesset that there is "no need to get all fired up" about the rockets, and a major military operation in Gaza would be "out of proportion to the pressures we face." Public Security Minister Avi Dichter declared in July 2006 that disengagement was a success despite the rocket attacks, because "10 months without any Israeli being killed" from Gaza "is an extraordinary achievement"; that same month, former premier Ariel Sharon's chief strategist, Dov Weisglass, said the rockets do not detract from disengagement's success, because "the physical damage they do is not great." In short, daily rocket fire is unimportant as long as nobody gets killed.

The mispreception is that this operation is about the missiles that are being lobbed into Israel, but its actually and deterrence and intimidation

Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that that energy reflected the deep feeling among average Israelis that the country had to regain its deterrent capacity.

“There has been a nagging sense of uncertainty in the last couple years of whether anyone is really afraid of Israel anymore,” he said. “The concern is that in the past — perhaps a mythical past — people didn’t mess with Israel because they were afraid of the consequences. Now the region is filled with provocative rhetoric about Israel the paper tiger. This operation is an attempt to re-establish the perception that if you provoke or attack you are going to pay a disproportionate price.”