Uri Avneri, the peace campaigner and former MP, said Operation Pillar of Defence should be renamed Operation Short Memory, explaining: "Netanyahu counts on people not remembering that four years ago Israel went to war in Gaza, killing 1,300 civilians in three weeks, which otherwise did not make any significant change to the situation.
Israel held Hamas responsible for all attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip, and has carried out three major military campaigns in Gaza - Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, Operation Pillar of Defence in November 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in July 2014.
Mulling over the wars – Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, OPillarof Pillar of Defence in 2012 and the current Operation Protective Edge – concertinaed into her short life, Najia concludes that this one is the worst.
It is the third major military operation in Gaza in six years, following Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012; the others culminated in ceasefires that sadly did little to address the underlying conflict.
Mr Postol says that while he cannot say what the performance of Iron Dome was in Operation Pillar of Defence, "all the available evidence unambiguously indicates a drastically lower level of performance than the 84% claimed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)." His view is that the successful hit rate on incoming warheads could be as low as 5-10%.
ISRAEL's generals will feel satisfied with the results of Operation Pillar of Defence, especially compared with the botched Lebanon war of 2006 or the highly destructive Operation Cast Lead, when Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip for three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009.
However, that assumes that Israel is not running out of targets, as it did after only a week of Operation Pillar of Defence in 2012.
But Assad's Arab critics have been doing some bleak calculations: in the eight days of Operation Pillar of Defence 160 Palestinians were killed by Israel.
In the last intense conflict, Operation Pillar of Defence in November 2012, there was considerable public opposition to a ground invasion.
Abdurrahman Fayez, a teacher, lost his 16-year-old brother, Abdelrashid, in the first day of Israel's Operation Pillar of Defence.
