On July 21, I claimed that Israel’s political leadership was suffering an abysmal failure in its campaign to win over Palestinian public opinion, or what the defense minister calls being “etched in their consciousness.” More than 1,000 dead, 6,200 wounded, and tens of thousands of people homeless and cut off from water and electricity failed to persuade Hamas to raise the white flag of surrender. Hamas members opposed to the reconciliation with Fatah are taking credit for the growing number of dead and wounded, for stopping foreign airlines from flying to Israel’s main airport and for the enormous toll this campaign is taking on Israel, both economically and on its image. Protest marches by thousands of West Bank Palestinians to the Qalandiya checkpoint, the uprising in East Jerusalem and demonstrations by the Israeli Arab sector all indicate growing support for the struggle Hamas is waging against Israel.

Even if the Israeli establishment is displeased with this campaign's success over the Palestinian consciousness, it can take comfort in its impressive achievements in Israeli perceptions. Reports and commentary in the local media (and also to some degree in the foreign media), as well as bumper stickers, billboards and especially the dialogue on the social networks testify to the government's policies enjoying overwhelming support among the general public. Across the political spectrum, the Israeli public is lapping up the official line that Operation Protective Edge is a “war of no choice.” According to this narrative, the hundreds of infants and children buried beneath the ruins of buildings in Gaza (especially those used to hide tunnels or Hamas fighters and arms) are a pardonable necessity that cannot be condemned, as the bombing spared hundreds of Israeli infants and children from suffering a similar fate. Framing it this way justifies the deaths of 43 Israeli soldiers and four civilians as of today, July 28, and transforms the act of abiding the sirens and rushing to shelters into a means of contributing to the war effort.

One prominent example of this trend can be found on the Facebook page of popular radio and TV host Avri Gilad. In a status update, this journalist, who represents the left on a radio show, the Army Radio show "The Last Word," shared a text that he described as “the most brilliant article I’ve read over the course of this war. It put things in perspective for me.” Gilad sent a “deep thank you” to the author, Guy Aloni, for helping him to understand that the State of Israel was faced with nothing less than an existential threat for the first time since the War of Independence.

This status update earned Gilad more than 19,000 “shares” to date (I can’t remember ever seeing that many “shares” for anything else) and an even higher number of “likes.” In his update he presents a horror scenario that has since become a legacy for the Israeli masses. He says that the tunnels were actually the “infrastructure for a ground invasion,” and that Hamas planned to use them to send thousands of its troops into Israel, dressed in Israeli uniforms, to fire hundreds or even thousands of rockets into the center of the country and paralyze Israel's ability to organize against the invasions.