No apology needed for surviving

It is my humble opinion that at the root of the MSM's obsession with pointing out the technological mismatch in the region is their essential loyalty to Israel's enemies. What I had failed to realize before was that the MSM (and their core audience) view the Arabs as Indiana Jones, and are therefore understandably outraged at the prospect of their hero facing off against the bad guy armed only with a whip... regardless of who started the fight.
[snip]

Simply put; Israel's problems with the world audience don't stem from bad PR. They are rooted in the fact that the MSM and the world audience view Israel as that sword-wielding assassin, a small plot complication that must be resolved as quickly as possible for the regional story to reach a satisfactory dénouement.

IMHO it is the height of silliness for Israel to place too much hope in positive 'Hasbara' (PR/propaganda). No amount of positive PR would have made an Indiana Jones fan care a wit about the fate of the assassin with the sword.

[snip]

Israel would do well to forget about trying to reclaim the hero status it enjoyed in the early days of its existence.

Those days are gone.

What remains is the challenge of simply meeting each threat with the only thing we have going for us; superior weaponry. They pull a whip we pull a sword. They pull a sword, we pull a gun. They pull a gun, we pull a cruise missile.

This isn't a movie set... and Israel needn't apologize for surviving. It may be that the rest of the world is rooting for our enemies to prevail and ride happily into the sunset, but that doesn't mean that we have to lay down and act like some pesky plot complication.