​"Allah be praised, all the young Muslims in Gaza love martyrdom, just as our enemies, the infidel Jewish dogs, love life" – Brother of Muhammad al-Homs, Hamas activist killed with Hamas military leader Ahmad al-Jaabari in Gaza, November 2012.

               Many countries have enemies.  Only Israel has a near neighbour, Iran, sworn to its destruction and supplying and training terrorist movements on its doorstep committed to the same goal.  Here in Ireland, friends of those movements use their money and energies to instil in the public mind myths about Israel aimed at delegitimising its existence and justifying the terror campaigns against it.

               The first of these myths is that Israel is an aggressive state and the air strikes in Gaza are the most recent example of this.  But what country could ignore the firing of 12,500 rockets at the civilian population of its towns and cities over eleven years, 1,500 of them in this month alone?  The first duty of every sovereign state is to defend its citizens, and Israel had no option but to act.

               Related to this myth is a second one: that Israel constantly seeks to expand its territories at the expense of neighbouring states, that Israel is some kind of 'colonising power.'  In spreading this libel, the propagandists rely on ignorance and short memory.  In 1979, Israel agreed a treaty with Egypt under which, in exchange for peace, it returned the Sinai peninsula, an area three times its own size that it had won from Egypt in a war of self-defense in 1967.

               In 2005, Israel disengaged completely from the Gaza Strip, evacuating every soldier and every Jewish resident, a move that might have been taken as a goodwill gesture. In return, Israel received an escalation of the rocket fire.  In truth, Israel is a tiny corner of the Middle East, merely the size of Leinster, so small it is barely visible on the map.

              Another far-fetched myth is that the root cause of this conflict is the failure of Israel to agree to the setting up of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.  Leaving aside the murderous mutual hostility between Fatah, which controls the former territory, and Hamas, the rulers of the latter, which makes any unified state unlikely, the people of Israel have learned a bitter lesson from the years of Hamas aggression.

               If we were to do what many in the international community are demanding – leave the West Bank as we left Gaza – how long before Hamas comes to power there and the rockets begin to rain down on the central cities of Israel and on its sole international airport?  Only face-to-face negotiations between the two sides can bring about a Palestinian state based on the resolution of all outstanding issues, including the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and agreement on adequate security guarantees for the people of Israel.

               Another myth, repeated time and time again by politicians and media whenever Israel has to defend itself, is that its use of military power is somehow 'disproportionate.'  Actually, the opposite is the case.

                In the most recent conflict between my country and Hamas which ended last week, the Israeli Defence Forces launched some 1,500 airstrikes against Hamas military targets in Gaza.  Israel's enemies like to point out that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world.  I agree with them.  But isn't it odd, then, that despite such massive use of firepower, the relatively small number of a few dozen civilians died.  Compare that to the hundreds of civilians being slaughtered every day next door in Syria, or the indiscriminate slaughter that happens whenever Muslim armies fight each other.

               It is a myth that Israel doesn't care about Palestinian civilians.  The IDF bends over backwards to avoid the awful reality of 'collateral damage.'  If the IDF, with its great power, genuinely wanted to kill civilians it could easily kill many every day.  In fact, it is Hamas which is utterly contemptuous of Palestinian civilian life: Hamas committed once again a double war crime by not only firing rockets deliberately at Israeli civilians but by hiding its rocket launchers deep in civilian areas, in hospitals, schools and mosques, thereby exposing Palestinian women and children to danger.

                Hamas sponsors a cult of death; how many times have its proponents said they prefer death the way Israelis prefer life?  When Israeli civilians were blown up in their bus in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Hamas supporters in Gaza cheered in the streets.  In contrast, when a Palestinian civilian is killed in the course of a military operation Israel sees this as a regrettable failure.

                The last great myth, propagated by the Left in Europe in particular, is that the ongoing conflict is all about land and not about ideology; i.e. that if Israel gives up this, and that, and then this, then somehow everything will be alright.  However, as said, Israel has given up enormous amounts of land in the cause of peace over the past generation, yet the attitude of hatred remains endemic throughout the Muslim World.  As the great Australian critic and pundit Clive James put it, even if Israel reduced itself to the size of a tennis court it would still be 'illegitimate' in the eyes of its critics.