Deaf Ears

Sir, - While the fact of there being room for improvement in Israel's public relations efforts is commonly accepted, both the self-assured tone and much of Aaron Menenberg's arguments are open to question.

Operation Cast Lead only began after Israel's southern communities were attacked daily by terrorist rockets from Gaza for a well publicized 8 year period and yet received no sympathetic world understanding. Menenberg's own words testify to the IDF's extreme care to avoid civilian casualties by warnings through phone calls, leaflets, costly avoidance of military targets that were manned by civilians.

These efforts were well publicized and widely known. The infamous Goldstone Report followed, not because of Israel's failure to publicize, but rather due to the arrogance of a self-serving judge who was predisposed to condemn while knowingly basing his conclusions on hearing only one side.

It would be of interest to know how Menenberg would recommend that Israel publicly react to Obama's callous inhumanity in his remaining deaf to the recommendations of eminent U.S. citizens as well as to the pleas of Israel's leadership and all its citizens for the pardoning of Jonathan Pollard.

ZEV CHAMUDOT
Petach Tikva