“During the Gaza fighting, Israel sought as always to portray itself as the innocent victim of irrationally hate-filled Arab attacks. At least in the United States, it was quite successful in this effort. Despite the fact that Israel initiated the escalation that produced the war, dropped one thousand times as many tons of munitions on Gaza as Gazans fired at Israel, faced a foe with no air defenses with one of the world’s most advanced air forces while demonstrating a sophisticated defense against homemade missiles fired at it from Gaza, and killed 32 times as many Gazans as Gazans killed Israelis, most Americans continued to cast the issue in terms of Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attack. Almost no one mentioned the fact that Gaza had been under siege by Israel for eight years before this latest outbreak of fighting.”

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.), “Hasbara and the Control of Narrative as an Element of Strategy. Remarks to the Jubilee Conference of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy”, 3 december 2012 – Middle East Policy Council (https://mepc.org/…/hasbara-and-control-narrative…/)