Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak tells schoolchildren in the Negev, near Gaza, “not to whine and not to be spineless…We’ve overcome some very difficult things, and we will face even harder things. The state cannot protect your life. We’re not in western Europe or North America.”
Israel, Barak said, was a place where “whoever is not strong and confident, whoever blinks when faced with Qassam rockets, kidnappings and military cemeteries, cannot survive.”