Today, the UN is expected to vote on a resolution charging Israel with war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead, the 2008 action in Gaza. Israel will be given 90 days to investigate the claimed crimes against humanity listed in the Goldstone Report. If Israel does not comply, the matter will be referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The U.S. Congress voted yesterday to denounce this resolution.

Yesterday, Israel seized a ship loaded with weapons from Iran destined for delivery to Hezbollah, Israel’s enemy to the north in Lebanon. The day before yesterday Israel revealed that Hamas has tested an Iranian missile capable of hitting Tel Aviv. Clearly, Israel is damned if it reacts to these developments in defense of its safety and security but double-damned by threatening neighbors to the north and the south if it does not.

My personal encounter with Israel over the last two weeks was as a friend and fact-finder. Our Stand With Us team of informed and seriously inquisitive Americans was given astonishing access to strategic military sites, anti-terror analysts, and intelligence insiders. It is true that we were given the Israeli perspective but that was exactly why we went. We figured that putting our boots on the ground was the best way – maybe the only way -- to learn the Isreali perspective on today’s headlines.

A counter-terror and military strategist assessed Israel’s predicament saying, “When a country needs peace, it doesn’t need security.” It was no revelation to learn that Israel desperately wants peace and the people do live in hope that someday the current pressure of impending disruption will be lifted. But Israel cannot afford the luxury of wanting peace so badly that the price is a security compromise. Israelis have recently learned this bitter lesson.

There is consensus among strategists that the concession of the Gaza Strip territory came with exhorbitant cost and certainly none of the promised peace. Not only did command of this region give Hamas a strategic platform from which thousands of rockets have been launched into Israel but the Sharia-infused chaos perpetrated by Hamas is a spreading cancer. There is virtually no industry or business as Hamas practices the doctrine of control by perpetuating dependency. Reportedly any economic activity involves smuggled goods and weapons coming in from Egypt via hundreds of tunnels.

The presence of 10,000 international aid workers in Gaza distorts Hamas and Fatah abuses. Hamas’ sabotage of the moral, intellectual, and economic infrastructure is masked by the fungibility of this aid where the construction of schools, clinics, and orphanages redounds to Hamas’ credit. As Hamas also controls much of the aid distribution, it can allocate residual resources to its own military or organizational ends.

What is most shocking and demoralizing for those hopeful for a resolution of this hate feud is to confront Hamas’ programs in schools and popular media to brainwash the next generation. As one of the analysts that we met warned, “this is the worst case of international child abuse since the Nazis.” Of course, it is too much to expect that the NGOs and aid workers busily doing good in Gaza would hold Hamas responsible for this crime against the Palestinian children -- and against all of the West.

As we reflected on the fact that some sites in Israel have been attacked and rebuilt dozens of times it was clear that the Israeli DNA is imprinted with a unique historical perspective. Most profound for a visitor concentrating on security and anti-terror is the lesson that any skirmish may become the one conflict that Israel does not win. Israel cannot underestimate any threat.

When standing on the Golan and visualizing the Yom Kippur onslaught of 1600 Syrian tanks, backed by 1000 artillery pieces, one is struck with the utter impossibility of defending the breach with just two Israeli brigades. Yet Israel did defeat the Syrians, and in legendary fashion. And Israel learned that underestimating an enemy force is equivalent to defeat by surprise. The potential for surprise by stealth or surprise by overwhelming force exists on every border and is represented now by the potential that air attacks could be lethal in mere minutes.

Israel’s enemies have one great advantage. Since terror organizations are not concerned with a significant premium on human life, there is an unlimited capacity to spend resources testing Israeli responses and reaction times. These terror groups are also not constrained by strategic aims or public relations concerns so they have unlimited tactical flexibility.

As we heard from IDF strategist and trainer, Elliot Chodoff, great military leaders are tested in the crucible of choice between bad and worse options. Israel must often face the risk calculation that Elliot presents to his trainees: do you take a bet that gives you 5-to-1 odds? Hands rise confidently into the air. Sure, easy risk reward calculus. But the hands quickly fall back down when he describes the “one” bad chance as the single bullet chambered in Russian Roulette. When the 1-in-5 chance represents a fatal result, no weight of favorable odds counter-balance the horrifying downside.

Against this backdrop, the certainty that Israel will be condemned no matter what decisions are made is a hard reality. Recent cases in point are the Amnesty International and Goldstone Reports that charge Israel with war crimes committed during the Gaza conflict. The UN and general media outlets are not much interested in the corrective context provided by retired British Colonel Richard Kemp: “I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more effort to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF [did] in Gaza.”

Every democracy knows the mounting importance of the public relations component of war. Certainly there are always rogue characters and badly executed operations but the due process mentality of democracies requires long and careful investigations to discover the facts. Bad press does not wait for the outcome of investigations and ensuing corrections as America learned with Abu Ghraib.

As is often acknowledged - more as a prayer for future mercies than recognition of past interventions - “Israel doesn’t believe in miracles; it relies on them.” Beyond military miracles, Israel would greatly benefit from respectful and factual reporting. The western world has a survival interest in understanding that the existential terror threat represented by Hamas is just a part of the larger Islamist insurgency against democracies. We are all in this together.