As Iran watches Korea

JPOST EDITORIAL

For Israel, South Korea is the model we must strenuously avoid emulating.

The North Korean attack last week on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island included elements all too familiar to Israelis. But the horrified global reaction was of a very different order.

On the face of it, what happened between the Koreas greatly resembled what we here have experienced almost routinely at times – out-of-the-blue, unprovoked shelling of civilians by apparently inscrutable and fanatical enemy forces.

Israelis – North and South – have found themselves targeted by rockets, mortars and sniper fire so frequently that we’ve learned to take such incidents almost in our stride. So has the rest of the world. Often Kassams, Grads and other assorted projectiles lobbed into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon fail to get so much as a mention in foreign news outlets. And here is the rest of it.