Israel does not want to shoot anybody. We do not want to hurt children. I created the Peres Center, and all the money we collected went to the cure of Palestinian children. They didn’t have insurance, they didn’t have hospitals. In five years we brought to Israel 5,500 Palestinian children (and their mothers) to be cured.
There is no hospital today in Israel that does not have Arab doctors, so the Palestinian children can communicate with them.
But what can we do with those who put their own children in harm’s way, who put bombs in kindergartens, who hide themselves behind innocent families? Before we attacked, we tried to phone the people in the area. We said please leave the place, we don’t want to hurt you. We made 250,000 telephone calls during the Gaza operation to warn civilians.
Again I ask: What could we do? What was our choice? What would any country do?