The world condemned what happened on the 7th of October without much hesitation. Even if I ignore the fallacy that history only started on that day, and that 56 years of brutal and oppressive occupation had nothing to do with it, I will always say that even in armed resistance, killing non combatants is a red line, and should be abhorred.

How is that then when a sovereign state aided by the biggest superpower is routinely doing the same at an industrial scale, it is not worthy of the same condemnation? And all the so called civilised nations find it easier to hide behind “they don’t target them intentionally”, and “they have the right to defend themselves”.

As Bassem Youssef pointed out, forcibly moving more than a million people, cutting off electricity, food, water, medical treatment is done to force the population to turn against the political establishment when there is no hope of winning an asymmetric battle. And this is precisely what terrorist organisations do.

If there was any doubt that the targeting is deliberate, the prime minister referring to Bible passages about Amalekites in reference to Palestinians should remove that. That passage (1 Samuel 15:3) specifically orders to kill every man, woman, child, infant, ox, donkey, camel and sheep as retribution.

Moral cowardice of many of the western leaders, so hitched to this wagon, will be recorded in the wrong side of history. Any pretence of even handedness is shredded. I am heartened to see citizens of most of these countries defying the political class to express solidarity with people under apartheid.

My criticism here should not be read as a criticism of jews. Many of the vocal opponents of what is happening to the Palestinians are jews, including those in New York and San Francisco. This is also not a conflict between jews and muslims. About 15% of the Palestinian population is Christian.

May sense prevail on all sides, and a just settlement is found so all people in living in this holy land for all three Abrahamic religions sees peace and prosperity.

Photo credit: Associated Press, taken from Chicago Sun Times.