A prominent British Jewish journalist was explaining the dilemma that Israel faced over the rising death toll in Gaza. “At the heart of this,” he said, “from a humanitarian point of view, it’s disastrous.” But he added that we had to consider what the US did when it was attacked on 9/11: it invaded Iraq, where 200,000 [his figures] were killed in three years. And the British in the Second World War? “They firebombed Dresden, burning alive 25,000 civilians.”
You could see the point he was trying to make (in the latest episode of the Media Confidential podcast). Israel had been murderously attacked, and it was not going to take any lectures from the citizens of countries that, in a comparable situation, had famously – or infamously – retaliated with brutal force.
The counterargument, with the wisdom that hindsight comfortably brings, is that Iraq and Dresden are surely compelling arguments for not bombing even larger areas of Gaza into dust over the coming days and weeks.
