The problem 3.

There is a large number of people here in Europe who are justifying Israel's destruction of Gaza with a frightening moral certitude. Their case centres around the assumption, held unquestionable, that no country in the world would tolerate being constantly rocketed by a terrorist organisation that is constitutionally dedicated to its destruction. While this may well be true, the confident, almost lazy little nod with which some Western commentators, who have never in their life seen what a city looks like after a bombing raid, consign hundreds of people to their violent deaths is more than a bit unsettling. 

I can accept that the Israelis have no opportunity for such moral wishy-washiness. This sort of hand-wringing is a luxury. They have to do something to defend themselves. Theirs is a tough neighbourhood, as they like to frequently remind people. But ours is not. Civilisation may be the luxury of being out of the jungle. But let the civilised man at least sound a note of doubt in such matters. At the very least, the warrior pose makes us look silly.

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Is it just "the bravery of being out of range", as Roger Waters called it? Not even. I suppose the argument really is that until you have been faced with the corpse of a headless child half hanging out of the rubble of some house that has been hit by a shell, you are unqualified to make the moral call whether it is OK to launch a war even when it looks like a perfect case of self-defense. Therefore you shouldn't. And pray that the person who is making that decision has already peeked into that hell and can therefore hope to weigh the issues involved.