A simple question: when is a war crime not a war crime? Answer: when it’s done by an allied nation. And when it kills some of your own citizens (Charities halt Gaza aid after drone attack that killed seven workers, 2 April), it’s a “tragedy” (Benjamin Netanyahu).
Before the first Geneva convention (1864), no law protected civilians or prisoners in wartime. Instead, there existed informal rules. If you surrendered your city before the besieger launched an assault, you might escape with life and property; if you waited too long, you were at the conqueror’s mercy. Medieval civilians had better chances than those of today’s Gaza, where the Israeli government and armed forces ignore international law, outrage and finger-wagging from allies. The only thing that will stop them is when those who supply the bombs pull that plug.
Realpolitik has always trumped humanity, so this will only happen when western governments, whose history of hypocrisy would fill many pages of the Guardian, decide the political cost to them of ignoring the Palestinian deaths inflicted by their own weapons is higher than the cost of the current policy.
Dr Peter Purton
Southall, London
• Your editorial (The Guardian view on the IDF’s killing of aid workers: a grim milestone in Gaza, 2 April) asks: “What will it take for Israel’s allies to say: no more – and show they mean it?” Against the background of thousands of women and children killed by the Israel Defense Forces, the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, Israel’s policing of the food and medical supplies allowed into Gaza, and the deaths of more than 200 aid workers since 7 October, Monday’s killing of seven aid workers looks like a deliberate act of intimidation. It is because Israel’s allies have not gone beyond words of condemnation that all of the above has happened.
John Boaler
Calne, Wiltshire
• The diplomatic pressure on Israel today (Sunak calls for investigation as British aid workers killed in Israeli airstrike named, 3 April) should make us ask why the lives of seven innocent aid workers are seemingly worth more than the lives of more than 10,000 innocent Palestinian children.
Hasan Ahmed
Birmingham
• I was extremely distressed by your report on the condition of wounded children in Gaza’s hospitals (‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza, 2 April). Unlike many, I refuse to take sides in this conflict, but I cannot read about children in such distress without wanting to react. We live in such a different world: children attend Easter holiday activities in our parks and museums, and sadness is for those who don’t score a goal in the football game. So what can we do to show we care about the wounded children of Gaza, and we know what they are missing out on? Ideas, please.
Eleanor Allen
London
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