Talking Israeli Standards.

On July 11, Netanyahu said "No state would allow its citizens to be targeted without a harsh response." This point has been constantly reused by every apologist for Israeli criminality on the planet. Somehow everyone imagines this is an unprecedented situation. Veteran Mid East correspondent Robert Fisk knows better, thanks to his experience of Northern Ireland and Lebanon:

What if the people of London were being rocketed like the people of Israel? Wouldn’t they strike back? Well yes, but we Brits don’t have more than a million former inhabitants of the UK cooped up in refugee camps over a few square miles around Hastings.

The last time this specious argument was used was in 2008, when Israel invaded Gaza and killed at least 1,100 Palestinians (exchange rate: 1,100 to 13). What if Dublin was under rocket attack, the Israeli ambassador asked then? But the UK town of Crossmaglen in Northern Ireland was under rocket attack from the Irish Republic in the 1970s – yet the RAF didn’t bomb Dublin in retaliation, killing Irish women and children. In Canada in 2008, Israel’s supporters were making the same fraudulent point. What if the people of Vancouver or Toronto or Montreal were being rocket-attacked from the suburbs of their own cities? How would they feel? But the Canadians haven’t pushed the original inhabitants of Canadian territory into refugee camps.

The point has been made before, including by Peter Hitchens of all people. The IRA fired rockets at targets on the British mainland many times, attempted to assassinate Thatcher with the Brighton bombing, and fired mortars into John Major's backgarden (only for one to explode to no success). The British government did not respond by carpet-bombing Belfast and invading the Irish Republic where many IRA members based themselves. Yet that is what we would expect if we go by the standards of Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who is convinced it is normal to invade a country and shoot and bomb defenceless unarmed civilians.