AS shock at the death toll and the ghastly images from the Hamas invasion of Israel and the bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli state continues to reverberate around the world, we are once again confronted with the familiar and lethally self-defeating ‘Year Zero’ analysis. The grim and shameful history that is the wellspring of the violence is being once again ignored as European capitals light up with the blue and white of Israel and throw their massive political weight behind the perpetration of war crimes by Tel Aviv in response to the war crimes carried out in Israel by Hamas on Saturday and Sunday.

For make no mistake, the murder of innocents and the appalling images that followed the startling offensive by Hamas on Saturday can only have sickened those – this newspaper group included – who have been unswerving in their support for justice for Palestine and an end to the atrocity that is the illegal occupation. There is a moral imperative to call out all the appalling excesses that have filled the airwaves and newspaper pages for five days now – and there is a particular dignity in having the courage to stand up and say something is wrong, even when you are four-square behind the cause in whose name it has been done.

Western governments and the vast majority of the media have been driven by no imperative to acknowledge all the immense suffering and tragedy that we have seen, and are seeing in Israel and in Gaza – far from it. The narrative continues to be that Israel is the plucky lone democrat adrift in a sea of mindless Middle East fanatics and which is reluctantly – and because it has no other choice – turning its massive and modern western arsenal on the most densely populated residential area in the world; a residential area in which the people are held prisoner. Their imperative is to paint those refusing to cleave to a bogus single-culprit analysis as fellow-travellers of the group which carried out the Israel atrocities and to create an environment where even the appearance of a Palestinian flag is enough condemn whoever is carrying it.

And that’s where we are headed now. As the Israeli military continues to churn out footage of entire residential neighbourhoods being demolished and the media continues to present those images as self-defence, we see entirely legitimate and indeed mainstream support for justice for Palestine being undermined. People waving Palestine flags in protest at the demolition of Gaza are accused of standing behind the killing of babies; politicians are grilled aggressively about their support for the Palestinian people, as if the families cowering in their high-rise homes with nowhere to go were the people responsible for the killings in Israel.

Now, more than ever, is the time for us to state our support for a two-state solution; our support for a people who have faced 75 years of tyranny and oppression; and our solidarity with innocent victims. All of them.