A deadly attack on the al-Tabin school by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was justified on the grounds that it was a command and control centre for Hamas terrorists. Hospitals have also been attacked because of the terrorists alleged to be hiding there. This betrays a very inclusive definition of terrorists which has been maintained for a long time by the IDF. The cartoon below was produced by Gary Trudeau in 1982 and seems to capture the expansive view that continues to be adopted.

It is uncomfortable finding humour in such matters. The cartoon relates to when the the PLO was driven out of Beirut by the IDF, which was followed by a massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese Shia refugees in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

The massacre at the time involved the killing of somewhere between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians and was condemned by the UN General Assembly as an act of genocide. The US and a number of other nations objected to the term genocide. As the number of those killed approaches 40k and the number of cultural, religious, educational and medical buildings are flattened when will the definition of genocide become appropriate?

The power of the Trudeau cartoon is its revealing the absurdity of claims which are so extreme as to be absurd. Claims which attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

Doonesbury cartoon taken from “The Hundred Years War on Palestine” by R. Khalidi. Profile Books 2020.