I often have a conversation about the West Bank which goes like this. Someone says: Israel must lift the occupation. I reply: I agree but it has to be sure that when it does so, there will be security and a Palestinian force capable of preventing terrorism. They say: so you’re supporting occupation. I say: I’m not: I’m simply pointing out that if Hamas, with an unchanged position on Israel, were running the West Bank, Israel would have a perfectly legitimate right to be concerned about its security.

A constant conversation I have with some, by no means all, of my European colleagues is to argue to them: don’t apply rules to the Government of Israel that you would never dream of applying to your own country. In any of our nations, if there were people firing rockets, committing acts of terrorism and living next door to us, our public opinion would go crazy. And any political leader who took the line that we shouldn’t get too excited about it wouldn’t last long as a political leader. This is a democracy. Israel lost 1,000 citizens to terrorism in the intifada. That equates in U.K. population terms to 10,000. I remember the bomb attacks from Republican terrorism in the 1970s. There weren’t many arguing for a policy of phlegmatic calm.

So the issue of de-legitimization is not simply about an overt denial of the state of Israel. It is the application of prejudice in not allowing that Israel has a point of view that should be listened to.

One thing I state repeatedly in interviews about Gaza—despite disagreeing with the previous policy on it—is to say to western media outlets: just at least comprehend why Israel feels as it does. In 2005 it got out of Gaza i.e., ceased occupying it, took over 7,000 settlers with it and in return got rockets and terror attacks. Now I know all the counter-arguments about the unilateral nature of the withdrawal, the 2005 Access and Movement agreement and the closure of the crossings. But the fact remains: there is another point of view and you can’t describe it as illegitimate.

This is then hugely heightened by the way things are reported. Here the televisual images—whether in Lebanon, Gaza or indeed any field of conflict—in Afghanistan for example, are so shocking that they tend to overwhelm debate about how or why conflict began. Because Israel—like the U.S. or the U.K.—has superior force and because in such situations the horrible tragedy is that the innocent die—these images arouse anger, sympathy and a disgust that at one level is completely understandable but at another obscures the difficult choices nations like ours face when they come under attack.