Indignant protests by Israeli and US leaders over last week’s decision by the prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) to seek Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest for alleged war crimes shone new light on an old reality: for those at the top who wield decisive political power, all people are equal – but some are more equal than others.

At the heart of objections to Karim Khan’s gutsy move is the unspoken implication that violence against Palestinians, a dispossessed, marginalised and largely voiceless people, is less wrong, or somehow more acceptable, than violence against Israelis, the privileged, protected citizens of an established nation state. To demur is to be accused, inanely yet inevitably, of antisemitism.

The self-reverencing fury of US and Israeli politicians, and some in Europe, is revealing – and dismaying. Hamas’s massacre of about 1,200 people last October was appalling, criminal and unforgivable – and must and will be punished. It does not justify Israel’s disproportionate, illegal and indiscriminately lethal response in Gaza. But they just don’t get it.

Palestinian lives matter as much as anyone else’s. How is it that western politicians so easily tolerate, ignore or defend the killing of about 35,000 people, at least 12,000 of whom were women and children (based on revised UN figures), through the bombing of homes and hospitals and the blocking and hijacking of aid?

Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and the US president, Joe Biden, insist that arraigning Israeli and Hamas leaders at the same time implies “moral equivalence”. This is........

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