When Zohran Mamdani said Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested if he came to New York, my first reaction wasn’t outrage. It was curiosity.

Because if there is now a legal principle under which the leader of a democracy becomes a war criminal for fighting a war against an enemy that deliberately hides beneath civilians, then this is rather important. We should all know about it. We should teach it at Sandhurst, at West Point and at every military academy in Europe. Future officers should be instructed that if a terrorist organisation massacres your civilians, kidnaps your children and then embeds itself beneath apartment blocks and hospitals, your obligation is… well, this is the interesting part… what exactly?

That question has become strangely unfashionable.

The modern debate has become remarkably good at describing Israel’s alleged crimes and remarkably reluctant to describe Israel’s alternatives. Every interview, every demonstration, every statement seems to begin from the assumption that there was an obvious course of action available to Israel which only malice........

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