Politics is never at its optimal when it reaches the "yes but whatever our side did, the other side was worse" stage. Unfortunately, that's long been a recurring theme in the mire that is the Middle East. For the last two-and-a-half years, that has been a particularly cursed and complex theme, particularly in terms of the way the rest of the world has perceived events. The undoubted horrors of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 were greeted with shock, anger and grief.