Fintan O’Toole is a a prominent Irish writer, journalist and theater critic. Writing in the Irish Times, he lays into Israel, accusing it of all of manner lies and obfuscations to disguise the reality of its actions. There are references to other conflicts sprinkled throughout the text but the central intention is clear: strip away the rotten cladding of untruth and show the Israelis to be the blood-soaked monsters that they are.

Under the headline “Six-step guide to justifying atrocities” Fintan begins,

1. Why are you saying this? Always begin by questioning the motives of those who draw attention to unfortunate incidents such as the shelling of schools, the blocking of ambulances, the placing of bombs in restaurants, the firing of rockets into towns etc. They are anti-Semites, anti-Irish, anti-Islam - whatever. Even when you know the charge to be untrue, make them deny it.

Forget about the anti-Islam and anti-Irish references, they are just a discursive smokescreen. This is a classic reiteration of the Livingstone Formulation, the rhetorical maneuver which dismisses concern about antisemitism as a dishonest attempt to divert attention from the activities of Israel, normalizes attacks on that country and seeks to confound criticism of it with its complete deligitimization.

If confronted with an obviously independent, respected and neutral organisation - the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, a UN agency - react more in sorrow than anger. Accept that they are acting for the best motives, but regret that they have been cynically manipulated by evil forces. This gives you a double whammy - the implication that your critics are stupid and another cynical abuse to chalk up against your enemies.

“Obviously independent, respected and neutral.” That sounds nice. That would be obviously independent, respected and neutral in the sense that Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteuer in the Palestinian Territories and 9/11 conspiracy theorist is, eh Fintan? Or the impeccably neutral ICRC, neutral that is, except when it comes to Israel.

2. What about . . .? What about 800 years of oppression? What about Hamas’s charter? What about Cromwell? What about the Holocaust? What about the H-Blocks? What about the rockets? It is true, of course, that logic dictates that revulsion at one atrocity should apply to all others. Unless “we” are innately superior to “them” (we are, but let’s not go there), the same standards have to apply. But your job is not about logic - it’s about emotion and distraction. What-aboutery generates passionate indignation and, more importantly, means that you don’t have to actually address what you’ve done. This, remember, is your primary task - to fill the airwaves or the newspapers with everything except an actual engagement with the atrocities.

Again, ignore the references to the history of conflict in Ireland, that’s not what Fintan’s really about. Focus on “What about Hamas’s charter?” In Fintan’s view people - people like me - who make reference to it only do so in a bid to throw up a smokescreen around Israeli atrocities. This view manages the unusual feat of being unfair to both Hamas and the Israelis; the former because it fails to give them credit for being able to understand the plain meaning of words they endlessly repeat and the latter because it suggests that they should ignore the stated intentions of their enemies.

Furthermore, anyone who attempts to apply their critical faculties to criticism of Israel is doing so in bad faith. They don’t really want to examine the extent to which such criticisms might be valid; all they want to do is cloud the commission of atrocities. Thanks, Fintan.

4. We gave a warning. We left a coded message saying that the bombs were about to go off. We dropped leaflets from the sky telling civilians to evacuate the area. Maybe the warning was a little imprecise or a little late. Maybe, when they evacuated one side of the town, we exploded car bombs in the area they ran into. Maybe, when they sought refuge in schools flying the UN flag, we shelled those buildings too. But we gave a warning.

Fintan thinks that Israel phoning the families of leaders of an organization that is trying to destroy it in order to warn them that their homes are about to be attacked is actually evidence of its inhumanity and capacity to commit atrocities. Now I have no doubt that more warnings could have been given, that some arrived too late, that the whole policy could have been carried out better, that more could have been done in general to protect civilians, but a condemnation tout court of the giving of warnings is absurd, even in current circumstances, where normally rational commentators are losing the run of themselves.

5. There is no morality, only “moralising”. Morality is an awkward bugger in these circumstances, not least because it can play hell with your own conscience. There is, thankfully, an almost magical solution - the beautiful word “moralising”. It transforms that nasty stuff about right and wrong into a contest between insufferable prigs (them) and clear-eyed realists (you). It shifts the ground from the atrocities you have committed or supported to the psychological flaws of those who get upset about them - all with the addition of five little letters. For advanced practitioners, “moralising” may be combined with “grandstanding” in a contemptuous sweep like “the throng of moralising grandstanders”, but it generally requires at least a university professorship to pull off such a comprehensive dismissal of international humanitarian law.

Let me attempt a translation. “Anybody who fails to draw conclusions identical to mine from the photographs of dead babies in Gaza is trying to justify atrocities and is a brute. I am not a brute and, risking all, I have no fear of speaking out about Zionist atrocities.” Bravo, Fintan.

6. We are at war with them to save ourselves. We have to do it to them before they do it to us. Other neat formulations include: “Here, just as generally, humanity would amount to the greatest cruelty towards our own people”; “The only way to cope with them is to treat them with the necessary brutality. If you spare them, you’ll later be their victim”; and “If we didn’t fend them off, they would annihilate us.” These latter phrases, nicely turned though they are, need to be used with caution and not in front of historically literate audiences who might recognise their origins in early 1940s Germany. If anyone should point out such parallels, however, see point one.

Fintan’s sarcasm hits new heights of subtlety here. Have you ever come across a cleverer and more deniable conflation of Israel with Nazi Germany? I sure haven’t.

A few final words for Fintan. War is hell and the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza is real. As war is inherently hellish and almost invariably the cause of acute suffering to civilians, the existence of such suffering in Gaza, in itself, tells us nothing about the justifiability of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

If Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, then those responsible should be held to account, that’s obvious. What’s equally obvious is that events in Gaza seem to be making people with no interest in war and conflict in other parts of the world foam at the mouth. I wonder why that might be.