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I can think of a rather less fantastic scenario to illustrate Mr Kamiya's point in his excellent article than his "thought experiment". Imagine British governments dealing with the IRA threat in Ulster the way that Israeli governments have dealt with Palestinian terrorism and simple resistance. Imagine the families of IRA men having their homes blown up by British soldiers as punishment for terrorist acts those men have committed or Irish Catholics being forced to live in enclosed communities where they must go through the daily humiliation of checkpoints or endure mockery or worse from their Protestant neighbours, who are materially better served in all respects than them. Imagine the British army, in reaction to the inevitable IRA military attacks on Catholic communities, bombing by land, sea, and air sections of Belfast and Londonderry and then sending in tanks and heavily armed infantry, in the process killing hundreds of innocent Irish Catholics after a several months long policy of severely limiting the import into their communities of material goods, food, and medical supplies because of IRA attacks. And through it all Her Majesty's Government would say we have no quarrel with the ordinary Irish Catholics of Ulster, we grieve at their deaths, we have taken every possible action to try to prevent civilian casualties, the IRA are to blame for what is happening to their people. What do you think the reaction of the world would be, what do you think the reaction of the US would be? Not likely what it has been to the actions of Israel.
