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At its best it is done in community with the living and the dead. We often learn by being moved by a person’s example in life and in art, example that enables us to see depth where we had not before – where, perhaps, we had seen only banality and sentimentality. indd 27 28/05/10 12:33 PM raimond gaita we attributed depth to what didn’t have it because we yielded to sentimentality, to an inclination to pathos or to cliché, or because our sense of tone is often fatally compromised by a tin ear for irony.

That attack was ingenious and unprecedented. indd 33 28/05/10 12:33 PM gerry simpson explosives that were timed to go off at random moments after the raid – killing rescue workers or families searching in the rubble. RAF Bomber Command described this raid, Operation Gomorrah, as a ‘complete victory’. Guernica and Hamburg are different in many ways. But, there is one unexpected difference. After Guernica, the German government insisted that its involvement be kept secret and Franco blamed the Republicans for using dynamite to destroy the town.

Second, there are the intermediate histories: Jenin, The Lebanon, the Oslo Accords and so on. I cannot discuss these here. Third, there is the immediate historical context. This may or may not, depending on the position advanced, include the presence or absence of a pro-Jewish lobby in Washington, DC, the threat or not of suicide attacks on Tel Aviv, the building of settlements on the West Bank, the continuing lack of recognition of Israel by surrounding Arab states, the military superiority of Israel over its immediate neighbours.