Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, has reminded western audiences of the mass civilian deaths caused by the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945. Why is he doing that? What he wants to say is that “if you could, why can’t we?” Israel’s American and European friends feel uncomfortable when this comparison is made.

History tells us that countries have routinely conquered land, where other people are living, so the case of the State of Israel is not unique. But the question arrives, what to do with the people on the conquered land. Here, the State of Israel is a very peculiar case, and at the root of the Palestinian tragedy.