I recently read several Facebook comments that trivialized the indiscriminate violence inflicted on innocent people in Gaza and Lebanon. Some commenters suggested that the deaths and disruption experienced by Israeli residents were equivalent to—or even worse than—the destruction inflicted on more than eight million people when sophisticated weaponry threatened or destroyed densely populated areas outside Israel’s borders.

That comparison is not merely inaccurate; it is morally grotesque. It erases the overwhelming disparity in firepower, civilian deaths, shattered infrastructure, mass displacement, hunger, and terror.

Israeli civilians should never be subjected to terrorist violence, but their suffering cannot honestly be used to minimize the far greater devastation wrought on entire populations in neighbouring lands.

Compassion that recognizes only one side’s humanity is not compassion. It is propaganda.

My comments drew an email inviting me to campaign against Zionism and support the elimination of non-Muslim governments in the Middle East. The writer added that LGBTQ activists who support Palestinians are particularly dangerous to Muslim people.

Such wildly divergent reactions help explain why this conflict has remained intractable for so long.