The pictures are horrific: schoolroom walls covered in blood, parents running with injured children against a backdrop of bombed-out rubble, women with outstretched arms imploring Heaven. But they do not tell the full story of what is happening in Gaza any more than the casualty or rocket tallies printed daily in The New York Times and elsewhere do.

Midweek, the Times reported that 1,410 Palestinians have died and only 59 Israelis, while Israel had launched 3,577 rockets into Gaza compared to 2,753 fired by Hamas at Israel. But these figures are grotesquely dishonest, implying a moral equivalence that simply does not exist.