Israel meets the requirements for a just war in Gaza, but it’s losing the propaganda battle, says Jacob Rees-Mogg

Third, there is required a right intention on the part of the belligerents, either achieving some good object or of avoiding some evil.

Israel meets the requirements for a just war in what it is doing in Gaza. It is a legitimate authority. Its cause is unquestionably just. And there is a right intention.

Yet Israel is losing the propaganda battle and support is dwindling.

How can this be?

Israel is rightly not held to the same standard as Bashar al Assad, the Syrian dictator, who is estimated to have murdered over 600,000 of his own people, or the Iranians, who, with their allies in Yemen, have been responsible for 377,000 people being killed.

Nor even the Chinese Communist Party which holds, according to Human Rights Watch, nearly a million and a half Uyghur Muslims in detention.

The atrocities of the dictators are not held to the same standard, nobody marches against the outrageous treatment of people in Syria, Yemen or Communist China.

Western democracies are expected to do better and are held to a higher standard.

This is not unreasonable. Yet Israel needs to win.

Hamas, supported by Iran, is part of the global threat to the West.

This is visible in other parts of the world in what Iran is doing through its Houthi proxies in the Red sea, through the actions of Russia in Ukraine, and the tension that comes from China, not just over Taiwan, but also on the border with India.

As in the last few days, we have seen a man attacked on the streets of London, apparently by proxies of the Iranian government. These threats are not always that remote.

To defend ourselves, we need to support our allies.

In some ways, our own proxies in Ukraine, in Gaza, and Taiwan.

But Israel is not making this easy for us as yesterday's deaths show.

The strikes this week that killed three British citizens are very difficult to explain.

Analysis from the Telegraph has shown that the IDF uses two types of drone strikes:

One with a blast radius of 5-10 metres, and another that is extremely precise down to a few feet, a drone operator told the Telegraph that they could theoretically take out the driver of a vehicle, leaving the person in the backseat alive.

The operator also said that strikes are only ever executed upon approval from a lawyer and a senior officer.

Israeli media have suggested that the strikes that killed the British citizens were of the highly precise type.

When you take this into account along with the fact that the aid convoy had alerted the IDF of its passage prior to the strike and it was duly approved, we cannot help but despair at the negligence.

The point is that Israel is an ally in the broader global war against Iran and its as well as Russia and China.

But these actions not only work against the western cause by granting our enemies moral ammunition, but they also work against Israel’s interests too.

Israel takes pride not only in being a western liberal democracy, but also in having a Defence Force of the highest moral and strategic standards.

Israel, having been attacked and having a just basis for its response, is losing the propaganda war.

It needs to win it and it needs to act in a way that allows its friends to support it with conviction.

It must answer some key questions. For example, how many people does it think have died as a consequence of its military activity, and how many of those were Hamas fighters?

If Israel loses in the court of public opinion, it will lose in the theatre of war.

That would potentially be catastrophic for the western world facing the threats that we know exist and are serious.

Our friends need to continue to win our support and they will not do this if the lives of their allies are lost.