The story is depressingly familiar. Israel acts to defend itself and the response from many mainstream figures is to condemn Israel.

The most egregious example this time round has come from Sir Keir Starmer. In his only comment to date on this week’s events in Israel, the Labour leader fulminated over “violence against worshippers during Ramadan” and demanded that Israel “work with Palestinian leaders to de-escalate tensions”. He did not consider it relevant to mention that it is those very Palestinian leaders who have been sending a barrage of rockets to Israel with the aim of murdering as many Israelis as possible.

But when it comes to dead Jews, polite opinion has long been ambivalent. Had any city in any other democratic nation been subject to such an attack, offers of help and solidarity would have flooded in and the right to defend its citizens proclaimed. But when Israel is attacked, it is the victim who is blamed.

Ignore the narrative pushed by media organisations which credulously report whatever they are told by Hamas and its anti-Israel fellow travellers. Israel went out of its way to calm tensions over the Sheikh Jarrah dispute. It is rarely reported that this is a decades long legal dispute and that the courts have repeatedly tried to offer a solution that did not lead to evictions — and, when this failed, even in the past week the decision was delayed to try to ease the situation.

The annual Jerusalem Day march was rerouted from its usual route through the Muslim Quarter.

But none of this is reported because it does not fit the story of an aggressive, intolerant Israel. The facts are irrelevant. Israel is to blame, because Israel is always to blame when someone seeks to murder its citizens.