Auden: "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return"

Patrick Cockburn, one of the best journalists when it comes to the Middle East, quotes W.H. Auden.

"I and the public know


What all schoolchildren learn:


Those to whom evil is done


Do evil in return".

I was revolted by the Hamas attack but am horrified by the coming massacres in Gaza. The 1200 Israeli dead will be a tiny number compared to the numbers of Arab civilians who will die.

Afterwards the world will not look well on Israel.

Half of the people in Gaza are children, locked in an open-air prison. You can recognise that the actions of Hamas are evil while at the same time pointing out the wrong done by Israel.

I remember the Comte de Tilly, in his wonderful memoirs, said that to start ones life by being raped was a very poor school for virtue. 

So is being bombed in an open air prison. The harm rape does goes on generation after generation, as do the horrors in Palestine.