I visited a friend who lives on a lifestyle block; a good person, even a virtuous person, but when I commented on the horror of what is happening in Gaza, the friend looked away and talked of the garden. I repeated the statement and our eyes met, then we looked away. When faced with evil one ends up looking away. Some resort to the rally, chanting the slogans to passers by who are looking away. And beneath the evil is the banality of a leader who has been humiliated, whose reputation is at stake, who has been made a laughing stock of and is now on a revenge rampage. Age old, these raping, looting, wreckers trampling on the enemy, the act dreadfully magnified by modern weaponry.

Add the disgusting games of diplomacy, the evil buried in carefully chosen language. One looks away. And we can. We’re not faced with the bombing, the death, the cell, the torturer… we can look away from the banality of evil. One day it may change.