BEN HARVEY: These two photos of boys show why the same old conflicts keep playing out in the Middle East

I fear this is not going to be a good newspaper column.

A good column leaves readers clear about the writer’s position on an issue.

Good columns don’t wallow in shades of grey because the journalists who write them don’t equivocate.

I have been studiously avoiding writing about the Middle East because what was a black-and-white issue has become ever greyer as the theatre of war grows in size and the death toll mounts.

The kidnapping, rape, mutilation and murder of more than 1000 Jews was a black-and-white issue. An act of pure, unfathomable evil.

Israel’s furious pursuit of the perpetrators was also a black-and-white issue. An act essential for self-preservation and one delivered with an understandable tinge of vengeance.

One year, and 40,000 lives later, it’s not as easy to paint such a stark picture.

The steady stream of photos of dead Arab children confronts the hardest hearts and challenges any black-and-white view of the war.

We cannot let those images detract from the fundamental issue here.

Dead children or not, Hamas and Hezbollah are evil and Israel’s decision to try to wipe the two organisations from the face of the earth is a mission of good.

Any Australian who protested on the weekend in support of the Palestinian cause should feel mighty uncomfortable at being praised by Hezbollah.

This terror group would happily replace every Western democracy, not just Israel, with a caliphate based on the regime governing Iran.

This is fine unless you are gay, or a woman who might speak her mind (or show her hair), in which case there’s an excellent chance you will be shot.

Amnesty has calculated that Iran is responsible for three-quarters of the world’s recorded executions. You can’t look sideways at someone in this place without being hauled before a firing squad.

That should exercise the mind of the woman in Perth who was photographed on Saturday holding a picture of slain Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

Lady, if you like him so much go and live in southern Lebanon or Tehran. See how long you last.

Anyone watching footage of dead children who might be moved to support Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar remember that he put those kids in harm’s way.

He guaranteed a high death toll by embedding his militia in a civilian population, using children as human shields.

Sinwar knew that by hosting weapons dumps in the suburbs of Gaza he would be condemning innocent Palestinians to death. He cared so much for them he was willing to let them die in a hail of air strikes.

Sinwar was fine with that because he could use the inevitable Palestinian deaths after October 7 as a bargaining chip.

Those images of wounded kids, brought to us live in Technicolour and Dolby Surround Sound from inside the hospitals of Gaza, were going to be his get-out-of-jail-free card.

His rationale for Israeli restraint.

A reason to call barleese as international pressure grew on Tel Aviv to stop the bombs because the response was “disproportionate”.

Sinwar knew that was the way it would play out.

Benjamin Netanyahu knew that also.

This wasn’t their first rodeo.

What Sinwar didn’t bank on was Netanyahu’s decision to hit pause on Groundhog Day.

Faced with the worst one-day Jewish death toll since the Holocaust, Netanyahu questioned the virtue of restraint.

He decided there was no point in a proportionate response because that had been factored in by Hamas as a cost of business.

Israel clearly believes that only disproportionate actions have a chance of securing the long-needed circuit breaker in the Middle East.

I don’t know whether it will be a successful strategy, though, for two reasons.

First, because the Palestinians are not hostages to Hamas; they’re not living grudgingly under a dictatorship.

They voted for Hamas.

They wanted to be ruled by an organisation dedicated to the destruction of Israel and with a proven history of using voters as human shields.

If this latest flare-up ever settles down there’s a good chance they’ll still vote for Hamas because they believe the Jews kicked them out of their homes when the state of Israel was created.

And guess what? They’ve kind of got a point there.

The second reason I am iffy about whether Israel’s tactic will work is encapsulated by the two photos above.

The picture on the left is of an 11-year-old Palestinian who watched his parents get killed by Israeli soldiers who also blinded his younger brother with a grenade.

Does anyone reckon that kid is going to study history and arrive at the conclusion that the death of his mother in machine gun fire was a necessary circuit breaker?

The only thing that boy is going to study is the operating manual for a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

The picture on the right shows a Jewish child.

It is a still image taken from a video that was live-streamed by Hamas terrorists after they shot his older sister.

In a few years, that boy will be conscripted into the Israeli army.

At some point next decade, perhaps in the West Bank or the Golan Heights, that Jewish boy is going to come up against a pissed-off Arab around his own age who’s carrying a rocket launcher and a grudge.

And, thus, groundhog day will start again.