THE most recent article I wrote for this newspaper was headlined: Israel-Gaza: We need an immediate ceasefire and proper humanitarian aid.

There is even more need now for the same demands. The Israeli attacks on Gaza have only intensified since and the trickle of humanitarian aid threatens to put the lives of the entire population of over 2 million at risk.

Recently, Craig Mokhiber director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights resigned in disgust. He characterised the most recent events as a “textbook case of genocide.” That judgment seems right. If so, it is a genocide not only accepted but actively encouraged by Western governments including our own.

Rishi Sunak has announced the despatch of British military personnel to the Eastern Mediterranean explicitly to help Israel and Biden has sent two fleet groups. This is more than moral support. Much more. It is active engagement as a combatant even as war crimes are being committed and genocide is being carried out.

What has changed since I wrote that piece a fortnight ago is a question of degree. The bodies have piled higher at an even faster rate and now a whole population goes hungry or is in danger of water-borne diseases because they are thirsty.

Therefore, it seems appropriate, rather than repeat the same arguments for ceasefire and humanitarian aid in a more desperate way, to tackle the arguments of Israel and its key Western supporters head-on.

As readers will know, there has been turmoil in the Labour Party arising from Keir Starmer’s defence of Israel’s right to block food, water and medicines to Gaza, even though each of these is a collective punishment and amounts to a war crime.

As a result of that pressure, the Labour leader has made a detailed case for his position, in a recent speech to Chatham House.

It is a speech which deserves to be widely read. It is the most comprehensive exposition of the case for the continued assault on Gaza from a leading politician that I have seen.

No similar argument is expected from Joe Biden, simply because he is not (yet) under the same degree of pressure to justify US actions.

There is much in the speech which is unobjectionable. But the thrust of the argument is to set Labour party policy against the call for a ceasefire. This is precisely the key area of contention.

Starmer argues that the call for a ceasefire should be resisted on two grounds. The first, and clearly most important, is that a ceasefire now would mean that Hamas would remain with whatever fighting capacity it has now. It would not have been defeated.

The second reason offered is not really an argument at all, just an unsupported assertion that the call for a humanitarian pause is the only feasible policy right now.

In essence, the argument is exactly the same as that of the Israeli government: that Hamas must be destroyed before there can be any peace, even before there could be even a ceasefire that might lead to a peace.

But history and logic do not support this argument.

Richard Haass, who is no leftwinger or supporter of Hamas but instead for 20 years was the president of the US Council on Foreign Relations, recently warned that: “Israel’s aim of eliminating Hamas is likely to prove impossible.”

This view is echoed by a number of leading figures from the security/military/diplomatic spheres. John Sawyers’ assessment, as a former head of MI6 is that: “Israel’s security chiefs know that the goal of destroying Hamas is probably beyond their reach. Hamas has a political base and extensive support from Iran.”

The long history of attempting to wipe out Israel’s armed opponents has no successful precedent. Or, victory can only be counted if it includes the destruction of the targeted organisation and its replacement with another even more militant or implacably opposed to Israel.

I am old enough to remember the demonisation of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) and its leader Yasser Arafat.

Over 20 years ago Israel bombarded his compound and vowed to “root out Palestinian terrorism once and for all.” It did not succeed. It did not create security for anyone, and it certainly did not resolve the underlying causes of the current crisis.

Gideon Rachman, the chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, recently reminded readers that the US vowed the same apocalyptic threat to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

After 20 years of fighting and 176,000 dead, almost 50,000 of them civilians, the Taliban are back in power and the US-led coalition forces have gone home.

Blind rage can never be a substitute for a rational foreign policy. A sober assessment of the likely costs and benefits of a military campaign must be weighed.

Some of us argue vociferously that there are no benefits to this assault on Gaza, or, on a lower scale the renewed violence and land grab by settlers on the West Bank. And we also argue that the costs in terms of innocent lives lost are a price no decent society should ever inflict.

But then I and many others are never much taken by arguments of realpolitik, of sticking close the US right or wrong, or knee-jerk defence of Israel no matter what the latest outrage.

Those many others include about three-quarters of the British population, who may seek to exact a political price on those who recklessly disregard their strongly held beliefs.

It also includes an overwhelming majority of countries in the world, as repeated UN votes demonstrate. “America right or wrong” may provide even greater calamities for a Labour prime minister during a Trump II presidency.

Yet we know that other politicians do take a realpolitik approach. They live in the real world and are the grown-ups in the room. We know all this because they tell us so, repeatedly.

They refuse the call for an immediate ceasefire and all necessary humanitarian aid within that framework. Essentially, the argument is that the Israelis are determined to “eradicate Hamas” whatever the cost and the US backs them, so we must. They take no account of the possibility that these aims cannot be met, or that US/Israeli policy will have to change course.

Their risk is that their arguments will be turned to rubble and their reputations turned to dust, like so much else in this military offensive.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.