The rhetoric was dialled up by all parties yesterday, with Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant stating Israel was “fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”.

The actions Israel has already embarked upon, about which some claim it has had “no choice”, include shelling 2.3m Palestinians effectively trapped, killing innocent children, and cutting off basic human rights including food and water.

In the Gaza Strip last night, the bodies of dead children were being carried from flattened buildings.

The Irish Examiner's front-page photograph today, Tuesday, shows one such innocent child’s arm being held by a rescuer. Lifeless, the child lies trapped under collapsed rubble. Israel’s response will justifiably earn rebuke from people around the world and the celebration of Hamas’s initial barbarism on streets around the world should earn the same hostility.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald was right to describe the events as “truly horrific”, but the words of certain Sinn Féin members in their support of Palestine have not reflected that view.

The horror that Hamas inflicted in the Negev desert is nothing less than international terrorism on a massive scale. Any support or justification for their killing of innocent civilians is wrong and should be condemned by all right-minded politicians and observers. That some elements within Sinn Féin saw this as the right time for flag-waving is causing understandable disquiet.

One doesn’t need to be a ‘supporter’ of Israel or Palestine to deplore what is evil, and what occurred at the rave in southern Israel can have no justification. Harrowing videos shared on social media show children, women, and elderly people being kidnapped at gunpoint and point to rape and abuse being carried out on innocent victims.

Government ministers here have appealed for calm before Israel’s inevitable large-scale retaliation. It was inevitable, too, that those appeals would fall on deaf ears. That the EU sought to unilaterally cut funding to Palestine territories is also concerning, though humanitarian aid will continue.

Mr Netanyahu said Israel’s actions were going to “change the Middle East”. That change has already begun. We need strong intervention from democracies now, to ensure that it doesn’t continue to come at so high a price.

Road safety report

The report from Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) last week highlighted a massive drop-off of Department of Transport support for vital road development and much-needed safety improvements, and also came with a chilling warning.

TII estimates that, unless work on such projects was immediately prioritised, some 77 people will be added to the grim roll call of those killed on our roads, with a further 381 seriously injured over the next five years.

In the light of  five further deaths on Irish roads last weekend and the growing clarion calls for something to be done, it came as no shock to find that the blame for these dark and stark predictions were being laid at the door of Transport Minister Eamon Ryan.

Highlighting the lack of investment in individual projects, the TII opined that 18 alone will die and 252 will be seriously injured because of the failure to advance the Cork City Northern Transport Project; similarly, four will die and 11 be seriously hurt because the N4 Longford-Mullingar road remains as it is, and the same road between Maynooth and Leixlip will cost six lives and 37 injuries for the same reason.

The certainty of death on Irish roads has become depressingly familiar, but blaming speed as the regular fall-guy has become tiresome. That an estimated 30,000 people are driving on our roads without having ever sat a driving test — according to the RSA’s own figures — is unacceptable.

Our failure to ensure the competence of Irish drivers and our seeming unwillingness to give them safe roads on which to drive are huge factors in the carnage we see almost daily.