Richard Ingrams’s Week: The ongoing tragedy of 'damage to innocents'

On Wednesday when the media reported the massacre of 40 Palestinians in a United Nations school in Gaza, the distinguished historian Andrew Roberts wrote in the Daily Express: "The Israeli Defence Force does all in its power to minimise damage to the innocent."

Roberts had perhaps written his piece before news of the massacre came through. But would he have wanted to change it or tone it down in the light of the latest atrocity? I doubt it. Israeli, he concluded, after all "is performing a service to the entire region". The death of 40 innocent civilians was presumably not going to change that.

There are still plenty of apologists for Israel working hard to excuse and condone the savagery of the Gaza invasion. But nowadays they are fighting a losing battle – likewise the Israeli ministers and their spokesmen who appear nightly on our TV screens. Try as they may, they cannot easily disguise the fact that they view the Palestinians as a lesser breed, one which has to be kept under strict control. What if 40 of them are killed in the UN school? It is their own fault or at least the fault of Hamas.

Despite this the likes of Andrew Roberts insist that the IDF is seriously concerned about the casualties.

Concerns over what Roberts calls the "damage to the innocent" has nothing much to do with principles, morality or even the Geneva Convention. What worries the Israeli army apparently is the thought that the BBC or Channel 4 will make "a simplistic" anti-Israeli propaganda out of any unwarranted killing.

Left cold by window shopping

Prowling round the West End of London in search of possible January sale bargains, I wandered into the Wedgwood shop in Piccadilly. But there was nothing to tempt me. Wedgwood is now threatened with bankruptcy. Woolworths, Wedgwood – who will be next?

The credit crunch is blamed for all these failures. But commentators feel the need to look for other, deeper causes. Thus in the case of Wedgwood, for example, I've seen people say that the modern world has no particular interest in fine china. They say that people don't buy dinner services any more. And who wants cups and saucers these days? No wonder poor old Wedgwood is heading for liquidation.

It's not very convincing. All right, the cup and saucer may well be a thing of the past (though I doubt it). People still need something, even if it's only a mug to drink their tea out of. Could it be that the reason some shops are struggling, possibly more so at this time than others, is that people don't want to buy the things in the windows? Wedgwood may be iconic but there was nothing very iconic about the china I saw displayed in Piccadilly – much of it designed by the distinctly un-iconic figure of Jasper Conran.

There is a drab sameness about modern shops – not surprising considering they are all owned by big monopolies and don't vary from town to town. The goods are selected by head office, and the individual managers have little power to impose their own ideas. Other shops simply seem to rent out their shelf space to outside businesses and those with the most money are those who get a good display. Credit crunch or no, it is not surprising that so many retailers are suffering.

Pietersen, Moores and a puzzle that's beyond me

The politics of cricket has never been easy for the outsider to follow and the latest episode involving the England captain Kevin Pietersen and the coach Peter Moores is no exception. I have studied a variety of accounts and am still as baffled as I was at the beginning.

As far as I can understand it, Pietersen, who has never seen eye to eye with Moores, told the English Cricket Board (ECB) that he was not prepared to go on the forthcoming tour of the West Indies if Moores continued to be the coach.

The ECB took offence at what it considered Pietersen's insubordination and sacked him or, rather, told him that he would have to resign.

But then the board also sacked Peter Moores. So did it follow that the ECB had actually agreed with Pietersen that Moores wasn't up to the job? And if so, why was Pietersen being sacked?

If that wasn't baffling enough, it was now being put about, presumably at the instigation of the ECB, that, in any case, Pietersen wasn't much good as the captain.

It was stated by a number of the cricket pundits that he is a one-man band who is interested only in his own performance as a batsman and that he is not popular with the other players and makes little or no effort to endear himself to them.

All that may be true. But if it is and if it was generally known by all, and the ECB in particular, why was Pietersen ever made the captain in the first place?