The Israeli attack that could be even more devastating than the aid convoy airstrike

The killing of seven World Central Kitchen charity workers has overshadowed Israel’s deadly bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria on Monday. But, says Mary Dejevsky, this clear violation of international law has taken the war to a new level – and could yet spark a conflagration across the entire region

Iranian protesters burn US and Israeli flags after an airstrike on Tehran’s consulate in Syria (AP)

The news spotlight, in another week of death and devastation in the Middle East, has understandably been on the seven aid workers killed in a series of Israeli missile strikes as they drove along the coast road in Gaza.

This was especially understandable in the UK, which is where three of those travelling in the World Central Kitchen convoy came from, and where their bodies have now been returned.

Some have criticised the narrow focus on the aid workers’ deaths as implying that white lives from the rich world were somehow more valuable than those of Palestinians, tens of thousands of whom have also died as a result of Israeli airstrikes. Yet it can also be said that the aid workers’ deaths made for a poignant approach to the half-year mark of this conflict, which falls on Sunday: seven individuals with no personal stake in the fighting, struck down by a weapon of the very war whose consequences they were trying to mitigate.