Given the vacuum of moral responsibility across the Middle East, who can trivialise the trial of Benjamin Netanyahu?

We pick and choose who we want to stand trial among the leaders across the region – but the law is something that binds us all, writes Robert Fisk

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) inside the district court of Jerusalem on 24 May (AFP)

I’m not greatly moved by the trial of Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s not the charges – bribery, fraud and breach of trust – nor the length of time it’s taken to see him appear Netanyahu in court. Nor the Israeli prime minister’s attempt to drag the court case on even longer.

Nor is it the obvious fact that any sane observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must ask why the Israelis themselves must endure this possibly two-year trial when far more ghastly offences should have been levelled against previous Israeli leaders and military commanders over their behaviour in past decades.

The Israelis – like the Arabs, by the way – have committed plenty of war crimes: the wholesale shooting dead of unarmed Palestinians, the bombing of apartment blocks containing innocent men, women and children, the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon in 1982, the mass destruction of homes and businesses, the imprisonment without trial of thousands of Palestinians.