The best quote from the TV series “Game of Thrones” is from Ned Stark: «What comes before the “but” counts for nothing». Paraphrasing the title of a book by Primo Levi, what is upstream of the conjunction “but” at the end of the reasoning will be the “submerged”. Everything that is downstream, the “saved”.

The subtitle of the “View” column in the Financial Times of October 5 partially confirms this rule: «The Hamas attack on Israel was terrible, but the response inflamed the region”. The underlying meaning is: enough is enough! The editorial begins with a fitting tribute to the horrors of October 7, 2023, but highlights the atrocities committed by the Israeli army. Forty-one thousand dead killed in Gaza, mostly women and children. Fronts open as if they were discarded chocolates, and then left there by a minky child in search of milk chocolate. It is the Financial Times, not Al Jazeera, yet it claims that there is no proven link between 7 October 2023 and Iran.

After the intimidating attack by Israeli forces against UNIFIL, the UN peace buffer on the border between Israel and Lebanon, Federico Rampini makes a different use of the “but” in his examination of the criticisms of Western governments: «These reactions are understandable, legitimate, necessary (…) but everything can be said about that attack, not that it was a surprise”.

When the adjectives before the “but” are three and in sequence, their meaning undergoes an inversion. As Marco Paolini said in the Vajont monologue, (I’m going from memory) “good” said once is a compliment; said three times, the recipient could be a ©øgliøn€.

Rampini should experience at least once the thrill of putting Netanyahu’s actions ahead of that “but”. As in a stream of consciousness, a karst river could flow downstream revealing what the illustrious journalist with roots on the left intimately thinks of the current far-right Israeli government.

If he followed that river further downstream, Rampini might one day reveal that with two million people sealed for years in a strip of land, everything can be said about October 7th, not that it’s…

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