Shaping our coverage of the war in Gaza has been one of the most challenging episodes in my tenure as editor of The Economist. That is not for lack of a superb team. Our Middle East correspondents are among the best in the world. Their reporting and analysis have been consistently outstanding. The challenge has been to steer our editorial line on a subject that is horrific, polarising, complex and about which emotions on all sides run high.

Over the past 22 months my mailbag has at times been filled with criticisms that The Economist is blind in its support of Israel and at other times that it has a shockingly anti-Zionist bias. I have taken comfort from this. Perhaps being roundly attacked from both sides means we are steering the right course, pointing out the culpability and failures wherever they occur.

In the past couple of weeks we have run one leader calling, again, for a ceasefire. The continuation of a war that serves no military purpose disgraces the Jewish state. We ran a second leader pointing out the counterproductive folly of Britain, France and Canada calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. Their grandstanding might just make a ceasefire less likely.

This week, on our cover, we stand back and tackle a bigger subject, one that will haunt Israel and the world long after the fighting stops: the question of accountability. We have a long report that looks at the failures of Israel’s normally fiercely independent legal system to police the country’s own war crimes. In another dispatch we look at the moribund state of international human-rights law. And our cover leader links the two, arguing both why Israel must hold itself to account and how it can be made to do so.

I’ve no doubt that many readers will disagree with our argument, but whatever your perspective I hope you can take something useful from this attempt to grapple rigorously and fair-mindedly with one of the world’s greatest current tragedies.