I re-entered Britain’s orbit last Thursday after a blissful, media-free holiday in Canada. Along with jetlag, I had to get psyched up as I got back into the news and ensuing national melees.
The biggest story is, of course, Gaza. In one recent, prescient column, I quoted a Palestinian musician, whose sister was maimed by an Israeli soldier: “Hell is better and kinder than here. They can do anything. Now Islamist groups are in refugee camps. What can we do?”
Civilians like him were caught between brutal Hamas and the increasingly repressive Israeli state. For too long, many Western journalists and politicians have shielded Israel from proper scrutiny.
What Hamas did was unspeakable, unforgiveable. Like the IRA, they’re violent anarchists with little regard for their own people. On 7 October, they slaughtered around 1,400 Israelis in cross-border incursions and took more than 200 hostages.
Israel’s retaliatory bombs have killed more than 5,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza authoritries – most of them civilians. Gaza is being razed, its population denied water, food and essentials. There is growing revulsion against the collective punishment, some of it being expressed by previous loyalists. On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Tom Nides, former US ambassador to Israel, repeatedly made a distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people.
On 9 October, Dov Zakheim, who is Jewish and a neoconservative, wrote on the US news website The Hill that Benjamin Netanyahu was an unfit leader and that Israel “can no longer have a government that includes racist, neo-fascist ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, whose pronouncements have only enflamed Palestinian – and not only Palestinian – hostility.”
On social media, Israelis who were attacked by Hamas in a kibbutz speak out against the revenge assaults and for ordinary Palestinians. Such bravery, such humanity.
Between 1972 and 1978, I lived in the home of Dr Hugh Blaschko, a German-Jewish scientist, famous for vital research on adrenalin. He was fearful that the Jewish homeland would “bring out the worst” in his people. I think of him today. Here in the UK, our political leaders and right-wingers in the media still chant that mantra: “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
Michael Gove affirmed unconditional support for that state at a pro-Israel rally, reinforcing Rishi Sunak’s avowals.
Earlier this month, Keir Starmer was asked by Nick Ferrari on LBC if “cutting off power, cutting off water” was an appropriate response to the events of 7 October. He replied: “I think that Israel does have that right.”
Several Labour councillors resigned from the party and so he backtracked and rediscovered his commitment to international law and aid. For now. Yet on Sunday, shadow frontbencher Lisa Nandy refused to “grandstand” about international law and waffled about the hurt of Muslims.
True, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah have sinisterly tried to turn the conflict into a jihad, but she must know that the plight of the Palestinian people is not a religious but a political cause. Many of its most articulate representatives, like the late Edward Said, have been Christians.
Currently, citizens across the globe are standing up for Palestinian rights. Protests are erupting across the Arab world. Leaders of Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt, which had “normalised” relationships with Israel, are becoming wary.
As with the Iraq War, a chasm has opened up between leaders and elite influencers and their populations.
In Canada, I talked to some pro-Palestinian protesters. One of them, a South African, spoke emotionally about historical injustices: “Palestinians did not try to exterminate Jews. Germany and European collaborators did. The British displaced Palestinians to create a Jewish homeland and Europeans exported their shame, guilt and blame to the Middle East. Now they are whiter than white.” Those truths are rarely told.
Europeans became the good guys and Arabs antisemitic devils. Brian, a university lecturer, who has worked in the Palestinian territories, told me he had come across a few real Jew-haters but that the majority wanted friendly neighbours, a good life and peace. An Israeli woman said the same was true of her people. Some abhorred all Palestinians, the rest wanted friendly neighbours, a good life and peace.
I now believe that Israel would not have become as uncompromising and obdurate as it now is, if it had been held more accountable by Western powers when it flouted all international laws and obligations. There has never been an inspection of its nuclear arsenal.
Even now, when that country’s actions are seen by millions as cruel and destructive, journalists self-censor or have to be exceptionally careful about what can be said or written about Israel’s actions. The BBC in particular, but other outlets too, fear accusations of antisemitism which are hurled at journalists, including Jeremy Bowen, Peter Oborne and others.
On Saturday at the Small Wonder book festival in Charleston, East Sussex, Simon Jenkins and I were on a panel discussing column writing. He said this issue should be avoided. I emphatically disagreed.
In Germany and France, pro-Palestinian demos have been banned; here, Suella Braverman wants to clamp down on such protests and is pushing the police to take tougher actions. According to The Guardian: “Waving a Palestinian flag or singing a chant advocating freedom for Arabs in the region may be a criminal offence, Suella Braverman has told senior police officers.”
Yes folks, “free” Europe imposes authoritarian controls without compunction.
If Hamas keeps the hostages captive or kills more Israelis, and collective punishments are intensified by Netanyahu’s cabal, the coming days will end all hope for peace-seeking Palestinians and Israelis. “The horror! The horror!” moaned the dying Mr Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, recognising the savagery humans are capable of. Can that region ever heal after this unbearable tragedy? I fear not.
