CLUELESS IN GAZA
Every time I witness yet a further Israeli atrocity, for there seems always to be a step further in the pornography of violence that Israel is prepared to take, the steady accumulation of atrocity, of war crimes, it is Auden who comes to mind,
‘I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn. Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.’
I have not wanted to write about Gaza, not out of any reluctance to engage with the issues, but more out of a sense of despair and impotence. I did not go on any protest rallies this time. It now should be clear that Israel is impervious to such protests, indifferent to indignation and disgust. The only meaningful action now is economic and trade sanctions. The EU is now Israel’s major trading partner and even the rather feeble move of the EU in freezing talks to upgrade EU Israel trade relations has hurt the electoral prospects of Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the centrist Kadima party. This is the same Ms Livni who has recently been pontificating on the removal of all Israeli Arabs to any newly created Palestinian state. Incidentally when Israeli politicians talk about a two state solution the Palestinian state they envisage is not the kind of Nation state most people would recognise, no it more like the ‘homelands’ created in Apartheid South Africa.
However Livni’s failure opens up the way for the disgusting Binyamin Netanyahu, a racist ideologue. Without serious and sustained outside pressure I see no prospect of Israel changing its vicious and ultimately disastrous policies toward the Palestinians. Such pressure will also have to face down the US.
There is another reason I did not join the protests, I have become increasingly uneasy about the company you keep at such rallies. I remember the chants from 2007, ‘we are all Hezzbollah now!’ Oh really, we are all misogynous anti Semites wedded to the return of medieval laws?
The growth of anti semitism, now infecting some groups who would describe themselves as ‘progressive,’ is one of the most disturbing consequences of Israeli policy and also an indicator of how degraded some parts of the Left have become.
The problem with Israel is that it was based upon a lie, a land without people for a people without land, the Palestinians were just supposed to disappear.The ethnic cleansing, enforced through terror and massacre, no longer disputed in Israeli academic circles that characterised 1948 set the pattern of things to come. Overshadowing all was the spectre of the Holocaust, ‘legitimising’ the racism and violence that characterised the birth of Israel. However Israel does exist and is still a dynamic democracy with a vibrant and pluralistic free press, though as the tensions created by Israeli foreign policy increase these institutions will come increasingly under threat, but of how many other countries in the Middle East can this be said? Its rationale based on a continuous Jewish presence in the region stretching back over many millennium. For Israels neighbours the argument about the creation of the Israeli state now need to be transcended in favour of a dialogue focusing on co-existence and mutual interests. Indeed, though you would not believe it from most western press, recognition of the state of Israel has long been on the table in exchange for a return to the 67 borders.
It used to be said of Arafat that he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but how much truer this is of the state of Israel. Several historical moments have occurred when the magnanimous act, the generous gesture, the reaching out to moderate Arab opinion could have resulted in something closer to a stable and lasting peace. Each moment ignored, each opportunity ducked, safe in the knowledge that Uncle Sam would support any Israeli stance. Israeli diplomacy characterised by bad faith and duplicity. It is difficult to imagine a more stupid, short sighted or ultimately self defeating policy.
But let’s be clear here this is not a situation that can endure, even in terms of crude demographics the clock is ticking against Israel. The Islamacists openly boast of this in apocalyptic terms. Moreover any state whose existence is dependent upon the electoral politics of a foreign state cannot ever be confident of its future. The slow and bloody decline of the state of Israel and it will be very slow, sucking the region into ever greater cycles of violence is not something it is possible to be sanguine about.
Israel has no future as some imagined part of Europe or as the 51st state of the US. It has to learn to live with its neighbours, to come to terms with geographical reality.
In truth I do not feel optimistic, the increasing insularity of Israeli politics, coupled with the growth of a militant Islam that is becoming increasingly the face of Palestinian resistance at the expense of the secular Fatah movement, do not give rise for hope. Now is the time to bring the greatest pressure on Israel to change its ways, not only in our own interests but in the interests of the state of Israel itself.
‘I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn. Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.’
I have not wanted to write about Gaza, not out of any reluctance to engage with the issues, but more out of a sense of despair and impotence. I did not go on any protest rallies this time. It now should be clear that Israel is impervious to such protests, indifferent to indignation and disgust. The only meaningful action now is economic and trade sanctions. The EU is now Israel’s major trading partner and even the rather feeble move of the EU in freezing talks to upgrade EU Israel trade relations has hurt the electoral prospects of Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the centrist Kadima party. This is the same Ms Livni who has recently been pontificating on the removal of all Israeli Arabs to any newly created Palestinian state. Incidentally when Israeli politicians talk about a two state solution the Palestinian state they envisage is not the kind of Nation state most people would recognise, no it more like the ‘homelands’ created in Apartheid South Africa.
However Livni’s failure opens up the way for the disgusting Binyamin Netanyahu, a racist ideologue. Without serious and sustained outside pressure I see no prospect of Israel changing its vicious and ultimately disastrous policies toward the Palestinians. Such pressure will also have to face down the US.
There is another reason I did not join the protests, I have become increasingly uneasy about the company you keep at such rallies. I remember the chants from 2007, ‘we are all Hezzbollah now!’ Oh really, we are all misogynous anti Semites wedded to the return of medieval laws?
The growth of anti semitism, now infecting some groups who would describe themselves as ‘progressive,’ is one of the most disturbing consequences of Israeli policy and also an indicator of how degraded some parts of the Left have become.
The problem with Israel is that it was based upon a lie, a land without people for a people without land, the Palestinians were just supposed to disappear.The ethnic cleansing, enforced through terror and massacre, no longer disputed in Israeli academic circles that characterised 1948 set the pattern of things to come. Overshadowing all was the spectre of the Holocaust, ‘legitimising’ the racism and violence that characterised the birth of Israel. However Israel does exist and is still a dynamic democracy with a vibrant and pluralistic free press, though as the tensions created by Israeli foreign policy increase these institutions will come increasingly under threat, but of how many other countries in the Middle East can this be said? Its rationale based on a continuous Jewish presence in the region stretching back over many millennium. For Israels neighbours the argument about the creation of the Israeli state now need to be transcended in favour of a dialogue focusing on co-existence and mutual interests. Indeed, though you would not believe it from most western press, recognition of the state of Israel has long been on the table in exchange for a return to the 67 borders.
It used to be said of Arafat that he never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but how much truer this is of the state of Israel. Several historical moments have occurred when the magnanimous act, the generous gesture, the reaching out to moderate Arab opinion could have resulted in something closer to a stable and lasting peace. Each moment ignored, each opportunity ducked, safe in the knowledge that Uncle Sam would support any Israeli stance. Israeli diplomacy characterised by bad faith and duplicity. It is difficult to imagine a more stupid, short sighted or ultimately self defeating policy.
But let’s be clear here this is not a situation that can endure, even in terms of crude demographics the clock is ticking against Israel. The Islamacists openly boast of this in apocalyptic terms. Moreover any state whose existence is dependent upon the electoral politics of a foreign state cannot ever be confident of its future. The slow and bloody decline of the state of Israel and it will be very slow, sucking the region into ever greater cycles of violence is not something it is possible to be sanguine about.
Israel has no future as some imagined part of Europe or as the 51st state of the US. It has to learn to live with its neighbours, to come to terms with geographical reality.
In truth I do not feel optimistic, the increasing insularity of Israeli politics, coupled with the growth of a militant Islam that is becoming increasingly the face of Palestinian resistance at the expense of the secular Fatah movement, do not give rise for hope. Now is the time to bring the greatest pressure on Israel to change its ways, not only in our own interests but in the interests of the state of Israel itself.
