I had a Jewish friend who did the kibbutz ‘thing ‘ in the early 80’s. He came back with a very strange impression of Israel, which he said was barely a state at all and only existed because of a never-ending flow of American dosh.
Fast forward 40 years and it is now the only Western type democracy in the region and the only place lots of the lefty luvvies currently sporting their keffiyeh could survive for a week. Don’t even get me started about ‘Queers for Palestine ‘.
Say what you like, but the Israelis have grafted and built that country up from scratch to be what it is and all while fighting recurrent, near-existential wars against a vast array of enemies.
Just imagine what Palestine would be like if that hadn’t happened; just look around at the neighbours who haven’t had a bottomless pit of oil revenue to do the heavy lifting for them. The sight of the people fleeing in Gaza on their donkeys says it all.
Jews are over-achievers generally; that’s why they’ve managed to survive despite all the horrors that have been visited on them through history.
I’ve had a lot of Jewish friends during my life and I respect them far more than the deranged, flag-waving lefty brigades. They share a common heritage with us which is quite different to that of Muslims and I’ve lived in a Muslim country, so I know what I’m talking about. This doesn’t mean that I think Muslims are terrible people or that I can’t get on with them but that I recognise how different they are from us.
I find the lack of solidarity with Jews at the moment frankly shameful.
“I find the lack of solidarity with Jews at the moment frankly shameful.”
I am sorry but frankly that is a ridiculous remark. Israel has the full, unmitigated support of the USA behind her, both now and for the foreseeable future. If ‘she’ decided, and to lapse into the vernacular, to ‘Nuke’ say Tehran, Mecca and Cairo, the USA would STILL stand by her.
Somewhat irritatingly, a similar, although not so extreme situation is to be found in the unequivocal succour the USA provides to the Irish Republic.
In retrospect we the UK should have finished the place off, when we had the chance in 1814.
That is one of your more absurd remarks. Your disdain for the United States is bizarre. That nation, for all its many faults, is the main reason you don’t live under a Nazi dominated Europe, or one where Communism didn’t dominate even more of the globe than it already did. Britain certainly couldn’t do this alone. It ought to be easy enough choice.
The lack of solidarity with the Jews refers to the widespread public western attitudes, not of nation states, but in any case the United States is, shamefully, one of the relatively few countries to stand steadfastly by Israel when faced with this evil attack by the Hamas fanatics. By the way, Ireland is one of the more pusillanimous in its “both sidesism” and almost immediate call for Israel not to take action (as any other state would do) in the face of such an outrageous attack.
Great Britain was incapable of defeating the United States in 1814 or at any time thereafter, as its mostly wise leaders knew.
Your forbearance in waiting until 1814 to finish us off is generous. Someone more virulent in their anti-Americanism would have suggested that the whole North American colonial project should have been given up in 1590, after the Mole People wiped out Roanoke.
“If [Israel] decided, and to lapse into the vernacular, to ‘Nuke’ say Tehran, Mecca and Cairo….”
Ah, yes, of course. The familiar lapse into obscene “what if” fear-mongering hypotheticals (with absolutely no basis in historical precedent) against the Jewish people to justify atrocious mass-extinction actions executed in the present by the Palestinians via their official and duly-elected Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip.
We witnessed the same obscene “what if” fear-mongering hypotheticals by Hitler’s minions before and during WWII to justify the Holocaust.
I have been three times to Israel to visit a kibbutz close to Gaza. My memory is of a concrete bunker, covered in pictures of butterflies – the kindergarten. All of this energy and drive could only have happened with vast support from the rest of the world. The Israelis achieved this set-up by pushing back against the indigenous people (that is, the indigenous people after WW2.). The Israelis have created a first-world culture against a third-world backdrop and the achievement can’t be overstated.
But, the Palestinians – whatever you think of them – do exist and have suffered as well. What Ms Harrington refers to as support from Lefties is really only people saying, “What about the other people there? They exist as well.” People who try to sympathise with the Palestinians are not Lefties or Woke, they are just trying to look at all people in the equation.
Ms Harrington has fallen into the trap of trying to get ‘Lefties’ and ‘woke’ as many times as possible into her articles in order to keep the money from Unherd flowing in. When she started with UnHerd she didn’t have to resort to this strategy because her fame went before her.
The official and duly-elected Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip crossed a line that distinguishes humans from animals when they cruelly planned and executed the purposeful mass kidnapping, rape, torture, and mass-execution of innocent men, women and children in Israel.
Then the official and duly-elected Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip crossed the same line (that distinguishes humans from animals) when they demanded that their own citizens stay in their homes in the Gaza Strip to likely be killed by the righteous war reprisals that were caused by the Palestinian Government’s mass-extinction actions in Israel.
Then as their citizens fled – fearing war more than the threats of their own government – their official and duly-elected Palestinian Government crossed the same line (that distinguishes humans from animals) by trying to stop these people from immigrating elsewhere due to the very war that their duly-elected Palestinian Government initiated last week.
In short, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (and their supporters worldwide) have only their own official and duly-elected Palestinian Government to blame for all of this – from the deaths in Israel to their own deaths in the subsequent war and their loss of the Gaza Strip as the Palestinian’s home.
Perhaps the Palestinians – and their Leftist supporters around the world – should consider not promoting, funding, sustaining and carrying out mass-extinction events against fellow humans if they want to be accepted by the world as fellow travelers.
This argument only works for the first world – let us assume that everyone in Palestine can think like you, reason things clearly in their cosy room away from any harm, write things clearly in a meaningful way, etc. In fact, we are talking about the third world – as I said – and your cosy theory fails.
There were Palestinians in the kibbutz I visited but they were servants and were locked out at night. This is the fate of Palestinians in Israel. Your arguments don’t work for people with no schooling and who are taught what to do by their Imams.
Utter nonsense. “…crossed a line that distinguishes humans from animals “. This is actually true in general but in the opposite sense. Animals are not capable of such actions only humans really are capable of such hatred, and that certainly is not limited to just one side of this issue. Your use of the term is a naked attempt to dehumanise the “other side” so you can excuse murder, while simultaneously condemning the other side for the same thing. Hypocrite.
Forgive me, but isn’t Israel’s war against Hamas and not Palestine? As the commenter below writes, the only reason that one could justifiably conflate their activities with the Palestinian cause is because Hamas is the “duly-elected Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip”; it’s also worth noting that if Hamas is one political party among many, then its ideologies and activities cannot be viewed as reflective of the whole of the Palestinian political spectrum.
I don’t think calling Hamas’s actions evil, or saying that Israeli actions are just in the present case — which is what I think Ms Harrington is trying to say here, amounts to a denial of the Palestinian suffering or even their right to political self-determination and statehood. I don’t even think it entails denying that Israeli settlement policies post Israeli independence are colonial in character — not sure if this is Ms Harrington’s posiiton, but it certainly is mine. It just means that there is a clear distinction between “good” and “evil” — lack of clarity regarding which has culminated in the grotesque Hamas apologia we see spewed on the left today.
Why should we feel compelled to frame the issue this way? Why do we have to “stand” with the Israelis or the Palestinians? Why do we need display “solidarity” with one side or another?
When Britain was the most powerful nation it was perhaps appropriate to for us to play at being the world’s judge and to debate the most moral and equitable outcome of each international quarrel (when not preoccupied by self interest). Now such moral posturing by the British seems self important and irrelevant. It seems particularly absurd in this case where clearly neither side are saints and neither are without their story of persecution and victimhood. The Hamas raid was abhorrent terrorism but also only the latest episode in a cycle of violence.
The most the British can do is offer constructive suggestions. Maybe UnHerd readers should focus on discussing whether there is a way out of the current situation that does not involve a regional conflagration but does meet the needs of both parties to some extent. Perhaps we might come up with something more useful than irrelevant posturing.
As an Irishman I agree with you. Many of my countrymen would be 100% behind the Palestinians for historical reasons, thinking the situation is equivalent to Ireland’s struggle with a colonial master, which it clearly isn’t.
And it’s also why I find Ursula von der Leyen and Biden’s “We stand behind Israel” deeply concerning. Please by all means condemn the atrocities but to “pick a side” here is not as straightforward as many think.
Why isn’t there some sort of peacekeeping UN style solution being proposed here? Would seem to be the least bad solution.
‘We’ should have stayed out of it, if only because we couldn’t AFFORD it.
‘We’ would also have been in a superb position to supply both sides with munitions etc, in exchange for gold, which have been very helpful indeed as we still hadn’t fully recovered from 1914-18.
I hope this is not a serious comment. Nazism was evil and failing to oppose it would have been unforgiveable (though to be fair I am not sure the depth of depravity of Nazism was apparent at the beginning.)
Nobody had any idea of Hitler’s depravity in 1938/9, nor for that matter would anyone on the Left admit to Stalins’s equally homicidal behaviour, despite the evidence.
The possibility that these two appalling regimes might tear each other apart in a titanic war should have been encouraged. There was NO clear British strategic imperative to get involved one way or the other.
Perhaps our ‘pride’ got the better of us? After all some thought we were still a Great Power, incredibly.
Look at UNIFIL in Lebanon, whose sole mandate was to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. Now Hezbollah has 100x more weapons than when UNIFIL came on board. UNRWA is in league with Hamas and their schools teach hatred of Jews. The UN is part of the problem, not the solution.
The UN’s peace-keeping missions have a long history of not keeping the peace and not relieving the suffering of the victims. They put a “hold” on the (bad) situation, sometimes for many years on end. It’s called “kicking the can down the road”; a classic form of disfunction. We’re sick of that crap.
Sudan, Cyprus, Kosovo, Haiti…..
Hamas has made it very clear by its actions that a two state solution is impossible. The state must be Israel & that state must be protected by the Nazis at their doorstep.
Your view makes sense. Why argue about who is right and wrong in an abstract sense when people are dying? Solve the problem, don’t worry about who’s to blame.
The pragmatist Donald Trump said when asked “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?”:
“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing, I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people. . . . I want everybody to stop dying. They’re dying. Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying.”
We should do the same thing in Israel. Worry about stopping the dying, then solve the underlying problems.
That’s rubbish. Trump doesn’t care about people dying, he only cares about Trump. He says whatever sounds good to him, and it changes with the wind. He has delusions of grandeur and has stated that if he were still president there would be no war because the other dictators are afraid of him.
I keep shaking my head vigorously in an effort to wake myself up. Surely this many UnHerders can’t be indulging in lazy both-side-ism vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians.
When one neighbor calls frankly and repeatedly for the elimination of another one, while the put-upon neighbor asks only to be left alone, it’s rather hard to balance both points of view in reasonable negotiation.
Leaving aside the obvious political and historical advantage that Israel’s claims have, the ethnic Palestinians are far freer and wealthier than they would be, living in any of their neighbor states. I suspect that that embarrassing fact alone is a burr under their saddles.
To sit on the fence about whether you want Hamas to achieve their goal of ethnic cleansing stated in their covenant is inaction and the same thing as siding with Hamas. This moral posturing is a luxury we have as spectators from the other side of the globe that Israel can’t afford. And while we side with Israel to prevent their total eradication (for this is what Hamas’ covenant states), we can still yearn for peace and the safety of innocent people on both sides.
Give European history a glance and you will hardly be surprised by these current sentiments – a virtual pogrom is just as gratifying as the real thing was, time and again.
I think it was Martin Amiss who made the observation about 70 people outside the Soviet embassy in London protesting the invasion of Czechoslovakia while thousand protested outside the US embassy over Vietnam.
On an unrelated point I understood that the Balfour Declaration was a dirty deal done between the UK and Jewish interests in the US to get them to use their influence to bring the US into the war.
If Balfour had failed to convince Paul Warburg & Co to keep funding us we would have lost the Great War by December 1916. He also persuaded them (US) to join the war if only to protect their ‘debt’. After all, if Kaiser Bill had won he certainly WASN’T going to pay it back!
So in way we have only ourselves to blame for the subsequent catastrophe! After more than two centuries of happily plundering the world and running a ‘war’ as a business opportunity, we finally got caught out!
Thank you Mr Asquith, Mr Churchill and Mr Lloyd George, to name but three.
“The sight of the people fleeing in Gaza on their donkeys says it all.”
Indeed. Palestinians were given 20 miles of Mediterranean coastline loved by northern European tourists, next door to the most technically advanced state in the middle east (Israel), with a border to the most populous state in the middle east (Egypt), and given billions in aid every year since it was created. They could have become free and rich, but instead, they voted to murder their neighbours.
To be fair, the way the Palestinians see it is this:
“We were given only a small portion of what was taken from us in the 1948 Nakba. We want the rest back. The only way to get it back is terrorism.”
Certainly there’s a lot to criticize the Palestinians for. But as always, there’s more to both sides than just a binary right and wrong.
…indeed. They are roughly half the size and population of Singapore, have a very well educated diaspora with world-wide reach, had a plan for a significant and modern commercial port…and had no shortage of potential investors and donors. A slightly smaller Levantine City-State on that model was well within reach.
They chose this, instead…
Yes, the donkeys pulling carts said it all!
Another perceptive, well-informed, and user-friendly essay from Harrington, all of which I agree with. It takes courage to state one’s position firmly as she does at the end. Everyone is afraid of violent, fanatical Muslims including world leaders, with good reason. Look what happened to Salmon Rushdie. CNN has a British Muslim, news anchor, Nada Bashir, who reports from London and is now reporting, with bias, from Lebanon. She always wears a Hajib which I’ve been complaining about ever since since she started. It’s the equivalent of a journalist wearing a big, Christian cross – unprofessional and unnecessary. Management is either too afraid to protest or allows it to appease Islam. We’re expected to walk on eggshells around them and it pisses me off.
“Just imagine what Palestine would be like if that hadn’t happened; just look around at the neighbours who haven’t had a bottomless pit of oil revenue to do the heavy lifting for them. The sight of the people fleeing in Gaza on their donkeys says it all.” Perhaps living the simpler life with a donkey to get you places might have advantages over to the must-get-more-stuff lives that we lead. Look where that has got us.
Dylan Blackhurst
1 year ago
Thank you for that article Mary.
The question I always ask myself is this. If there were no America adding it’s protection to the democracies of Europe, Japan, Israel etc does anyone seriously think those countries would be a better/safer?
No. Of course not. Only an idiot would think so.
So many of these activists fail to understand that US protection helps to create the conditions and freedom to hold these views and gather in the way they do.
The ‘luxury beliefs’ of those protesting against the entity that provides them the safety and freedom to protest. It’s quite immature. Most grow out of it but some not.
Is criticising Russias foreign policy Russophobia? Is being critical of the recent Azerbaijani offensive Islamophobia? If not why is every criticism of Israel deemed to be caused by anti semitism?
Seconded – I have no idea why criticism of Netanyahu’s foreign policy is antisemitism, though I do understand that zionism is a part of Judaism and so criticising the establishment or continued existence of Israel does count as antisemitism. Saying Israel has a right to defend itself seems to me to mean just that – defending its legal borders – not committing war crimes beyond those borders or illegally expanding..
Zionism is not “part” of Judaism if you mean that it is an article of Jewish faith. There were strong anti – Zionist strands in Jewish thought before the foundation of Israel: the Marxist Bundist movement for example.
The following from Mosaic magazine, discussing Stefan Zweig’s brief portrait of Teodor Herzl (Zionist founder) in his book (recommended), The World of Yesterday.
In his own day, the Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was one of Europe’s most popular authors, famous for his historical biographies and short stories—which often revolved around the cosmopolitan and urbane world of pre-World War I Vienna. In 1901, the young Zweig met Theodor Herzl—then at the height of his career as a Zionist leader—who hired him to write feuilletons (long-form columns) for the Die Neue Freie Presse, a prestigious Viennese newspaper where Herzl worked as an editor. Neil Rogachevsky comments on Zweig’s description of Herzl in his memoir, The World of Yesterday:
Vienna, and especially Jewish Vienna, was put off by [Herzl’s] Zionism, but probably mostly thought it was comical and ridiculous. Perhaps it flattered [Viennese Jews’] pride that they were immune from a messianic contagion that had affected their brethren—former brethren?—in the East. . . . [I]t’s worth trying to reconstruct the perspective of a well-meaning but rather skeptical observer that day.
“This powerful man,” [writes Zweig], “clearly struck a nerve in the oppressed Jewish masses of the East. He promised them that the hour of redemption was a possibility, and that it could be brought forth through a political rather than a spiritual awakening combined with a single-minded and practical devotion to the cause. But is this not merely Jewish history repeating itself in tragic rhymes? Is not Jewish history replete with examples of leaders who promise the people redemption and lead them only to their ruin? How different really is this Herzl from Shabtai Zvi? Why would this time be any different? The only difference between this failed messiah and the last is that now we have reasonable hopes that the situation of the Jews will improve rather than deteriorate.”
This perspective was not at all crazy and in fact wasn’t unreasonable. But Herzl saw that the age to come was not to be reasonable. . . . Jewish history, like all of history but perhaps more so, is full of ironies. Though he died thinking himself a failure, Herzl’s dream would ultimately be realized—though only in part and at tremendous cost. The comfortable and brilliant world of Jewish Vienna was utterly destroyed, never to return. But few could see this, and even among those who “see” the boundary between delusion and true political insight may be quite thin. Most ordinary people just have to judge by the results, at a later historical time, when comfortably in the grip of a new set of illusions.
Thank you – that’s very interesting. One of the other issues around Zionism as an aspect of Jewish thinking is its privileging of Hebrew over Yiddish, but these are perhaps debates for the drawing room rather than the current battlefield…
Or a mad fringe of nutjobs at whom anger should really be directed rather than people who are just concerned about the humanitarian crisis of innocent people in Gaza and our own government’s complicitness in condemning one war crime without condemning another?
Yes and he said so. The question is, why does she think this attitude is representative of an entire peace movement. They are not – in the same way that the actions of the Israeli military may not reflect what many Israelis want. There are plenty of Israelis who despise Netanyahu whose support is collapsing (see link below) in the wake of this. As I understand, his distraction with trying to deal with protests against his efforts to appoint his own judges (poor guy) was one of the reasons the intelligence did not respond effectively to the attacks, despite a warning from Egypt 24 hours in advance. Seeing this conflict as one between Israel and Hamas where one is supposed to choose a side (and be called imperialist for backing one and racist for backing another) seems madness when ordinary people, below all the politics (where people at the top have political capital to gain from such wars) must be desperate for an end to this, which has never been guaranteed by further war, only by peace talks such as those shot down by Hamas and Netanyahu and his entourage. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/poll-shows-backing-for-netanyahu-imploding-gantz-taking-the-rudder/
Simple. Because the same folk up in arms about Palestine weren’t up in arms about the uyhgurs in China.
25 people attended the demo in support of them. TWENTY FIVE.
And today, we’ve seen lots of the great and good falling over themselves to announce that Israel bombed a hospital, when a cursory glance at OSINT intelligence and Hamas’ own photos proved the opposite, that it was a Palestinian rocket.
The only explanation is antisemitism. Deep, ingrained antisemitism. Whether conscious or not.
Australia just voted ‘No’ to the Voice Referendum. Many average Australians were not happy with being labelled as racist for not being sure how they felt about it, or for not agreeing with it. Were they actually all displaying their deep, ingrained, unconscious racism?
I used to believe the BS that criticizing Israel was not anti-semitic. Then I saw the Pro Hamas rallies immediately following the gruesome pogrom committed by Hamas. I saw academics & students celebrating this “decolonization” and “resistance”. The lie has been exposed: Free Palestine means Exterminate The Jews.
Anti-Semitism is a label, albeit an accurate one, not an explanation. But WHY are so many on the Left anti-Semitic? Presumably not because the Jews were Christ-killers. Weren’t lots of Jews in the original Bolshevik Party? Mary Harrington makes an excellent argument.
There was always a lot of anti-semitic sentiment in Russia and Communism, despite all its blah about equality never changed that. Stalin himself never trusted Jews and they were always thought likely to backslide and display bourgeois tendencies. This was the same in many other Slavic nations despite the utopian light of Communism (aka State Terrorism).
Moreover, according to the author of ‘Israelophobia ‘ during the Cold War, the Soviet intelligence service ran a propaganda campaign against Israel because it was in the American camp and they supported the Arab States in opposition.
They merely rehashed (sometimes doing a literal cutandpaste job) 19th Century anti-semitic Tsarist tracts and replaced the word Jew with the word Zionist. So the willing idiots lapped all this up and since then, Israel has been the ultimate bête noire of the Left.
Conversely Cuba, which was so run-down and authoritarian that people resorted to floating to Florida using rubber rings, was held up as a shining example of Socialism.
Just as with the wannabe Jihadis today; they extol the virtues of semi-feudal shitholes from the comfort of their ‘awful’ Western nests and would never dream of going to live in any of these places due to the slow broadband speeds.
Their Arab neighbours won’t take the Palestinians in because they apparently can say they don’t want a load of troublemakers undermining social cohesion. But of course, we’re not allowed to make the same self-evident argument.
We can say, anonymously, it but world leaders can’t. Nobody wants the Palestinians not even the protesters. They’re not offering them a home as Europeans did for Ukrainians. And Palestinians certainly don’t want the “queers for Palestine”. They’d lose their heads really fast!
They aren’t. At the height of the panic over antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, the JPR conducted an exhaustive analysis of anti semitic and anti Israeli attitudes in the UK and found that:
“Levels of antisemitism among those on the left-wing of the political spectrum, including the far-left, are indistinguishable from those found in the general population.”
Yes indeed – and neither was the Corbyn leadership found to be antisemitic by the Forde Report (as was claimed by the much publicised BBC panorama documentary (there go the loony BBC left)) which found that the processing of complaints of antisemitism by the party was choked by the labour right which regularly weaponised the issue to oust Corbyn out. But barely anyone has heard of the Forde Report as it was hardly mentioned by the media (I bet there’s barely anyone reading this who’s heard of it)..
I recommend people read Dave Rich’s book:The Left’s Jewish Problem
I came across it some years ago when I was puzzled by the blatant anti-semitism that was being tolerated. An evidence based account that it well worth reading.
There was no way the UK, either financially or politically could have sustained the state of Israel, even though it initiated its founding There just have not been enough prominent Jews in British society to care enough or who worked at high enough levels to have an impact. Even more so, its upper classes unfortunately have politely, masked their anti-Semitism for quite some time now, not all, but it’s there. So yes, American Jews have been instrumental to Israel’s survival.
It seems like many commentators on here would will rail against the “woke” calling everyone who doesn’t agree with them as racist, but are comfortable calling people who don’t agree with some of Israel’s behaviours and policies as anti-semetic.
Matt Sylvestre
1 year ago
Ms. Harrington hit it exactly right again of course… Especially: “ Israel plays as a proxy for American geopolitical hegemony” – That’s the true motivation behind Western pathetic radical Leftists (self hatred as a sport). So what if good people were deliberately targeted and terrorized…
Walter Lantz
1 year ago
Mary makes a good point about the geo-political motivations of the British and then the American actions in the ME. It’s based on the three keys to real-estate value “Location, location, location”. The Suez and oil. This is the same reason Turkey is valued (and the Turks are well aware). Geography. Her view that anti-Israel sentiment is actually a manifestation of anti-Americanism also makes sense.
IMO, another point to be made is related to an opinion from Thomas Sowell regarding why so-called marginalized groups never seem to get anywhere re: improved outcomes. His theory is that Black Americans (applies to Indigenous people in Canada and Australia as well) have been sold on an idea that political power brings improved economic results. “It’ll be all better once one of our own is in charge”. Sowell’s claim is that this is backwards and that economic power begets political influence. Politics listens to money. His proof is that states and cities where the outcomes for the Black population are the worst have had “one of us” Black governors, mayors and police chiefs.
The activist Left dismisses this by blaming “systemic racism” or “historical injustice” which brings up another awkward question. If this is the reason that outcomes never improve then Jews collectively should be the worst-performing welfare basket case on the planet. As a group they’ve been at one time or another, massacred, stepped on, shunned, expelled and “cancelled” in every corner of the planet. They are the runaway gold medal winners of the “You owe us” Victim Olympics.
The problem is that while they have clearly been victims they have refused to let that identify them. For the most part they have survived and prospered. Economic prosperity has lead to political influence. I’m sure there are many arguments as to whether or not that influence has always resulted in desired outcomes but it sure explains why every major western leader has stood up for Israel in this current mess.
And the Palestinians? The street protests say it all. “We were robbed”. “Settlers” “Occupiers”- typical tropes by a group that has fallen for the false promise of “Guilt into Gold” progressive alchemy. Are all things Israeli pure in heart and deed? Maybe not, but Israel is getting our support while the Palestinians will have to settle for a little sympathy.
Thomas Sowell was asked in an interview. “The Jews face so much hatred, what one thing could they do to get more people to like them” – Sowell’s answer. “Fail”
bang on sir – thanks for the pithy summary. the Israeli’s have learnt through a grim history that no outside entity can ever enact magic on your behalf and only hard work can acheive security. It has taken them 2000 plus years to learn that – I guess the ‘oppressed’ people of the world might need 1000 years to ‘get it’. At least my irish and english and Bohemian ancestors had the guts to leave an oppressive existence and build a better life for themselves. The Palestinians appear to be functionally primitive medievalists who are unlikely to have a rennaisance anytime soon………Maybe kicking them all out into the arms of their caring brothers is the only way to make them MOVE ON>
Nik Jewell
1 year ago
Speaking as a “fool”, I disagree here. You’ve seen me arguing on here with some of you for the last few days, but you haven’t seen the years I’ve spent arguing with Leftists about their obsession with this issue.
In my earlier years, the international issue I was passionate about was Tibetan freedom, and I used to attempt to make the case with Leftists about why they didn’t care about the Tibetans when they cared so much about Palestinians. More recently, I have argued with them about their lack of interest in Rohingyas and the Kurds, again making the comparison. To this day, I argue with them about the Uighurs who build their precious solar panels.
On the Israel-Palestine conflict, I’ve seen some anti-Semitism, betrayed by linguistic slips in the middle of arguments, occasional Protocols nonsense, and a fair amount about bankers.
When arguing about the relative lack of interest in the issues I care about, the reasons I have been given continuously are because Israel is closer to home, because Britain created the problem, and because of apartheid. More than anything, apartheid is mentioned. I have sympathies with these, but I still do not understand the lack of interest in other injustices around the world.
I have rarely seen modern critical social justice style reasoning, but that may be because I have mainly argued with the traditional left and not the identitarian left about Israel-Palestine.
I have had many discussions about US hegemony, sometimes along ‘Team America: World Police’ lines, and proxy wars, both of which I have sympathy with. Far more often, though, it is because the US is blamed for being the spoiler of socialism, with claims that if socialism has never worked, it is because the US isolates, sanctions, invades or organises coups in socialist countries.
The connection of the US with Israel has been very rare in my years of arguing over Israel-Palestine with them. Indeed, I think I connect them more than they do.
Maybe the dimension Mary H discusses includes the reality that it is personally ‘safer’ having a go at UK/US supported Israel, (you’re unlikely to be assassinated) and there is more likelihood that your display of virtue will be noticed, or even have a real world effect. Protesting Saudi, China et al, doesn’t return a dividend of anything much except a beating or worse if the relevant sponsors’ goons get a fix on you.
Very revealing. You use the big “I” so many times in your comment that it comes over as a grand display of your carefully considered moral stance contrasted with everyone else’s muddled moral shakiness. It’s almost like reading a Peter Hitchens column – a journalist who never fails to berate the world for failing to heed the important message that only he is delivering.
Why are lefties not standing outside the Russian embassy and screaming about the evils of Russian imperialism and barbarism? Because such people are morally blind unless they can blame a conventional target such as the USA or Britain. So they twist the Ukrainian war to be the fault of the expansionist UN or some similar baloney.
It’s the left that has been largely critical of Russias invasion of Ukraine, strangely enough its been the (online) right that has been saying the Ukrainians should just accept being a Russian vassal state and bemoaning the amount of military aid given to Ukraine
Yes indeed. That’s a terrible comparison GS, not only for the reasons BB mentions but also because Ukraine got strong support from the west from the start whereas Palestine has had far less and for far longer.
Like the Manchurian Candidate’s Sen. Iselin, I like things “real simple.”
And the “real simple” thing about our lefty friends is that they think they are the only thing on this Earth between “helpless victims” and Armageddon.
The question always is: who is the victim? With regard to Israel, lefty experts and social scientists agree, the victim is the Palestinians.
Therefore the Israelis are the oppressive apartheid imperialist aggressor (fill in additional lefty word salad to taste). Period, full stop.
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
I know this probably sounds silly, but last night, the 1996 movie, “Mars Attacks!” was on TV and, although it is a pulp comedy, I was struck by a few things: Mars launches a surprise invasion of Earth. The majority of Earthlings, including world leaders and their expert advisors, insist that the Martians come in peace; “We have much to learn from each other”. The Americans stage a large welcome for the Martian ambassador, everyone is thrilled and hopeful.
They are promptly incinerated. This continues through the movie, with leadership still insisting it’s all a “cultural misunderstanding”. The Martian marauders laugh at the Earthlings’ naïveté whilst wiping out everything in site. The American President, struck down in a bunker by eye-rolling Martians, suffers the final indignity of a Martian flag rising out of his chest: it bears the same colors and similar design to that of the Palestinian flag currently being waved in the world’s great cities.
My point isn’t a deep dive intellectual analysis, of course, but some threats are obvious to the point of parody. In the movie, it wasn’t bullets, tanks, missiles, or nukes (when America launches a nuke at a Martian ship, the aliens blow it up, capture the contents in a little balloon, and inhale it like helium). What finally destroys the Martians? Broadcasts of Slim Whitman yodeling.
Cutting off Gaza from food, electricity, water, and other necessities is a start. Force fellow Arab states to take in their refugee brothers and sisters. Then cut off Iran and make it a pariah state. If the world, starting with America, would refuse to trade /bribe/fund the mullahs, we might actually get somewhere.
Collective punishment and ethnic cleaning is your solution? I’d have thought the Jews would have been fairly squeamish about that as a solution owing to what happened to them during the Second World War.
Also why should other countries take in the Palestinians as refugees? Why can’t America take in the Israeli’s for instance, seeing as they are there loudest cheerleaders? The skin tone alone would imply that the Arabs probably have more historical claim to that land than the white Israelis after all
– the UN resolved that there should be a Jewish state in Palestine in 1947. When the British gave up the Mandate in May 1948 the UN failed to agree what should follow (there was some idea that an international trusteeship should be set up), and in default of international agreement Israel declared itself into existence and, crucially, was recognised by the US. The failure at the very outset to set up a “two-state” solution has blighted the region ever since.
– the Left’s attachment to the Palestinian cause owes a lot to Soviet propaganda in the Cold War. The USSR had a unit churning out pro-Palestinian propaganda on the basis that Israel was a US client state in the region, and my enemy’s enemy is my friend.
Katharine Eyre
1 year ago
This was a really excellent article, I enjoyed reading it and the logic is sound.
Perhaps, just as Winston Churchill famously said that democracy was the worst form of government – except for all the others we’ve tried, Pax Americana is the best alternative we have. And, if you see the Israel-Palestine conflict through that lens, then of course you have to be on Israel’s side.
But for me, this is the definition of a position held grudgingly and by default – not because I’m in any way enthusiastic about American hegemony anymore. What Mary refers to as its “expat-inflected international politics” or – put another way – how Washington seems to see the world through the prism of its own domestic neuroses has too often resulted in the world becoming a more dangerous and unsafe place. See: the monumental disaster of Afghanistan.
That episode removed any kind of trust I had in America as a world power. I don’t actively dislike it, but my attitude towards the USA and Pax Americana is very much “oh, well – if that’s the best we’ve got then we’d better just deal with it”…and just hope that they’ve got a grip of the facts on the ground on the next geopolitical mission rather than going in with heads full of romantic notions of a homeland or their own creation myth.
Rob N
1 year ago
Interesting view on this is https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2022/04/08/exposing-the-soviet-lie-of-israeli-apartheid/
General Ion Pacepa, chief of Romania’s foreign intelligence service, says the chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov (later Leonid Brezhnev’s successor as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party), told him: We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States.”
Andrew Horsman
1 year ago
Picking a place to stand doesn’t necessarily mean picking one or other side in a war. To my mind, standing with peace and order means standing with any individual human being who is afflicted with suffering and misery because of the actions of any other human being or group of human beings. Drop the labels and what you see are people brutalising each other simply because of their respective group identities, recent or historical past injustices perpetrated by one “group” against the other, and the threat that members of one group are perceived to pose to members of the other. I respectfully implore anyone who despairs of groupthinking woke identity politics, and of the naivety of the blue-and-yellow flag waving crowd, yet who has adopted an unambiguous pro-war stance on this awful, nasty conflict, to reflect, please, on this.
Perhaps the reason that the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict conjures little emotion or reaction is simply because it has much less coverage across practically all forms of corporate and alternative media. Who benefits from the promotion of wall-to-wall blood and trauma in the Middle East, heightened negative emotions, anger, more polarisation, the closing off of constructive dialogue between compassionate human beings with different political leanings, ethnicities, religious sensibilities, and mass distraction from all of the other corporatist power grabs going on? Certainly not the little guy; but perhaps the narcissistic, fearful, power-greedy politicians, their minders, their hangers-on, and the suppliers and financiers of arms might stand to gain a thing or two? Always follow the money.
You may think I am naive to believe that the radicalised followers of Hamas could be persuaded to change their minds and support a peaceful co-existence with their Jewish neighbours. Others may think I am naive to believe that the Israeli government could be persuaded to agree to a permanent, peaceful, normalised two-state solution, and disappoint its military contractors. This may be so. But nonetheless I continue to hope and pray for the abatement of the suffering of individual people, in Israel, Palestine, Nagorno-Karabakh, and anywhere else, whoever they may; and that those in nominal authority discharge their duties with temperate, level heads.
I stand for peace and order, however flawed. I stand with humanity.
All fine and dandy, but personally I stand against bestial cruelty and inhumanity and against anyone who supports such people whether explicitly or tacitly.
“My vicar..is not an antisemite.” Really
Mary? Remember Matthew 7:16 “ye shall know them by their fruits.” His discourse shows that he is an antisemite, it’s just that we aren’t used to recognising wish washy C of E parsons as the kind of people who could be antisemites. Remember those T-shirts that used to say “this is what a feminist looks like?” We need a poster campaign featuring generic “nice guy” figures—a vicar, a teacher, an NHS doctor etc.—with the line “this is what an antisemite looks like.” People expect anti-semites to look like thugs. These days they look like university lecturers, civil servants, heck! They even look like Alicia Keys.
Yeah so many commentators hate the notion of being called racist by “woke” but are comfortable calling centrist people anti semetic.
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago
The Left’s great hope was that a revolution in the Arab world would cut off the supply of oil and bring down capitalism.
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
David Ben-Gurion is reputed to have said, “Do NOT expect the Palestinians to give up, we wouldn’t “.
Benjamin Greco
1 year ago
Understanding the history of Israel’s creation is interesting but unhelpful as is making the conflict a Left/Right argument about American hegemony. You can turn any conflict in the world into a superpower competition.
Harrington is right about the protesters though; they are fringe actors and therefore irrelevant, yet conservative media is having a field day focusing on them. They are not the problem. America is not the problem. The problem is the intractable conflict between Palestinians and Israel. The Palestinians’ refusal to give up terrorism and acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and an Israeli government that has given up on negotiating a two-state solution is the problem. The Palestinians attack on Oct. 7th was despicable but no matter how much Israel’s response is justified, it will only end up creating more terrorists and the ugly cycle of violence will continue. All that leaves us is to pick a side and that isn’t good enough.
The tragedy is no-one has a solution to the central problem. It is unrealistic to expect Israel to allow a state on its border that is committed to its destruction, yet the Palestinians and the terrorist groups they allow to lead them aren’t going anywhere. The Americans don’t have a solution, the Europeans don’t, the Right doesn’t, and the Left doesn’t. The media certainly doesn’t, and their incompetent journalism makes things worse. God knows, I don’t.
I do know that concentrating on fringe Leftist protests and middle-class children practicing performative social justice is just another way of ignoring the problem. It is only good for ratings and clicks.
Malcolm Powell
1 year ago
Sadly, given the ability of so many people and groups in the UK to constantly find fault with Israel and see perfection in the Palestinians, I have only one conclusion. That is that a huge proportion of the UK population really are anti-semitic and not just anti-Israel as they claim to be.
It was quite clear to me from the start that there was no way Israel would bomb a hospital in Gaza. The political implications were horrific. In spite of the now available evidence, to the contrary, these people still cling to the view that it was Israel’s fault
My only qustion is whether the Islamic group which fired its missile at the hospital did it deliberately (to get good PR) or it was an accident. I wouldnt rule the former out
Exactly, I thought from the beginning that Israel hadn’t bombed the hospital because it wasn’t in their interest to do so. On the contrary. Judging from the terrorist audio that has been obtained it was an accident.
Funny, I thought that about Syria. Somehow Assad used chemical weapons on his people, the ‘red line’ that the US had said would cause the US to react. For some reason all other means weren’t enough and he used them. You would have thought that it wasn’t in his interest.
Don’t underestimate psyops on both sides, winning hearts, minds and outrage on the world stage are important for legitimacy.
The bombing of the hospital can only be determined by international investigators.
Doug Mccaully
1 year ago
This is too black and white. We don’t have to wish the destruction of Israel to support Palestinians, whatever the current slogans chanted by crowds are: people say/shout overheated rubbish all the time. Israel must allow a homeland to Palestinians to allow them to live with dignity, that’s all. They committed to this in the Oslo accord after all. That’s not going to destroy Israel, but its the beginnings of a lasting peace.
They are not just shouting rubbish slogans they’re dangerous activists.
Malcolm Robbins
1 year ago
What nonsense. The last two sentence’s are contradictory: “I stand with peace and order, however flawed. I stand with Israel.”
How is it that intelligent writers can rationalise such a statement? (answer: it lacks reason). Surely one needs to start from the fundamentals: The principal of universality and rights of every human to liberty, freedom of expression and equality?
With that you would conclude “I stand with peace and order”. But there is no possible way you can reason that that implies “I stand with Israel”.
One proper inference is that both sides should be encouraged to negotiate a path to peace. Idealistic? Perhaps. But it is the only path to eventual peace in the future, once the majority of people on both sides agree with that path.
No vengeful destruction of Gaza by Israel, equating the people who live there as Hamas, moves things in the direction of peace.
Well said, I was too baffled by that closing statement of otherwise balanced article.
Frances An
1 year ago
the Israel-Palestine issue is really not one I knew much about before (but I’m trying to learn more now). I’m glad Harrington wrote such an incisive and comprehensive article about it. I’m truly convinced that she brings nuance and intellect to every topic she touches. Wow…
It is not just ” blinded by the sins of America” but blinded by the Left’s long commitment to International Socialism – which instead of focusing on the class struggle, focuses also on ‘anti imperialist’ struggles around the world. This has now merged with ‘de-colonisation’ movements and with the accompanying notion of ‘white privilege’ ( ironically both American in origin) Israel is representative of everything the Left proclaims to hate. “Israel was increasingly denounced, not just for what it did, but also for what it was and is. Not only was Israel’s behaviour condemned as cruel and oppressive, but a conviction developed that there was also something uniquely ugly and mendacious about Zionism itself. In this view, Zionism was not a liberation movement and life-raft for a persecuted nation. It was a manifestation of everything the Left was committed to opposing: imperialism, racism, dispossession, colonialism, and later, even apartheid.This morally indefensible project was promoted and sustained by a powerful Jewish lobby and well-connected American Jews who used their power and influence to bend Western economies and foreign policy to their will”
Last edited 1 year ago by Jane Anderson
Penny Adrian
1 year ago
None of this gibberish explains the celebrations of the deliberate rape & slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians. Most of those cheering on Hamas have zero knowledge of the region’s history. Get out of your head, Mary. Hams would have done exactly the same to you & your little girl.
The desire for bloody revenge on any and all Palestinians by Israelis is understandable if we ignore our humanity and Christian values which, sadly, most do.
The identical motive, devoid of pity, desiring indiscriminate, brutal, murderous, evil killing by Hamas, also can be explained in exactly the same way, if we ignore our humanity and Christian values. Babies and children get to be beheadedand de-limbed by bombs and falling buildings as well. There is no difference.. well, wait there is one difference; a difference of scale.. 96 Palestinian children are murdered for every 4 Israeli children murdered. All are precious and the killing of every innocent is wrong, and evil.
There is another difference:
Israel tries to kill their armed enemies, and will do it even if they have chosen to surround themselves with innocent civilians who will also die.
Hamas kills children and rapes because they specifically want to do do that.
So the IDF will knowingly murder women and children in order to kill a couple of terrorists? That same group then labels any criticism of those actions as anti semitic?
Imagine if the police employed those tactics in other first world countries. Some failed bank robbers end up in a hostage situation, so rather than try and ensure the safety of the hostages the police instead burn the building to the ground killing both the guilty and innocent. There would be uproar, yet we’re supposed to believe it’s fine when the IDF do it?
For your bank robbers you can spin out the hostage situation. Countries generally do not let the hostage takers excape, but even if they did it is just another bank robbed and sooner or later they will get captured again. Hamas has embedded itself within the civilian population so it is impossible to hit them without hitting the civilians. From that safety they sally forth to kill Israelis. Israel then has the choice of doing nothing, letting Hamas return to safety and calmly plan the next atrocity, and the next …. Or to hit back, knowing that a lot of innocent bystanders will be killed. What do you expect them to do, exactly?
Of course Assad, Putin and Kadyrov, or various Roman emperors had no problems with this. They would simply keep massacring the rebel population till sheer terror prevented them from doing anything whatsoever against their oppressors. The Israelis are at least holding back from that.
Jake Prior
1 year ago
Great article, describing, with much greater acuity, my own feelings about the situation.
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Of the Jews wanted a safe place to live I think smack vang in the middle of enentirely Arab region qualifies as “a sade place” ..there are entire states in the US with almost no one living in them eg Wyoming, Idaho etc. Near those is the state of Utah, a safe place for Mormons so they’d be close to friends. Sending Jews to Palestine for safety is like sending Americans to Iran for safety, surely?
Yeah, Australia would have been a good place too, we had the space and beautiful coastlines.
The location of Israel only makes geopolitical sense, not humanitarian sense for the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.
Well, people (not just Palestinians) have this aversion to being forcibly moved to some random place on the globe. How would you feel about having all Australian ‘settlers’ forcibly moved to New Mexico to make room for the (ab)original inhabitants?
Sure, I wouldn’t love it, but funnily enough, if it meant the safety of my family, and the large financial support given to Israel by the US could be used for resettlement, I think I’d be putting my hand up.
Mark Carpenter
1 year ago
I think Jews are about 2 percent of US population yet they run the largest news organizations on left and right and if we say anything about the disproportionate representation in the media, we are antisemitic. Only recently has NYT and other coastal media begun to pay attention to the US-Mexico border. Now it’s back to the Muddle East. If we had at least one big-time Paper owned by family of Hispanic heritage, or Black or Southern White, the politics in US would be more localized. Our SW border is one of the most difficult in the world, and it has been ignored for decades by the coastal elite.
Oh, I am wrong about the Murdochs being Jewish. I apologize for throwing that out there.
Last edited 1 year ago by Mark Carpenter
Tyler Durden
1 year ago
What´s key here is that a post-colonial Muslim fellowship is mobilised each time to attack Israel and, by extension, the sins of the United States´ imperial past.
That said US imperial past is largely another settler-native confrontation – as the US was decolonised from the British – is not largely remarked upon by the neo-Marxists who are only interested in saying that an Israeli critique is not anti-Semitic (it is simply post-WWII anti-Semitism).
In effect, this is the same phenomenon as the digital-jihadi youth craze driving recruitment by Islamic State. However, it´s as important to note the extent to which universities and their favoured media outlets now foster these waves of pro-Islamic militancy. That´s a little of a difference with the state of play 10 years ago.
John Croteau
1 year ago
Love you, Mary, but this one is hard to read.
Most Americans would love to retreat to our North American fortress and let cesspools in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe(?) fester into oblivion. Blaming American Jews for the defense of Britain’s creation — Israel — avoiding another Holocaust, and “American hegemony” as a source of evil in the world is, frankly, aggravating. Shaping societies “in America’s image” includes defrocking hijabs, protecting gays, and stopping honor killings. Not all bad.
“Good” Germans elected Hitler and unlocked genocide. “Good” Palestinians elected Hamas and did the same. They each had legitimate grievances against Jews. None of them warranted a Holocaust. Your forebears would have written about American hegemony responsible for crushing reparations at Versailles and Roosevelt handing the Sudetenland to Hitler.
No, we bailed you out then, and we’ll bail you out now. American blood and capital. Germans de-Nazified, rebuilt, and reshaped by “American values”. Japan the same. Palestinians de-Hamasified one way or another.
The real risk you run is America withdrawing, not imposing its will. We clearly aren’t perfect, but last week’s events put most Americans (and British) on the right side of good versus evil. That is, those of us who aren’t infected by illiberal virtue signaling — like this piece.
Those who lack moral clarity may just get what they ask for.
Alan Hawkes
1 year ago
Question to the chanters of, “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.”
We have seen what that would mean in reality: Hamas gave us a demonstration: the women raped, the babies murdered. If you knew in advance that this was actually going to happen, would you go to watch the slaughter? After all, why not? You’re a cheerleader for it.
0 0
1 year ago
The interpretation of the chant ‘from the river to the sea…’ as anti-semetic has been rejected by Palestinians who say its origins in the 1960s as part of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s attempt to push for a secular, democratic state in all of historic Palestine and today acknowledges that Palestinians do not enjoy full and equal rights with Jewish Israelis. It questions the existence of the state of Israel but allows for peaceful relations between Jews and Palestinians in a secular state. This is to me what it means particularly now that there appears litte realistic possiblity of a two state solution because of the extent of Israel’s settlement of the West Bank contrary to international law. Given the death of the two state solution we are left with: the continuation of the status quo, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians or a one state solution.
Mary also seems to think that people like me are obsessed with opposition to the USA. Although the USA is the primary backer of Israel and therefore is in the most powerful position to enable a change of policy outside of Israel itself my focus is simply on the need to find a just peace for Palestininans and this seems to me to be best achieved by peaceful co-existence with the Jewish people who have made their home there – backed where necessary be international support.
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Shalom Ms. Harrington. Thank you for this interesting article. Much that you write is persuasive. Yet, the mystery remains. I think a key resource for understanding what is happening on the radical Left in regard to Israel is the book by Prof. David Nirenberg, “Anti-Judaism.” Nirenberg wrote a magisterial survey of the intellectual traditions of the Christianity-based and Islam-based civilizations. He describes what he calls “the work done” by setting up Jewish ideas, beliefs, and now the Jewish State as negative examples against which to measure what great things one’s own ideology can deliver. It is very deeply routed in Western civilization. Think of St. John Chrysostom or Karl Marx. Armenian civilization, while ancient, simply does not fill that profound role in Western thought (or Islamic thought, for that matter).
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Surely there’s a 4th group Mary? Those who support Palestinians for humanitarian reasons? I fall into that group and I don’t think I’m alone?
I think it is possible to support both Palestinians and the Jewish people for humanitarian reasons I am concerned that Israel itself is not a secular state and can’t guarantee the freedom of the Jewish and Palestinian people in harmony.
Supporting a people who live to exterminate another people…..for humanitarian reasons? That’s the definition of an oxymoron.
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
According to American figures the death count paid for pax Americana is 8 million.. Surely the US is the most aggressive, destabilising and bellicose nation by far on the planet? It’s easy to talk of Pax Americana is you live in a white, Christian, capitalist vassal state of the US.. but if you assert your freedom to be a sovereign state and act like one, death and destruction await, as well as coups, regime toppling, assassination of democratically elected leaders and theft of resources,o or am I living on another planet?
chris sullivan
1 year ago
AMEN SISTER
Martin Terrell
1 year ago
Spot on but you could go further. For Greater Corbinites, my enemy’s enemy is my friend. It’s not affection for suffering Palestinians or indifference to Jewish suffering that motivates. Rather, a deep dislike of the nation state and its cultural (religious) heritage.
Jerry Carroll
1 year ago
Where did you find that photo of Joe Biden, an antique shop?
George Venning
1 year ago
Weird article.
The author starts off by conceding that many people might support Palestine simply because of “a general commitment to protecting those at risk of ethnic cleansing,” but dismisses the possibility on the grounds that, if that were the case, they’d be equally distressed about events in Nagorno-Karabakh.
She then gives 1,500 words of reasons why these two different conflicts might have different levels of salience in the Western mind before concluding that the only explanation for lefty support for Palestinian civilians is its reflexive dislike of “the reigning order, which I don’t like”.
The blind spot is entirely the author’s own.
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
You say you “stand with peace and order” and therefore “you stand with Israel” – surely thos3 two standings are diametrically opposed?
Walter Schwager
1 year ago
is it true that Israelis consider Palestinians as sub-human? Did Golda Meir, that loving grandmother, call them vermin?
i have read her autobiography and would have loved having her as a grandmother – nothing in there about ‘vermin’ – much about despair at the attitude of the arabs and what the israelis were forced to do to fight off being massacred every other year. Should be mandatory reading !
Billy Bob
1 year ago
I don’t stand with Israel. I feel sympathy for those who were murdered by Hamas, however I also have sympathy for those bombed in their beds by the IDF. I don’t stand with Palestine either, in my opinion they’re all as bad as each other. I don’t class Israel as an ally, and I fail to see what connection Britain has to the country for our politicians to want to get involved in the everlasting conflict. If anybody could point out what Israel has done to assist Britain in order for me to think of them as allies I’d be keen to hear it.
Maybe it’s not ‘what have they done for us’, but are they allies – do they have similar political views, goals, ethics, enemies? A thought experiment – if Brits were the residents of Palestine, or of Israel, how would we approach the problem? Would we more closely resemble one group, or the other? Ultimately, would the war continue?
I’d guess that if we found ourselves in the Palestinians’ position, the war would end soon enough, we’d stop lobbing missiles into Israel, would stop calling for the destruction of Israel, and would instead focus on nation building; whilst if we found ourselves in Israel’s position, the war would go on and on.
So if Hamas laid down their weapons tomorrow would Israel grant the Palestinians a homeland along the original lines of partition, and move all the settlers back to within its own borders?
I also don’t understand why I should stand with a country with which we have no shared history, no shared religion (although I’m not a religious man) and who have never assisted us in no way, shape or form. In fact quite the opposite as they armed the Argentinians during the Falklands
Another piece of evidence. As to the charges of ‘ethnic cleansing by Israel- 1.8 million Palestinians live in Israel now (20% of total) – by any metric a big historical increase. Meanwhile, if we look to the many other Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa, the Jewish populations have declined (with lots of ‘encouragement’ by the states), typically by around 99%. The Christian populations of the same have also declined hugely.
I don’t get this at all. You should support Israel because they support democracy, freedom and human rights. You can critique Israel because they do crappy things and often fail badly at supporting those ideals. Ultimately though, all those people marching in the streets to protest Israel would never be able to do that in a world run by Hamas. You have to see the forest from the trees.
In that case should I stand with every African country that holds elections? Simply having the vote is a very flimsy basis to be allied to a country and get involved in their conflicts, especially with ones that have no shared history (apart from murdering British troops when trying to create their state of course)
Yes, you should support every single nation in the world that conducts free and fair elections. Full stop. As I mentioned in my comment though, that doesn’t preclude them from criticism and rebuke. And it doesn’t imply that any nation should support them in an offensive war.
So even if their views and morals are completely alien to me, I should support them simply because they hold elections? Funnily enough there are plenty on here for suggesting collective guilt on the Palestinians because the originally elected Hamas so should we have supported them seeing during what would have been their first term seeing as their original rise to power was democratic (even if it has since been suspended)
I certainly don’t assign collective guilt to the Palestinian people. There hasn’t been an election in 20 years. But I get what you’re saying – what if one free and fairly elected govt invaded another? This does present a conundrum, but I’m pretty sure this has never happened.
What about when one one country that holds regular elections routinely overturns the elections of other countries when it doesn’t like the results? Can you guess who I might have in mind?
Exactly. And they certainly wouldn’t tolerate dissenting views about anything. No freedom of speech or the press, no gays or LBTQ or alternative lifestyles. The “free Palestine” protesters would not be free in Palestine. That’s the irony that they don’t get.
I’m confused Jim.
“You can critique Israel because they do crappy things and often fail badly at supporting those ideals” But you shouldn’t critique Israel by marching in the streets to protest its current and on-going war crimes (laying siege to a civillian population being very much a war crime).
Can you explain?
I think that the forest is “don’t massacre children” (50% of the population of Gaza are children). The trees are “they did it first,” “they aren’t a democracy,” and “they’d be nasty to you if you were gay.”
But the biggest tree/red herring is “you can’t protest against Israel in London because Hamas wouldn’t let you protest against them in Gaza”. Not only is that entirely irrellevant but you are literally saying that people shouldn’t protest against Israel in London – which seems to put you on the wrong side of your own argument.
I never said any such thing. I have no issue with people protesting Israel. What I take issue with are the many groups that waved away the intentional massacre of women and children – the barbarity of targeting innocent children. Or the people marching in the streets chanting gas the Jews, or those who rip down posters of Israeli hostages. And don’t come back at me with Israel kills civilians when they bomb Palestine. This it is not the same thing.
OK, if I misconstrued you, then my bad, but you didn’t actually mention “waving away the intentional massacre of women and children” you only said that Hamas wouldn’t permit protests against their actions in Gaza. Which is true but isn’t really relevant.
What we’re left with is whether it is legitimate to support Palestinian self-determination in a world which also contains genuine antisemites and moral relativists. I say that the existence of gross people with gross beliefs on both sides of the argument, does not alter the actual morality of the situation.
We should perhaps engage with the best of what people have to say rather than the worst of what the people on the other side of the argument have to say.
Last edited 1 year ago by George Venning
Stephen Kristan
1 year ago
“When the crowd bellows “From the river to the sea”, then, relatively few are saying this because they have a material interest in obliterating the real Israel. I dare say many more have no particular animus toward Jewish people.”
I nominate these sentences as the most transcendentally, cosmically idiotic sentences ever to appear in print.
And pardon my understatement.
I think Mary H is talking there about the UK mainly, and the younger cohorts of indigenous Brits, who definitely aren’t as moored to ‘history as we know it’.
I nominate your comment for the “ill-considered knee-jerk” award of the week, just to put your timescale in perspective. This isn’t a print medium, by the way.
Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
A D Kent
1 year ago
I think the number of occasions that you use the words ‘Britain’, ‘British’ and ‘European’ in your potted history of the endless debacles of Palestine might give you a clue as to why some of us on the Left get rather more exercised about Palestine than we do about the goings on in Armenia (horrendous as they may be).
David Lindsay
1 year ago
The Al-Ahli Arabi Hospital in Gaza was founded by the Church Mission Society in 1882, run by the Southern Baptists from 1954 to 1982, and then taken over by the local Anglican diocese. Impeccable Anglo-American Evangelical credentials, and links to the Church of England. That is what has just been bombed.
I wonder how many outlets in the United States are reporting that it was Southern Baptist for much of its history? I wonder whether this attack is being reported very much at all there? But for all that it still has “Baptist” in its name, it was founded by English Anglicans, and it has been run by Palestinian Anglicans for the last 41 years. Yet Newsnight professed only to have spoken to “the church that operates it”. The audience cannot know that it is connected to the dear old C of E.
Even before that, we have had Keir Starmer, David Lammy and Emily Thornberry, who used to be so much better, defending the turning off of the water supply to one million children while white phosphorus was dropped on them. They should all be disbarred, and Bible Belters also have their own housekeeping to do, as have Church and King Tories. But the Left hereby proscribes the Labour Party as incompatible with its aims and values. Membership of or support for the Labour Party shall henceforth constitute autoexclusion from the Left.
From bragging about it, to saying that a Hamas rocket had misfired, to blaming Islamic Jihad, the Israeli story changed twice in three hours, and in ways that could not all have been true, not even in part. Islamic Jihad has nothing one per cent powerful enough to have done this, and even if it did, then what would have been the chances of that weapon’s misfiring such as to hit a large crowd that was standing on top of an ammunition dump in a hospital? By their silence, not even the Americans are pretending to believe that.
Was there an ammunition dump in that hospital? Interesting. Do you have a source?
As for the misfiring, Islamic Jihad might well have done it deliberately. After all, they have hugely benefited from the effects, and this entire war was planned on the premise that it would provoke Israel to kill a lot of Palestinians and thereby advance the cause of a Palestinian victory. Or it might have been Israel, of course. We just need to consider all the alternatives.
There would have had to have been for an explosion that big by the means alleged by the Israelis. But there wasn’t. The Israelis bombed the hospital. It is as simple as that.
Could you give us a link? Preferably to a non-Israeli source of course – no offence, but they just might decide to not tell the truth when so much is riding on the result.
ADDED: OK, as of Wed evening there is an account on the BBC. The dead were in a courtyard where apparently 1000 people were sheltering. There is a small crater and blast damage, so no sign of huge explosions or exploding ammo dumps. Evidence not conclusive, but suggestions definitely compatible with a smallish rocket exploding in a crowd of people.
Yes where is the balance? A country has responded to egregious war crimes with more war crimes (which though perhaps less sadistically evil are on a far larger scale under a war minister calling Palestinians (not Hamas) ‘human animals.’) They’re going full old Testament at a time when we need the new more than ever.
I mainly pay mine to read well reasoned articles on a range of topics, in the hope that at least half of them make me instantly want to disagree with the writer; and partly in the hope that the comments will change my mind again.
Happens regularly to me too. And to Nik Jewell, apparently. Their moderation system is totally opaque and unpredictable. If only they would explain how it worked and why, it might be easier to tolerate.
Me as well. I always took it as anti-Welsh.
There is, of course, no real discussion on UnHerd. If you disagree with the majority, somebody hits a red flag. Really a waste of money now.
But you have been read even if most disagree with you at the time. Perhaps you’ve planted a seed. I keep plugging away. I don’t particularly want to preach to the choir, I like to go where angels fear to tread!
Happens to me as well (I think for accusations levelled at the Tories, if there is a pattern at all, though it is mainly unpredictable). That said, all my comments are eventually posted again, they’re just sometimes put under arrest as it were for 24 hours (a bit like what the met did with the Republic demonstrators).
So.. start our own separate comments page for unherd articles?
Particular bad recently, although entirely predictable given the subject matter.
Tommy Abdy Collins
1 year ago
I do not stand with the Israelis. Atrocities are part of war, and have been forever, so the atrocity, as we see it, by Hamas should be set aside.
Since the Jews were settled in Palestine they have treated the Palestinians as second class to themselves, so resentment has grown and fuelled Hamas.
Apart from shipping the Jews to an empty and failed American state, where they will transform it to prosperity, I’m not sure what the answer is.
We, the hopefully civilised countries, must stop Israel inflicting collective harm on the Palestinians in a hopeless war against Hamas who will keep melting away. Otherwise we will be subject to another onslaught of terrorist attacks from an enemy already implanted in our societies because of our lax immigration rules.
Sorry, my error – second sentence! He said “the atrocity, as we see it, by Hamas should be set aside.” Did you read that bit? That is a totally shameful comment.
Happier now?
So you fear repercussions from Islam? That says it all doesn’t it as far as which side is civilized?
Xaven Taner
1 year ago
The US – at least since the failure of the Oslo Accords – has not ‘guaranteed the relative peace in Israel’. It has done little else but rubber stamp Israeli military aggression and the illegal seizure of land against dozens of UN resolutions. If it were not for the billions in US aid and military cooperation Israel would have been forced to compromise decades ago, Hamas would have had no reason to exist, and this current conflagration would not be happening.
I had a Jewish friend who did the kibbutz ‘thing ‘ in the early 80’s. He came back with a very strange impression of Israel, which he said was barely a state at all and only existed because of a never-ending flow of American dosh.
Fast forward 40 years and it is now the only Western type democracy in the region and the only place lots of the lefty luvvies currently sporting their keffiyeh could survive for a week. Don’t even get me started about ‘Queers for Palestine ‘.
Say what you like, but the Israelis have grafted and built that country up from scratch to be what it is and all while fighting recurrent, near-existential wars against a vast array of enemies.
Just imagine what Palestine would be like if that hadn’t happened; just look around at the neighbours who haven’t had a bottomless pit of oil revenue to do the heavy lifting for them. The sight of the people fleeing in Gaza on their donkeys says it all.
Jews are over-achievers generally; that’s why they’ve managed to survive despite all the horrors that have been visited on them through history.
I’ve had a lot of Jewish friends during my life and I respect them far more than the deranged, flag-waving lefty brigades. They share a common heritage with us which is quite different to that of Muslims and I’ve lived in a Muslim country, so I know what I’m talking about. This doesn’t mean that I think Muslims are terrible people or that I can’t get on with them but that I recognise how different they are from us.
I find the lack of solidarity with Jews at the moment frankly shameful.
“I find the lack of solidarity with Jews at the moment frankly shameful.”
I am sorry but frankly that is a ridiculous remark. Israel has the full, unmitigated support of the USA behind her, both now and for the foreseeable future. If ‘she’ decided, and to lapse into the vernacular, to ‘Nuke’ say Tehran, Mecca and Cairo, the USA would STILL stand by her.
Somewhat irritatingly, a similar, although not so extreme situation is to be found in the unequivocal succour the USA provides to the Irish Republic.
In retrospect we the UK should have finished the place off, when we had the chance in 1814.
That is one of your more absurd remarks. Your disdain for the United States is bizarre. That nation, for all its many faults, is the main reason you don’t live under a Nazi dominated Europe, or one where Communism didn’t dominate even more of the globe than it already did. Britain certainly couldn’t do this alone. It ought to be easy enough choice.
The lack of solidarity with the Jews refers to the widespread public western attitudes, not of nation states, but in any case the United States is, shamefully, one of the relatively few countries to stand steadfastly by Israel when faced with this evil attack by the Hamas fanatics. By the way, Ireland is one of the more pusillanimous in its “both sidesism” and almost immediate call for Israel not to take action (as any other state would do) in the face of such an outrageous attack.
Great Britain was incapable of defeating the United States in 1814 or at any time thereafter, as its mostly wise leaders knew.
Your forbearance in waiting until 1814 to finish us off is generous. Someone more virulent in their anti-Americanism would have suggested that the whole North American colonial project should have been given up in 1590, after the Mole People wiped out Roanoke.
“If [Israel] decided, and to lapse into the vernacular, to ‘Nuke’ say Tehran, Mecca and Cairo….”
Ah, yes, of course. The familiar lapse into obscene “what if” fear-mongering hypotheticals (with absolutely no basis in historical precedent) against the Jewish people to justify atrocious mass-extinction actions executed in the present by the Palestinians via their official and duly-elected Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip.
We witnessed the same obscene “what if” fear-mongering hypotheticals by Hitler’s minions before and during WWII to justify the Holocaust.
Wow. Talk about unmoored. And by the way you did try to finish the place off in 1814, in one of the stupidest wars of all time and you couldn’t.
I have been three times to Israel to visit a kibbutz close to Gaza. My memory is of a concrete bunker, covered in pictures of butterflies – the kindergarten. All of this energy and drive could only have happened with vast support from the rest of the world. The Israelis achieved this set-up by pushing back against the indigenous people (that is, the indigenous people after WW2.). The Israelis have created a first-world culture against a third-world backdrop and the achievement can’t be overstated.
But, the Palestinians – whatever you think of them – do exist and have suffered as well. What Ms Harrington refers to as support from Lefties is really only people saying, “What about the other people there? They exist as well.” People who try to sympathise with the Palestinians are not Lefties or Woke, they are just trying to look at all people in the equation.
Ms Harrington has fallen into the trap of trying to get ‘Lefties’ and ‘woke’ as many times as possible into her articles in order to keep the money from Unherd flowing in. When she started with UnHerd she didn’t have to resort to this strategy because her fame went before her.
The official and duly-elected Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip crossed a line that distinguishes humans from animals when they cruelly planned and executed the purposeful mass kidnapping, rape, torture, and mass-execution of innocent men, women and children in Israel.
Then the official and duly-elected Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip crossed the same line (that distinguishes humans from animals) when they demanded that their own citizens stay in their homes in the Gaza Strip to likely be killed by the righteous war reprisals that were caused by the Palestinian Government’s mass-extinction actions in Israel.
Then as their citizens fled – fearing war more than the threats of their own government – their official and duly-elected Palestinian Government crossed the same line (that distinguishes humans from animals) by trying to stop these people from immigrating elsewhere due to the very war that their duly-elected Palestinian Government initiated last week.
In short, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (and their supporters worldwide) have only their own official and duly-elected Palestinian Government to blame for all of this – from the deaths in Israel to their own deaths in the subsequent war and their loss of the Gaza Strip as the Palestinian’s home.
Perhaps the Palestinians – and their Leftist supporters around the world – should consider not promoting, funding, sustaining and carrying out mass-extinction events against fellow humans if they want to be accepted by the world as fellow travelers.
This argument only works for the first world – let us assume that everyone in Palestine can think like you, reason things clearly in their cosy room away from any harm, write things clearly in a meaningful way, etc. In fact, we are talking about the third world – as I said – and your cosy theory fails.
There were Palestinians in the kibbutz I visited but they were servants and were locked out at night. This is the fate of Palestinians in Israel. Your arguments don’t work for people with no schooling and who are taught what to do by their Imams.
Utter nonsense. “…crossed a line that distinguishes humans from animals “. This is actually true in general but in the opposite sense. Animals are not capable of such actions only humans really are capable of such hatred, and that certainly is not limited to just one side of this issue. Your use of the term is a naked attempt to dehumanise the “other side” so you can excuse murder, while simultaneously condemning the other side for the same thing. Hypocrite.
The Jews are the Indigenous people of Israel. The Palestinians should be reading land acknowledgment statements to them.
Forgive me, but isn’t Israel’s war against Hamas and not Palestine? As the commenter below writes, the only reason that one could justifiably conflate their activities with the Palestinian cause is because Hamas is the “duly-elected Palestinian Government of the Gaza Strip”; it’s also worth noting that if Hamas is one political party among many, then its ideologies and activities cannot be viewed as reflective of the whole of the Palestinian political spectrum.
I don’t think calling Hamas’s actions evil, or saying that Israeli actions are just in the present case — which is what I think Ms Harrington is trying to say here, amounts to a denial of the Palestinian suffering or even their right to political self-determination and statehood. I don’t even think it entails denying that Israeli settlement policies post Israeli independence are colonial in character — not sure if this is Ms Harrington’s posiiton, but it certainly is mine. It just means that there is a clear distinction between “good” and “evil” — lack of clarity regarding which has culminated in the grotesque Hamas apologia we see spewed on the left today.
Agree. I don’t believe that those demonstrating on the streets are thinking about American influence in the region as MH implies
Why should we feel compelled to frame the issue this way? Why do we have to “stand” with the Israelis or the Palestinians? Why do we need display “solidarity” with one side or another?
When Britain was the most powerful nation it was perhaps appropriate to for us to play at being the world’s judge and to debate the most moral and equitable outcome of each international quarrel (when not preoccupied by self interest). Now such moral posturing by the British seems self important and irrelevant. It seems particularly absurd in this case where clearly neither side are saints and neither are without their story of persecution and victimhood. The Hamas raid was abhorrent terrorism but also only the latest episode in a cycle of violence.
The most the British can do is offer constructive suggestions. Maybe UnHerd readers should focus on discussing whether there is a way out of the current situation that does not involve a regional conflagration but does meet the needs of both parties to some extent. Perhaps we might come up with something more useful than irrelevant posturing.
As an Irishman I agree with you. Many of my countrymen would be 100% behind the Palestinians for historical reasons, thinking the situation is equivalent to Ireland’s struggle with a colonial master, which it clearly isn’t.
And it’s also why I find Ursula von der Leyen and Biden’s “We stand behind Israel” deeply concerning. Please by all means condemn the atrocities but to “pick a side” here is not as straightforward as many think.
Why isn’t there some sort of peacekeeping UN style solution being proposed here? Would seem to be the least bad solution.
We tried negotiating prior to the Second World War, then we picked a side, fortunately for us.
‘We’ should have stayed out of it, if only because we couldn’t AFFORD it.
‘We’ would also have been in a superb position to supply both sides with munitions etc, in exchange for gold, which have been very helpful indeed as we still hadn’t fully recovered from 1914-18.
I hope this is not a serious comment. Nazism was evil and failing to oppose it would have been unforgiveable (though to be fair I am not sure the depth of depravity of Nazism was apparent at the beginning.)
Nobody had any idea of Hitler’s depravity in 1938/9, nor for that matter would anyone on the Left admit to Stalins’s equally homicidal behaviour, despite the evidence.
The possibility that these two appalling regimes might tear each other apart in a titanic war should have been encouraged. There was NO clear British strategic imperative to get involved one way or the other.
Perhaps our ‘pride’ got the better of us? After all some thought we were still a Great Power, incredibly.
No idea of Hitler’s depravity? The book burnings and Kristallnacht weren’t a clue? Jeez. Talk about willfully blind.
It was a huge leap from Kristallnacht to Zyclon B, or do you really claim to know better?
Look at UNIFIL in Lebanon, whose sole mandate was to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. Now Hezbollah has 100x more weapons than when UNIFIL came on board. UNRWA is in league with Hamas and their schools teach hatred of Jews. The UN is part of the problem, not the solution.
The UN’s peace-keeping missions have a long history of not keeping the peace and not relieving the suffering of the victims. They put a “hold” on the (bad) situation, sometimes for many years on end. It’s called “kicking the can down the road”; a classic form of disfunction. We’re sick of that crap.
Sudan, Cyprus, Kosovo, Haiti…..
Rwanda.
Hamas has made it very clear by its actions that a two state solution is impossible. The state must be Israel & that state must be protected by the Nazis at their doorstep.
Protected by? Or protected from?
Your view makes sense. Why argue about who is right and wrong in an abstract sense when people are dying? Solve the problem, don’t worry about who’s to blame.
The pragmatist Donald Trump said when asked “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?”:
“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing, I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people. . . . I want everybody to stop dying. They’re dying. Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying.”
We should do the same thing in Israel. Worry about stopping the dying, then solve the underlying problems.
That’s rubbish. Trump doesn’t care about people dying, he only cares about Trump. He says whatever sounds good to him, and it changes with the wind. He has delusions of grandeur and has stated that if he were still president there would be no war because the other dictators are afraid of him.
Regardless of who said it, it’s a great point.
Are you Corbins mummy
I keep shaking my head vigorously in an effort to wake myself up. Surely this many UnHerders can’t be indulging in lazy both-side-ism vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians.
When one neighbor calls frankly and repeatedly for the elimination of another one, while the put-upon neighbor asks only to be left alone, it’s rather hard to balance both points of view in reasonable negotiation.
Leaving aside the obvious political and historical advantage that Israel’s claims have, the ethnic Palestinians are far freer and wealthier than they would be, living in any of their neighbor states. I suspect that that embarrassing fact alone is a burr under their saddles.
Ask yourself which side would you prefer to invite for dinner.
Or, at the risk of sounding flippant, which side would you want to invite to the pub!
Now all I can think about is how entertaining Bibi would be as a dinner guest.
To sit on the fence about whether you want Hamas to achieve their goal of ethnic cleansing stated in their covenant is inaction and the same thing as siding with Hamas. This moral posturing is a luxury we have as spectators from the other side of the globe that Israel can’t afford. And while we side with Israel to prevent their total eradication (for this is what Hamas’ covenant states), we can still yearn for peace and the safety of innocent people on both sides.
Exactly, it’s nuanced, reasoned thinking not black versus white.
Give European history a glance and you will hardly be surprised by these current sentiments – a virtual pogrom is just as gratifying as the real thing was, time and again.
Yes. Very good article Mary Harrington.
I think it was Martin Amiss who made the observation about 70 people outside the Soviet embassy in London protesting the invasion of Czechoslovakia while thousand protested outside the US embassy over Vietnam.
On an unrelated point I understood that the Balfour Declaration was a dirty deal done between the UK and Jewish interests in the US to get them to use their influence to bring the US into the war.
Yeah those “dirty Jews” always scheming.
I was thinking more of perfidious Albion, but have it your way.
If Balfour had failed to convince Paul Warburg & Co to keep funding us we would have lost the Great War by December 1916. He also persuaded them (US) to join the war if only to protect their ‘debt’. After all, if Kaiser Bill had won he certainly WASN’T going to pay it back!
So in way we have only ourselves to blame for the subsequent catastrophe! After more than two centuries of happily plundering the world and running a ‘war’ as a business opportunity, we finally got caught out!
Thank you Mr Asquith, Mr Churchill and Mr Lloyd George, to name but three.
Mr Buchannan is very scathing about Mr Churchill’s role in getting it into WW1.
On an unrelated point, here’s some random latent antisemitism
“The sight of the people fleeing in Gaza on their donkeys says it all.”
Indeed. Palestinians were given 20 miles of Mediterranean coastline loved by northern European tourists, next door to the most technically advanced state in the middle east (Israel), with a border to the most populous state in the middle east (Egypt), and given billions in aid every year since it was created. They could have become free and rich, but instead, they voted to murder their neighbours.
To be fair, the way the Palestinians see it is this:
“We were given only a small portion of what was taken from us in the 1948 Nakba. We want the rest back. The only way to get it back is terrorism.”
Certainly there’s a lot to criticize the Palestinians for. But as always, there’s more to both sides than just a binary right and wrong.
…indeed. They are roughly half the size and population of Singapore, have a very well educated diaspora with world-wide reach, had a plan for a significant and modern commercial port…and had no shortage of potential investors and donors. A slightly smaller Levantine City-State on that model was well within reach.
They chose this, instead…
Thank you for this.
Yes, the donkeys pulling carts said it all!
Another perceptive, well-informed, and user-friendly essay from Harrington, all of which I agree with. It takes courage to state one’s position firmly as she does at the end. Everyone is afraid of violent, fanatical Muslims including world leaders, with good reason. Look what happened to Salmon Rushdie. CNN has a British Muslim, news anchor, Nada Bashir, who reports from London and is now reporting, with bias, from Lebanon. She always wears a Hajib which I’ve been complaining about ever since since she started. It’s the equivalent of a journalist wearing a big, Christian cross – unprofessional and unnecessary. Management is either too afraid to protest or allows it to appease Islam. We’re expected to walk on eggshells around them and it pisses me off.
“Just imagine what Palestine would be like if that hadn’t happened; just look around at the neighbours who haven’t had a bottomless pit of oil revenue to do the heavy lifting for them. The sight of the people fleeing in Gaza on their donkeys says it all.” Perhaps living the simpler life with a donkey to get you places might have advantages over to the must-get-more-stuff lives that we lead. Look where that has got us.
Thank you for that article Mary.
The question I always ask myself is this. If there were no America adding it’s protection to the democracies of Europe, Japan, Israel etc does anyone seriously think those countries would be a better/safer?
No. Of course not. Only an idiot would think so.
So many of these activists fail to understand that US protection helps to create the conditions and freedom to hold these views and gather in the way they do.
Sad. And actually a little pathetic.
The ‘luxury beliefs’ of those protesting against the entity that provides them the safety and freedom to protest. It’s quite immature. Most grow out of it but some not.
Exactly
Actually extremely pathetic – and therefore dangerously ignorant !!
And the U.S. is only $33.5 TRILLION in debt as a result. Doesn’t look sustainable from my perspective.
It’s nice of Mary Harrington to try to find another justification for the treatment of Israel by our moralising superiors in the UK.
But the truth is, it is antisemitism, whether conscious or not, and it does us a disservice to deny it.
Is criticising Russias foreign policy Russophobia? Is being critical of the recent Azerbaijani offensive Islamophobia? If not why is every criticism of Israel deemed to be caused by anti semitism?
Seconded – I have no idea why criticism of Netanyahu’s foreign policy is antisemitism, though I do understand that zionism is a part of Judaism and so criticising the establishment or continued existence of Israel does count as antisemitism. Saying Israel has a right to defend itself seems to me to mean just that – defending its legal borders – not committing war crimes beyond those borders or illegally expanding..
Zionism is not “part” of Judaism if you mean that it is an article of Jewish faith. There were strong anti – Zionist strands in Jewish thought before the foundation of Israel: the Marxist Bundist movement for example.
The following from Mosaic magazine, discussing Stefan Zweig’s brief portrait of Teodor Herzl (Zionist founder) in his book (recommended), The World of Yesterday.
In his own day, the Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was one of Europe’s most popular authors, famous for his historical biographies and short stories—which often revolved around the cosmopolitan and urbane world of pre-World War I Vienna. In 1901, the young Zweig met Theodor Herzl—then at the height of his career as a Zionist leader—who hired him to write feuilletons (long-form columns) for the Die Neue Freie Presse, a prestigious Viennese newspaper where Herzl worked as an editor. Neil Rogachevsky comments on Zweig’s description of Herzl in his memoir, The World of Yesterday:
Thank you – that’s very interesting. One of the other issues around Zionism as an aspect of Jewish thinking is its privileging of Hebrew over Yiddish, but these are perhaps debates for the drawing room rather than the current battlefield…
Not all Jews are Zionist. But the quasi-totality of Zionists are Jews, or pro-Jewish.
And Muslims are… not as much so.
Mary’s point about Israel-as-US-proxy is insightful.
Israel as Jewish—and specifically non-Muslim—needs more attention.
“From the river to the sea” and “gas the Jews!” That doesn’t sound like criticism of Netayahu’s “foreign policy”.
Or a mad fringe of nutjobs at whom anger should really be directed rather than people who are just concerned about the humanitarian crisis of innocent people in Gaza and our own government’s complicitness in condemning one war crime without condemning another?
It’s not, and he knows it.
Yes and he said so. The question is, why does she think this attitude is representative of an entire peace movement. They are not – in the same way that the actions of the Israeli military may not reflect what many Israelis want. There are plenty of Israelis who despise Netanyahu whose support is collapsing (see link below) in the wake of this. As I understand, his distraction with trying to deal with protests against his efforts to appoint his own judges (poor guy) was one of the reasons the intelligence did not respond effectively to the attacks, despite a warning from Egypt 24 hours in advance. Seeing this conflict as one between Israel and Hamas where one is supposed to choose a side (and be called imperialist for backing one and racist for backing another) seems madness when ordinary people, below all the politics (where people at the top have political capital to gain from such wars) must be desperate for an end to this, which has never been guaranteed by further war, only by peace talks such as those shot down by Hamas and Netanyahu and his entourage.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/poll-shows-backing-for-netanyahu-imploding-gantz-taking-the-rudder/
Hamas has made tougher foreign policy seem a lot more necessary.
Maybe the lack of criticism of Azerbaijan, and to a lesser extent, Hamas, has the same root cause as the failure to deal with the Pakistani rape gangs
In sunny Rochdale and Oxford for example?
Rochdale is sunny?
Simple. Because the same folk up in arms about Palestine weren’t up in arms about the uyhgurs in China.
25 people attended the demo in support of them. TWENTY FIVE.
And today, we’ve seen lots of the great and good falling over themselves to announce that Israel bombed a hospital, when a cursory glance at OSINT intelligence and Hamas’ own photos proved the opposite, that it was a Palestinian rocket.
The only explanation is antisemitism. Deep, ingrained antisemitism. Whether conscious or not.
It was illogical that Israel would bomb the hospital, absolutely not in their interest.
Australia just voted ‘No’ to the Voice Referendum. Many average Australians were not happy with being labelled as racist for not being sure how they felt about it, or for not agreeing with it. Were they actually all displaying their deep, ingrained, unconscious racism?
I used to believe the BS that criticizing Israel was not anti-semitic. Then I saw the Pro Hamas rallies immediately following the gruesome pogrom committed by Hamas. I saw academics & students celebrating this “decolonization” and “resistance”. The lie has been exposed: Free Palestine means Exterminate The Jews.
Anti-Semitism is a label, albeit an accurate one, not an explanation. But WHY are so many on the Left anti-Semitic? Presumably not because the Jews were Christ-killers. Weren’t lots of Jews in the original Bolshevik Party? Mary Harrington makes an excellent argument.
There was always a lot of anti-semitic sentiment in Russia and Communism, despite all its blah about equality never changed that. Stalin himself never trusted Jews and they were always thought likely to backslide and display bourgeois tendencies. This was the same in many other Slavic nations despite the utopian light of Communism (aka State Terrorism).
Moreover, according to the author of ‘Israelophobia ‘ during the Cold War, the Soviet intelligence service ran a propaganda campaign against Israel because it was in the American camp and they supported the Arab States in opposition.
They merely rehashed (sometimes doing a literal cutandpaste job) 19th Century anti-semitic Tsarist tracts and replaced the word Jew with the word Zionist. So the willing idiots lapped all this up and since then, Israel has been the ultimate bête noire of the Left.
Conversely Cuba, which was so run-down and authoritarian that people resorted to floating to Florida using rubber rings, was held up as a shining example of Socialism.
Just as with the wannabe Jihadis today; they extol the virtues of semi-feudal shitholes from the comfort of their ‘awful’ Western nests and would never dream of going to live in any of these places due to the slow broadband speeds.
Their Arab neighbours won’t take the Palestinians in because they apparently can say they don’t want a load of troublemakers undermining social cohesion. But of course, we’re not allowed to make the same self-evident argument.
We can say, anonymously, it but world leaders can’t. Nobody wants the Palestinians not even the protesters. They’re not offering them a home as Europeans did for Ukrainians. And Palestinians certainly don’t want the “queers for Palestine”. They’d lose their heads really fast!
I think they were largely Mensheviks, but hugely over represented either way
Because they are steeped in Marxism and Marxist theory about Rothschilds and Jewish bankers and capitalism.
They aren’t. At the height of the panic over antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, the JPR conducted an exhaustive analysis of anti semitic and anti Israeli attitudes in the UK and found that:
“Levels of antisemitism among those on the left-wing of the political spectrum, including the far-left, are indistinguishable from those found in the general population.”
https://www.jpr.org.uk/reports/antisemitism-contemporary-great-britain
Yes indeed – and neither was the Corbyn leadership found to be antisemitic by the Forde Report (as was claimed by the much publicised BBC panorama documentary (there go the loony BBC left)) which found that the processing of complaints of antisemitism by the party was choked by the labour right which regularly weaponised the issue to oust Corbyn out. But barely anyone has heard of the Forde Report as it was hardly mentioned by the media (I bet there’s barely anyone reading this who’s heard of it)..
Dictionary definition of semitic:
.. relating to peoples who speak Semitic languages, especially Hebrew & Arabic.
Yeah, but by antisemitic we mean “Jew Hater”.
Yeah, and most people who disagree with Israel’s actions aren’t “Jew Haters”.
I recommend people read Dave Rich’s book:The Left’s Jewish Problem
I came across it some years ago when I was puzzled by the blatant anti-semitism that was being tolerated. An evidence based account that it well worth reading.
Agreed. Good book.
There was no way the UK, either financially or politically could have sustained the state of Israel, even though it initiated its founding There just have not been enough prominent Jews in British society to care enough or who worked at high enough levels to have an impact. Even more so, its upper classes unfortunately have politely, masked their anti-Semitism for quite some time now, not all, but it’s there. So yes, American Jews have been instrumental to Israel’s survival.
It seems like many commentators on here would will rail against the “woke” calling everyone who doesn’t agree with them as racist, but are comfortable calling people who don’t agree with some of Israel’s behaviours and policies as anti-semetic.
Ms. Harrington hit it exactly right again of course… Especially: “ Israel plays as a proxy for American geopolitical hegemony” – That’s the true motivation behind Western pathetic radical Leftists (self hatred as a sport). So what if good people were deliberately targeted and terrorized…
Mary makes a good point about the geo-political motivations of the British and then the American actions in the ME. It’s based on the three keys to real-estate value “Location, location, location”. The Suez and oil. This is the same reason Turkey is valued (and the Turks are well aware). Geography. Her view that anti-Israel sentiment is actually a manifestation of anti-Americanism also makes sense.
IMO, another point to be made is related to an opinion from Thomas Sowell regarding why so-called marginalized groups never seem to get anywhere re: improved outcomes. His theory is that Black Americans (applies to Indigenous people in Canada and Australia as well) have been sold on an idea that political power brings improved economic results. “It’ll be all better once one of our own is in charge”. Sowell’s claim is that this is backwards and that economic power begets political influence. Politics listens to money. His proof is that states and cities where the outcomes for the Black population are the worst have had “one of us” Black governors, mayors and police chiefs.
The activist Left dismisses this by blaming “systemic racism” or “historical injustice” which brings up another awkward question. If this is the reason that outcomes never improve then Jews collectively should be the worst-performing welfare basket case on the planet. As a group they’ve been at one time or another, massacred, stepped on, shunned, expelled and “cancelled” in every corner of the planet. They are the runaway gold medal winners of the “You owe us” Victim Olympics.
The problem is that while they have clearly been victims they have refused to let that identify them. For the most part they have survived and prospered. Economic prosperity has lead to political influence. I’m sure there are many arguments as to whether or not that influence has always resulted in desired outcomes but it sure explains why every major western leader has stood up for Israel in this current mess.
And the Palestinians? The street protests say it all. “We were robbed”. “Settlers” “Occupiers”- typical tropes by a group that has fallen for the false promise of “Guilt into Gold” progressive alchemy. Are all things Israeli pure in heart and deed? Maybe not, but Israel is getting our support while the Palestinians will have to settle for a little sympathy.
Indeed. One has but to ask, ‘who has done more for Black British Jamaicans, Lenry Henry…..or Diane Abbot?’.
Interesting post. No group has been more persecuted than the Jews, yet they persevere and prosper.,
Thomas Sowell was asked in an interview. “The Jews face so much hatred, what one thing could they do to get more people to like them” – Sowell’s answer. “Fail”
Indeed.
So true.
bang on sir – thanks for the pithy summary. the Israeli’s have learnt through a grim history that no outside entity can ever enact magic on your behalf and only hard work can acheive security. It has taken them 2000 plus years to learn that – I guess the ‘oppressed’ people of the world might need 1000 years to ‘get it’. At least my irish and english and Bohemian ancestors had the guts to leave an oppressive existence and build a better life for themselves. The Palestinians appear to be functionally primitive medievalists who are unlikely to have a rennaisance anytime soon………Maybe kicking them all out into the arms of their caring brothers is the only way to make them MOVE ON>
Speaking as a “fool”, I disagree here. You’ve seen me arguing on here with some of you for the last few days, but you haven’t seen the years I’ve spent arguing with Leftists about their obsession with this issue.
In my earlier years, the international issue I was passionate about was Tibetan freedom, and I used to attempt to make the case with Leftists about why they didn’t care about the Tibetans when they cared so much about Palestinians. More recently, I have argued with them about their lack of interest in Rohingyas and the Kurds, again making the comparison. To this day, I argue with them about the Uighurs who build their precious solar panels.
On the Israel-Palestine conflict, I’ve seen some anti-Semitism, betrayed by linguistic slips in the middle of arguments, occasional Protocols nonsense, and a fair amount about bankers.
When arguing about the relative lack of interest in the issues I care about, the reasons I have been given continuously are because Israel is closer to home, because Britain created the problem, and because of apartheid. More than anything, apartheid is mentioned. I have sympathies with these, but I still do not understand the lack of interest in other injustices around the world.
I have rarely seen modern critical social justice style reasoning, but that may be because I have mainly argued with the traditional left and not the identitarian left about Israel-Palestine.
I have had many discussions about US hegemony, sometimes along ‘Team America: World Police’ lines, and proxy wars, both of which I have sympathy with. Far more often, though, it is because the US is blamed for being the spoiler of socialism, with claims that if socialism has never worked, it is because the US isolates, sanctions, invades or organises coups in socialist countries.
The connection of the US with Israel has been very rare in my years of arguing over Israel-Palestine with them. Indeed, I think I connect them more than they do.
Maybe the dimension Mary H discusses includes the reality that it is personally ‘safer’ having a go at UK/US supported Israel, (you’re unlikely to be assassinated) and there is more likelihood that your display of virtue will be noticed, or even have a real world effect. Protesting Saudi, China et al, doesn’t return a dividend of anything much except a beating or worse if the relevant sponsors’ goons get a fix on you.
Very revealing. You use the big “I” so many times in your comment that it comes over as a grand display of your carefully considered moral stance contrasted with everyone else’s muddled moral shakiness. It’s almost like reading a Peter Hitchens column – a journalist who never fails to berate the world for failing to heed the important message that only he is delivering.
Eh? I‘m reporting on my own anecdotal experience.
It’s a strange piece.
Why are lefties not standing outside the Russian embassy and screaming about the evils of Russian imperialism and barbarism? Because such people are morally blind unless they can blame a conventional target such as the USA or Britain. So they twist the Ukrainian war to be the fault of the expansionist UN or some similar baloney.
It’s the left that has been largely critical of Russias invasion of Ukraine, strangely enough its been the (online) right that has been saying the Ukrainians should just accept being a Russian vassal state and bemoaning the amount of military aid given to Ukraine
Yes indeed. That’s a terrible comparison GS, not only for the reasons BB mentions but also because Ukraine got strong support from the west from the start whereas Palestine has had far less and for far longer.
True. It’s the Republicans who would withdraw aid to Ukraine if they had the chance.
Does your arguing have an effect or is it just a hobby?
Oh Brilliant. You should be on the stage.
Like the Manchurian Candidate’s Sen. Iselin, I like things “real simple.”
And the “real simple” thing about our lefty friends is that they think they are the only thing on this Earth between “helpless victims” and Armageddon.
The question always is: who is the victim? With regard to Israel, lefty experts and social scientists agree, the victim is the Palestinians.
Therefore the Israelis are the oppressive apartheid imperialist aggressor (fill in additional lefty word salad to taste). Period, full stop.
I know this probably sounds silly, but last night, the 1996 movie, “Mars Attacks!” was on TV and, although it is a pulp comedy, I was struck by a few things: Mars launches a surprise invasion of Earth. The majority of Earthlings, including world leaders and their expert advisors, insist that the Martians come in peace; “We have much to learn from each other”. The Americans stage a large welcome for the Martian ambassador, everyone is thrilled and hopeful.
They are promptly incinerated. This continues through the movie, with leadership still insisting it’s all a “cultural misunderstanding”. The Martian marauders laugh at the Earthlings’ naïveté whilst wiping out everything in site. The American President, struck down in a bunker by eye-rolling Martians, suffers the final indignity of a Martian flag rising out of his chest: it bears the same colors and similar design to that of the Palestinian flag currently being waved in the world’s great cities.
My point isn’t a deep dive intellectual analysis, of course, but some threats are obvious to the point of parody. In the movie, it wasn’t bullets, tanks, missiles, or nukes (when America launches a nuke at a Martian ship, the aliens blow it up, capture the contents in a little balloon, and inhale it like helium). What finally destroys the Martians? Broadcasts of Slim Whitman yodeling.
Cutting off Gaza from food, electricity, water, and other necessities is a start. Force fellow Arab states to take in their refugee brothers and sisters. Then cut off Iran and make it a pariah state. If the world, starting with America, would refuse to trade /bribe/fund the mullahs, we might actually get somewhere.
This is BRILLIANT Allison!!!
Thank you!
Collective punishment and ethnic cleaning is your solution? I’d have thought the Jews would have been fairly squeamish about that as a solution owing to what happened to them during the Second World War.
Also why should other countries take in the Palestinians as refugees? Why can’t America take in the Israeli’s for instance, seeing as they are there loudest cheerleaders? The skin tone alone would imply that the Arabs probably have more historical claim to that land than the white Israelis after all
Just like that.
Couple of extra points:
– the UN resolved that there should be a Jewish state in Palestine in 1947. When the British gave up the Mandate in May 1948 the UN failed to agree what should follow (there was some idea that an international trusteeship should be set up), and in default of international agreement Israel declared itself into existence and, crucially, was recognised by the US. The failure at the very outset to set up a “two-state” solution has blighted the region ever since.
– the Left’s attachment to the Palestinian cause owes a lot to Soviet propaganda in the Cold War. The USSR had a unit churning out pro-Palestinian propaganda on the basis that Israel was a US client state in the region, and my enemy’s enemy is my friend.
This was a really excellent article, I enjoyed reading it and the logic is sound.
Perhaps, just as Winston Churchill famously said that democracy was the worst form of government – except for all the others we’ve tried, Pax Americana is the best alternative we have. And, if you see the Israel-Palestine conflict through that lens, then of course you have to be on Israel’s side.
But for me, this is the definition of a position held grudgingly and by default – not because I’m in any way enthusiastic about American hegemony anymore. What Mary refers to as its “expat-inflected international politics” or – put another way – how Washington seems to see the world through the prism of its own domestic neuroses has too often resulted in the world becoming a more dangerous and unsafe place. See: the monumental disaster of Afghanistan.
That episode removed any kind of trust I had in America as a world power. I don’t actively dislike it, but my attitude towards the USA and Pax Americana is very much “oh, well – if that’s the best we’ve got then we’d better just deal with it”…and just hope that they’ve got a grip of the facts on the ground on the next geopolitical mission rather than going in with heads full of romantic notions of a homeland or their own creation myth.
Interesting view on this is https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2022/04/08/exposing-the-soviet-lie-of-israeli-apartheid/
General Ion Pacepa, chief of Romania’s foreign intelligence service, says the chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov (later Leonid Brezhnev’s successor as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party), told him:
We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States.”
Picking a place to stand doesn’t necessarily mean picking one or other side in a war. To my mind, standing with peace and order means standing with any individual human being who is afflicted with suffering and misery because of the actions of any other human being or group of human beings. Drop the labels and what you see are people brutalising each other simply because of their respective group identities, recent or historical past injustices perpetrated by one “group” against the other, and the threat that members of one group are perceived to pose to members of the other. I respectfully implore anyone who despairs of groupthinking woke identity politics, and of the naivety of the blue-and-yellow flag waving crowd, yet who has adopted an unambiguous pro-war stance on this awful, nasty conflict, to reflect, please, on this.
Perhaps the reason that the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict conjures little emotion or reaction is simply because it has much less coverage across practically all forms of corporate and alternative media. Who benefits from the promotion of wall-to-wall blood and trauma in the Middle East, heightened negative emotions, anger, more polarisation, the closing off of constructive dialogue between compassionate human beings with different political leanings, ethnicities, religious sensibilities, and mass distraction from all of the other corporatist power grabs going on? Certainly not the little guy; but perhaps the narcissistic, fearful, power-greedy politicians, their minders, their hangers-on, and the suppliers and financiers of arms might stand to gain a thing or two? Always follow the money.
You may think I am naive to believe that the radicalised followers of Hamas could be persuaded to change their minds and support a peaceful co-existence with their Jewish neighbours. Others may think I am naive to believe that the Israeli government could be persuaded to agree to a permanent, peaceful, normalised two-state solution, and disappoint its military contractors. This may be so. But nonetheless I continue to hope and pray for the abatement of the suffering of individual people, in Israel, Palestine, Nagorno-Karabakh, and anywhere else, whoever they may; and that those in nominal authority discharge their duties with temperate, level heads.
I stand for peace and order, however flawed. I stand with humanity.
All fine and dandy, but personally I stand against bestial cruelty and inhumanity and against anyone who supports such people whether explicitly or tacitly.
Me too.
That too.
Don’t we all.
“My vicar..is not an antisemite.” Really
Mary? Remember Matthew 7:16 “ye shall know them by their fruits.” His discourse shows that he is an antisemite, it’s just that we aren’t used to recognising wish washy C of E parsons as the kind of people who could be antisemites. Remember those T-shirts that used to say “this is what a feminist looks like?” We need a poster campaign featuring generic “nice guy” figures—a vicar, a teacher, an NHS doctor etc.—with the line “this is what an antisemite looks like.” People expect anti-semites to look like thugs. These days they look like university lecturers, civil servants, heck! They even look like Alicia Keys.
Every criticism of Israel is anti semitic is it?
Yeah so many commentators hate the notion of being called racist by “woke” but are comfortable calling centrist people anti semetic.
The Left’s great hope was that a revolution in the Arab world would cut off the supply of oil and bring down capitalism.
David Ben-Gurion is reputed to have said, “Do NOT expect the Palestinians to give up, we wouldn’t “.
Understanding the history of Israel’s creation is interesting but unhelpful as is making the conflict a Left/Right argument about American hegemony. You can turn any conflict in the world into a superpower competition.
Harrington is right about the protesters though; they are fringe actors and therefore irrelevant, yet conservative media is having a field day focusing on them. They are not the problem. America is not the problem. The problem is the intractable conflict between Palestinians and Israel. The Palestinians’ refusal to give up terrorism and acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and an Israeli government that has given up on negotiating a two-state solution is the problem. The Palestinians attack on Oct. 7th was despicable but no matter how much Israel’s response is justified, it will only end up creating more terrorists and the ugly cycle of violence will continue. All that leaves us is to pick a side and that isn’t good enough.
The tragedy is no-one has a solution to the central problem. It is unrealistic to expect Israel to allow a state on its border that is committed to its destruction, yet the Palestinians and the terrorist groups they allow to lead them aren’t going anywhere. The Americans don’t have a solution, the Europeans don’t, the Right doesn’t, and the Left doesn’t. The media certainly doesn’t, and their incompetent journalism makes things worse. God knows, I don’t.
I do know that concentrating on fringe Leftist protests and middle-class children practicing performative social justice is just another way of ignoring the problem. It is only good for ratings and clicks.
Sadly, given the ability of so many people and groups in the UK to constantly find fault with Israel and see perfection in the Palestinians, I have only one conclusion. That is that a huge proportion of the UK population really are anti-semitic and not just anti-Israel as they claim to be.
It was quite clear to me from the start that there was no way Israel would bomb a hospital in Gaza. The political implications were horrific. In spite of the now available evidence, to the contrary, these people still cling to the view that it was Israel’s fault
My only qustion is whether the Islamic group which fired its missile at the hospital did it deliberately (to get good PR) or it was an accident. I wouldnt rule the former out
Exactly, I thought from the beginning that Israel hadn’t bombed the hospital because it wasn’t in their interest to do so. On the contrary. Judging from the terrorist audio that has been obtained it was an accident.
Funny, I thought that about Syria. Somehow Assad used chemical weapons on his people, the ‘red line’ that the US had said would cause the US to react. For some reason all other means weren’t enough and he used them. You would have thought that it wasn’t in his interest.
Don’t underestimate psyops on both sides, winning hearts, minds and outrage on the world stage are important for legitimacy.
The bombing of the hospital can only be determined by international investigators.
This is too black and white. We don’t have to wish the destruction of Israel to support Palestinians, whatever the current slogans chanted by crowds are: people say/shout overheated rubbish all the time. Israel must allow a homeland to Palestinians to allow them to live with dignity, that’s all. They committed to this in the Oslo accord after all. That’s not going to destroy Israel, but its the beginnings of a lasting peace.
They are not just shouting rubbish slogans they’re dangerous activists.
What nonsense. The last two sentence’s are contradictory: “I stand with peace and order, however flawed. I stand with Israel.”
How is it that intelligent writers can rationalise such a statement? (answer: it lacks reason). Surely one needs to start from the fundamentals: The principal of universality and rights of every human to liberty, freedom of expression and equality?
With that you would conclude “I stand with peace and order”. But there is no possible way you can reason that that implies “I stand with Israel”.
One proper inference is that both sides should be encouraged to negotiate a path to peace. Idealistic? Perhaps. But it is the only path to eventual peace in the future, once the majority of people on both sides agree with that path.
No vengeful destruction of Gaza by Israel, equating the people who live there as Hamas, moves things in the direction of peace.
Well said, I was too baffled by that closing statement of otherwise balanced article.
the Israel-Palestine issue is really not one I knew much about before (but I’m trying to learn more now). I’m glad Harrington wrote such an incisive and comprehensive article about it. I’m truly convinced that she brings nuance and intellect to every topic she touches. Wow…
And she’s user-friendly not a dry academic.
It is not just ” blinded by the sins of America” but blinded by the Left’s long commitment to International Socialism – which instead of focusing on the class struggle, focuses also on ‘anti imperialist’ struggles around the world. This has now merged with ‘de-colonisation’ movements and with the accompanying notion of ‘white privilege’ ( ironically both American in origin) Israel is representative of everything the Left proclaims to hate.
“Israel was increasingly denounced, not just for what it did, but also for what it was and is. Not only was Israel’s behaviour condemned as cruel and oppressive, but a conviction developed that there was also something uniquely ugly and mendacious about Zionism itself. In this view, Zionism was not a liberation movement and life-raft for a persecuted nation. It was a manifestation of everything the Left was committed to opposing: imperialism, racism, dispossession, colonialism, and later, even apartheid.This morally indefensible project was promoted and sustained by a powerful Jewish lobby and well-connected American Jews who used their power and influence to bend Western economies and foreign policy to their will”
None of this gibberish explains the celebrations of the deliberate rape & slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians. Most of those cheering on Hamas have zero knowledge of the region’s history. Get out of your head, Mary. Hams would have done exactly the same to you & your little girl.
The desire for bloody revenge on any and all Palestinians by Israelis is understandable if we ignore our humanity and Christian values which, sadly, most do.
The identical motive, devoid of pity, desiring indiscriminate, brutal, murderous, evil killing by Hamas, also can be explained in exactly the same way, if we ignore our humanity and Christian values. Babies and children get to be beheadedand de-limbed by bombs and falling buildings as well. There is no difference.. well, wait there is one difference; a difference of scale.. 96 Palestinian children are murdered for every 4 Israeli children murdered. All are precious and the killing of every innocent is wrong, and evil.
There is another difference:
Israel tries to kill their armed enemies, and will do it even if they have chosen to surround themselves with innocent civilians who will also die.
Hamas kills children and rapes because they specifically want to do do that.
So the IDF will knowingly murder women and children in order to kill a couple of terrorists? That same group then labels any criticism of those actions as anti semitic?
Imagine if the police employed those tactics in other first world countries. Some failed bank robbers end up in a hostage situation, so rather than try and ensure the safety of the hostages the police instead burn the building to the ground killing both the guilty and innocent. There would be uproar, yet we’re supposed to believe it’s fine when the IDF do it?
This is war, Billy. War is not nice.
For your bank robbers you can spin out the hostage situation. Countries generally do not let the hostage takers excape, but even if they did it is just another bank robbed and sooner or later they will get captured again. Hamas has embedded itself within the civilian population so it is impossible to hit them without hitting the civilians. From that safety they sally forth to kill Israelis. Israel then has the choice of doing nothing, letting Hamas return to safety and calmly plan the next atrocity, and the next …. Or to hit back, knowing that a lot of innocent bystanders will be killed. What do you expect them to do, exactly?
Of course Assad, Putin and Kadyrov, or various Roman emperors had no problems with this. They would simply keep massacring the rebel population till sheer terror prevented them from doing anything whatsoever against their oppressors. The Israelis are at least holding back from that.
Great article, describing, with much greater acuity, my own feelings about the situation.
Of the Jews wanted a safe place to live I think smack vang in the middle of enentirely Arab region qualifies as “a sade place” ..there are entire states in the US with almost no one living in them eg Wyoming, Idaho etc. Near those is the state of Utah, a safe place for Mormons so they’d be close to friends. Sending Jews to Palestine for safety is like sending Americans to Iran for safety, surely?
Yeah, Australia would have been a good place too, we had the space and beautiful coastlines.
The location of Israel only makes geopolitical sense, not humanitarian sense for the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.
Well, people (not just Palestinians) have this aversion to being forcibly moved to some random place on the globe. How would you feel about having all Australian ‘settlers’ forcibly moved to New Mexico to make room for the (ab)original inhabitants?
Sure, I wouldn’t love it, but funnily enough, if it meant the safety of my family, and the large financial support given to Israel by the US could be used for resettlement, I think I’d be putting my hand up.
I think Jews are about 2 percent of US population yet they run the largest news organizations on left and right and if we say anything about the disproportionate representation in the media, we are antisemitic. Only recently has NYT and other coastal media begun to pay attention to the US-Mexico border. Now it’s back to the Muddle East. If we had at least one big-time Paper owned by family of Hispanic heritage, or Black or Southern White, the politics in US would be more localized. Our SW border is one of the most difficult in the world, and it has been ignored for decades by the coastal elite.
The largest news media monopoly is owned by Richard Murdoch who isn’t Jewish.
Oh, I am wrong about the Murdochs being Jewish. I apologize for throwing that out there.
What´s key here is that a post-colonial Muslim fellowship is mobilised each time to attack Israel and, by extension, the sins of the United States´ imperial past.
That said US imperial past is largely another settler-native confrontation – as the US was decolonised from the British – is not largely remarked upon by the neo-Marxists who are only interested in saying that an Israeli critique is not anti-Semitic (it is simply post-WWII anti-Semitism).
In effect, this is the same phenomenon as the digital-jihadi youth craze driving recruitment by Islamic State. However, it´s as important to note the extent to which universities and their favoured media outlets now foster these waves of pro-Islamic militancy. That´s a little of a difference with the state of play 10 years ago.
Love you, Mary, but this one is hard to read.
Most Americans would love to retreat to our North American fortress and let cesspools in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe(?) fester into oblivion. Blaming American Jews for the defense of Britain’s creation — Israel — avoiding another Holocaust, and “American hegemony” as a source of evil in the world is, frankly, aggravating. Shaping societies “in America’s image” includes defrocking hijabs, protecting gays, and stopping honor killings. Not all bad.
“Good” Germans elected Hitler and unlocked genocide. “Good” Palestinians elected Hamas and did the same. They each had legitimate grievances against Jews. None of them warranted a Holocaust. Your forebears would have written about American hegemony responsible for crushing reparations at Versailles and Roosevelt handing the Sudetenland to Hitler.
No, we bailed you out then, and we’ll bail you out now. American blood and capital. Germans de-Nazified, rebuilt, and reshaped by “American values”. Japan the same. Palestinians de-Hamasified one way or another.
The real risk you run is America withdrawing, not imposing its will. We clearly aren’t perfect, but last week’s events put most Americans (and British) on the right side of good versus evil. That is, those of us who aren’t infected by illiberal virtue signaling — like this piece.
Those who lack moral clarity may just get what they ask for.
Question to the chanters of, “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.”
We have seen what that would mean in reality: Hamas gave us a demonstration: the women raped, the babies murdered. If you knew in advance that this was actually going to happen, would you go to watch the slaughter? After all, why not? You’re a cheerleader for it.
The interpretation of the chant ‘from the river to the sea…’ as anti-semetic has been rejected by Palestinians who say its origins in the 1960s as part of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s attempt to push for a secular, democratic state in all of historic Palestine and today acknowledges that Palestinians do not enjoy full and equal rights with Jewish Israelis. It questions the existence of the state of Israel but allows for peaceful relations between Jews and Palestinians in a secular state. This is to me what it means particularly now that there appears litte realistic possiblity of a two state solution because of the extent of Israel’s settlement of the West Bank contrary to international law. Given the death of the two state solution we are left with: the continuation of the status quo, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians or a one state solution.
Mary also seems to think that people like me are obsessed with opposition to the USA. Although the USA is the primary backer of Israel and therefore is in the most powerful position to enable a change of policy outside of Israel itself my focus is simply on the need to find a just peace for Palestininans and this seems to me to be best achieved by peaceful co-existence with the Jewish people who have made their home there – backed where necessary be international support.
Shalom Ms. Harrington. Thank you for this interesting article. Much that you write is persuasive. Yet, the mystery remains. I think a key resource for understanding what is happening on the radical Left in regard to Israel is the book by Prof. David Nirenberg, “Anti-Judaism.” Nirenberg wrote a magisterial survey of the intellectual traditions of the Christianity-based and Islam-based civilizations. He describes what he calls “the work done” by setting up Jewish ideas, beliefs, and now the Jewish State as negative examples against which to measure what great things one’s own ideology can deliver. It is very deeply routed in Western civilization. Think of St. John Chrysostom or Karl Marx. Armenian civilization, while ancient, simply does not fill that profound role in Western thought (or Islamic thought, for that matter).
Surely there’s a 4th group Mary? Those who support Palestinians for humanitarian reasons? I fall into that group and I don’t think I’m alone?
I fail to see how supporting a group which is firmly behind a bunch of gangsters with morals unworthy of rats can be described as ‘humanitarian’
Are you unable to support both Palestinians and Israelis for humanitarian reasons?
People on here have been saying you can’t care for both, you’re still labelled antisemitic.
I think it is possible to support both Palestinians and the Jewish people for humanitarian reasons I am concerned that Israel itself is not a secular state and can’t guarantee the freedom of the Jewish and Palestinian people in harmony.
Supporting a people who live to exterminate another people…..for humanitarian reasons? That’s the definition of an oxymoron.
According to American figures the death count paid for pax Americana is 8 million.. Surely the US is the most aggressive, destabilising and bellicose nation by far on the planet? It’s easy to talk of Pax Americana is you live in a white, Christian, capitalist vassal state of the US.. but if you assert your freedom to be a sovereign state and act like one, death and destruction await, as well as coups, regime toppling, assassination of democratically elected leaders and theft of resources,o or am I living on another planet?
AMEN SISTER
Spot on but you could go further. For Greater Corbinites, my enemy’s enemy is my friend. It’s not affection for suffering Palestinians or indifference to Jewish suffering that motivates. Rather, a deep dislike of the nation state and its cultural (religious) heritage.
Where did you find that photo of Joe Biden, an antique shop?
Weird article.
The author starts off by conceding that many people might support Palestine simply because of “a general commitment to protecting those at risk of ethnic cleansing,” but dismisses the possibility on the grounds that, if that were the case, they’d be equally distressed about events in Nagorno-Karabakh.
She then gives 1,500 words of reasons why these two different conflicts might have different levels of salience in the Western mind before concluding that the only explanation for lefty support for Palestinian civilians is its reflexive dislike of “the reigning order, which I don’t like”.
The blind spot is entirely the author’s own.
You say you “stand with peace and order” and therefore “you stand with Israel” – surely thos3 two standings are diametrically opposed?
is it true that Israelis consider Palestinians as sub-human? Did Golda Meir, that loving grandmother, call them vermin?
If you look at behaviour of the Islamofascists both now and in the past it is accurate description.
i have read her autobiography and would have loved having her as a grandmother – nothing in there about ‘vermin’ – much about despair at the attitude of the arabs and what the israelis were forced to do to fight off being massacred every other year. Should be mandatory reading !
I don’t stand with Israel. I feel sympathy for those who were murdered by Hamas, however I also have sympathy for those bombed in their beds by the IDF. I don’t stand with Palestine either, in my opinion they’re all as bad as each other. I don’t class Israel as an ally, and I fail to see what connection Britain has to the country for our politicians to want to get involved in the everlasting conflict. If anybody could point out what Israel has done to assist Britain in order for me to think of them as allies I’d be keen to hear it.
Maybe it’s not ‘what have they done for us’, but are they allies – do they have similar political views, goals, ethics, enemies? A thought experiment – if Brits were the residents of Palestine, or of Israel, how would we approach the problem? Would we more closely resemble one group, or the other? Ultimately, would the war continue?
I’d guess that if we found ourselves in the Palestinians’ position, the war would end soon enough, we’d stop lobbing missiles into Israel, would stop calling for the destruction of Israel, and would instead focus on nation building; whilst if we found ourselves in Israel’s position, the war would go on and on.
So if Hamas laid down their weapons tomorrow would Israel grant the Palestinians a homeland along the original lines of partition, and move all the settlers back to within its own borders?
I also don’t understand why I should stand with a country with which we have no shared history, no shared religion (although I’m not a religious man) and who have never assisted us in no way, shape or form. In fact quite the opposite as they armed the Argentinians during the Falklands
Such a homeland has already been offered, and refused, more than once.
Not tomorrow, but I believe it would happen, and would have happened a long time ago if Palestinian government had been competent and mature.
Israel is a very strong ‘passive’ ally (we are not currently in any war together) with a highly compatible outlook.
Another piece of evidence. As to the charges of ‘ethnic cleansing by Israel- 1.8 million Palestinians live in Israel now (20% of total) – by any metric a big historical increase. Meanwhile, if we look to the many other Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa, the Jewish populations have declined (with lots of ‘encouragement’ by the states), typically by around 99%. The Christian populations of the same have also declined hugely.
I wouldn’t recommend living in Palestine if you’re gay.
I wouldn’t recommend living in Palestine
I don’t get this at all. You should support Israel because they support democracy, freedom and human rights. You can critique Israel because they do crappy things and often fail badly at supporting those ideals. Ultimately though, all those people marching in the streets to protest Israel would never be able to do that in a world run by Hamas. You have to see the forest from the trees.
In that case should I stand with every African country that holds elections? Simply having the vote is a very flimsy basis to be allied to a country and get involved in their conflicts, especially with ones that have no shared history (apart from murdering British troops when trying to create their state of course)
Yes, you should support every single nation in the world that conducts free and fair elections. Full stop. As I mentioned in my comment though, that doesn’t preclude them from criticism and rebuke. And it doesn’t imply that any nation should support them in an offensive war.
So even if their views and morals are completely alien to me, I should support them simply because they hold elections? Funnily enough there are plenty on here for suggesting collective guilt on the Palestinians because the originally elected Hamas so should we have supported them seeing during what would have been their first term seeing as their original rise to power was democratic (even if it has since been suspended)
I certainly don’t assign collective guilt to the Palestinian people. There hasn’t been an election in 20 years. But I get what you’re saying – what if one free and fairly elected govt invaded another? This does present a conundrum, but I’m pretty sure this has never happened.
What about when one one country that holds regular elections routinely overturns the elections of other countries when it doesn’t like the results? Can you guess who I might have in mind?
I’d support a benign monarchy.
You’re not obliged to stand with anyone.
Exactly. And they certainly wouldn’t tolerate dissenting views about anything. No freedom of speech or the press, no gays or LBTQ or alternative lifestyles. The “free Palestine” protesters would not be free in Palestine. That’s the irony that they don’t get.
I’m confused Jim.
“You can critique Israel because they do crappy things and often fail badly at supporting those ideals” But you shouldn’t critique Israel by marching in the streets to protest its current and on-going war crimes (laying siege to a civillian population being very much a war crime).
Can you explain?
I think that the forest is “don’t massacre children” (50% of the population of Gaza are children). The trees are “they did it first,” “they aren’t a democracy,” and “they’d be nasty to you if you were gay.”
But the biggest tree/red herring is “you can’t protest against Israel in London because Hamas wouldn’t let you protest against them in Gaza”. Not only is that entirely irrellevant but you are literally saying that people shouldn’t protest against Israel in London – which seems to put you on the wrong side of your own argument.
I never said any such thing. I have no issue with people protesting Israel. What I take issue with are the many groups that waved away the intentional massacre of women and children – the barbarity of targeting innocent children. Or the people marching in the streets chanting gas the Jews, or those who rip down posters of Israeli hostages. And don’t come back at me with Israel kills civilians when they bomb Palestine. This it is not the same thing.
OK, if I misconstrued you, then my bad, but you didn’t actually mention “waving away the intentional massacre of women and children” you only said that Hamas wouldn’t permit protests against their actions in Gaza. Which is true but isn’t really relevant.
What we’re left with is whether it is legitimate to support Palestinian self-determination in a world which also contains genuine antisemites and moral relativists. I say that the existence of gross people with gross beliefs on both sides of the argument, does not alter the actual morality of the situation.
We should perhaps engage with the best of what people have to say rather than the worst of what the people on the other side of the argument have to say.
“When the crowd bellows “From the river to the sea”, then, relatively few are saying this because they have a material interest in obliterating the real Israel. I dare say many more have no particular animus toward Jewish people.”
I nominate these sentences as the most transcendentally, cosmically idiotic sentences ever to appear in print.
And pardon my understatement.
I think Mary H is talking there about the UK mainly, and the younger cohorts of indigenous Brits, who definitely aren’t as moored to ‘history as we know it’.
That’s what I took from that statement as well.
I nominate your comment for the “ill-considered knee-jerk” award of the week, just to put your timescale in perspective. This isn’t a print medium, by the way.
I think the number of occasions that you use the words ‘Britain’, ‘British’ and ‘European’ in your potted history of the endless debacles of Palestine might give you a clue as to why some of us on the Left get rather more exercised about Palestine than we do about the goings on in Armenia (horrendous as they may be).
The Al-Ahli Arabi Hospital in Gaza was founded by the Church Mission Society in 1882, run by the Southern Baptists from 1954 to 1982, and then taken over by the local Anglican diocese. Impeccable Anglo-American Evangelical credentials, and links to the Church of England. That is what has just been bombed.
I wonder how many outlets in the United States are reporting that it was Southern Baptist for much of its history? I wonder whether this attack is being reported very much at all there? But for all that it still has “Baptist” in its name, it was founded by English Anglicans, and it has been run by Palestinian Anglicans for the last 41 years. Yet Newsnight professed only to have spoken to “the church that operates it”. The audience cannot know that it is connected to the dear old C of E.
Even before that, we have had Keir Starmer, David Lammy and Emily Thornberry, who used to be so much better, defending the turning off of the water supply to one million children while white phosphorus was dropped on them. They should all be disbarred, and Bible Belters also have their own housekeeping to do, as have Church and King Tories. But the Left hereby proscribes the Labour Party as incompatible with its aims and values. Membership of or support for the Labour Party shall henceforth constitute autoexclusion from the Left.
From bragging about it, to saying that a Hamas rocket had misfired, to blaming Islamic Jihad, the Israeli story changed twice in three hours, and in ways that could not all have been true, not even in part. Islamic Jihad has nothing one per cent powerful enough to have done this, and even if it did, then what would have been the chances of that weapon’s misfiring such as to hit a large crowd that was standing on top of an ammunition dump in a hospital? By their silence, not even the Americans are pretending to believe that.
Was there an ammunition dump in that hospital? Interesting. Do you have a source?
As for the misfiring, Islamic Jihad might well have done it deliberately. After all, they have hugely benefited from the effects, and this entire war was planned on the premise that it would provoke Israel to kill a lot of Palestinians and thereby advance the cause of a Palestinian victory. Or it might have been Israel, of course. We just need to consider all the alternatives.
There would have had to have been for an explosion that big by the means alleged by the Israelis. But there wasn’t. The Israelis bombed the hospital. It is as simple as that.
Five minutes research would disprove your allegation.
Could you give us a link? Preferably to a non-Israeli source of course – no offence, but they just might decide to not tell the truth when so much is riding on the result.
ADDED: OK, as of Wed evening there is an account on the BBC. The dead were in a courtyard where apparently 1000 people were sheltering. There is a small crater and blast damage, so no sign of huge explosions or exploding ammo dumps. Evidence not conclusive, but suggestions definitely compatible with a smallish rocket exploding in a crowd of people.
Heaven forbid! God’s chosen people would actually LIE!
You are a blasphemer sir! And deserve the fate of one Deuteronomy of Gath!
What do I pay my subscription for?
The last ten days have made me wonder myself.
Yes where is the balance? A country has responded to egregious war crimes with more war crimes (which though perhaps less sadistically evil are on a far larger scale under a war minister calling Palestinians (not Hamas) ‘human animals.’) They’re going full old Testament at a time when we need the new more than ever.
I mainly pay mine to read well reasoned articles on a range of topics, in the hope that at least half of them make me instantly want to disagree with the writer; and partly in the hope that the comments will change my mind again.
If only that’s what most people in the comments thought!
Thank you, in a nutshell – the perfect answer. Mine would have been ‘to hear the opposite of an echo-chamber’.
I was talking about the disappearance of my comments for hours. They did the same over Ukraine. Other people must have had this.
Happens regularly to me too. And to Nik Jewell, apparently. Their moderation system is totally opaque and unpredictable. If only they would explain how it worked and why, it might be easier to tolerate.
Me as well. I always took it as anti-Welsh.
There is, of course, no real discussion on UnHerd. If you disagree with the majority, somebody hits a red flag. Really a waste of money now.
But you have been read even if most disagree with you at the time. Perhaps you’ve planted a seed. I keep plugging away. I don’t particularly want to preach to the choir, I like to go where angels fear to tread!
Happens to me as well (I think for accusations levelled at the Tories, if there is a pattern at all, though it is mainly unpredictable). That said, all my comments are eventually posted again, they’re just sometimes put under arrest as it were for 24 hours (a bit like what the met did with the Republic demonstrators).
So.. start our own separate comments page for unherd articles?
Perhaps they’re going through the editor.
The voting system is my pet peeve. Also, it would be nice if there was a reference library of all essays past and present to catch up on or re-read.
Particular bad recently, although entirely predictable given the subject matter.
I do not stand with the Israelis. Atrocities are part of war, and have been forever, so the atrocity, as we see it, by Hamas should be set aside.
Since the Jews were settled in Palestine they have treated the Palestinians as second class to themselves, so resentment has grown and fuelled Hamas.
Apart from shipping the Jews to an empty and failed American state, where they will transform it to prosperity, I’m not sure what the answer is.
We, the hopefully civilised countries, must stop Israel inflicting collective harm on the Palestinians in a hopeless war against Hamas who will keep melting away. Otherwise we will be subject to another onslaught of terrorist attacks from an enemy already implanted in our societies because of our lax immigration rules.
How about the hopefully civilised countries stopping Hamas inflicting collective harm on everybody around as part of a hopeless war against Israel?
Your first sentence is one of the most shameful things I have ever read.
He simply said he doesn’t stand with the Israelis. If that’s the most shameful thing you’ve ever read then you haven’t lived.
Sorry, my error – second sentence! He said “the atrocity, as we see it, by Hamas should be set aside.” Did you read that bit? That is a totally shameful comment.
Happier now?
So you fear repercussions from Islam? That says it all doesn’t it as far as which side is civilized?
The US – at least since the failure of the Oslo Accords – has not ‘guaranteed the relative peace in Israel’. It has done little else but rubber stamp Israeli military aggression and the illegal seizure of land against dozens of UN resolutions. If it were not for the billions in US aid and military cooperation Israel would have been forced to compromise decades ago, Hamas would have had no reason to exist, and this current conflagration would not be happening.
Mmmm. You might want to look at Hamas stated aims. They would exist if Israel compromised.