I’ll devote this post to general points about Gaza, many of them arising from letters I’ve received or points made here. First of all I’ll just dispose of a couple of comments that stand out.
John Edwards writes ‘When discussing Ukraine nobody talks about "the Slavs of the region" but Peter Hitchens still insists on referring to the Palestinians as "the Arabs of the region". Why are Palestinians, uniquely, denied their national identity and a link with a geographical place? Perhaps because someone else wants their land.’
***Even I, who argue that Ukraine does not properly exist as a sovereign nation, readily recognize that there is a Ukrainian language and culture . The trouble is,and I thought we had got past this by now, is that neither language nor culture is universal among the people in the current version of ‘Ukraine’, which has simply inherited the largely meaningless borders of Stalin’s and Khrushchev’s Ukrainian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic). Many of the citizens of Ukraine, especially in the East, are to all intents and purposes Russian. Many are mixed, speak both languages and have family which is Ukrainian and family which is Russian. The only part of the country which is pretty much wholly Ukrainian is the far West, much of which used to be part of Austria Hungary and then of pre-1939 Poland.
I explained in a recent posting here
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/07/some-thoughts-on-the-use-of-the-word-palestinian.html why I am reluctant to employ the term ‘Palestinian’, believing its careless use to a be a propaganda victory for a cause with which I do not sympathize.
The idea of a ‘Palestinian’ nationality is a propaganda invention of the 1960s and 1970s, which (amongst other things) cast Israel as a dominant majority overpowering an Arab minority. Until then, Israel had been seen (to its great propaganda advantage) as a tiny Jewish state surrounded by hundreds of millions of mainly Muslim, mainly Arab enemies.
But by separating the local Arabs into a ‘Palestinian’ nationality, this was overcome. David became Goliath and Goliath apparently shrank to become David. Leaving aside the lack of evidence of the use of the term ‘Palestinian’ by the Arabs themselves before about 1970, I have not heard of any notable distinction between the culture and language of Arabs in the West Bank and of the non-Bedouin Arabs in Jordan, both of whom are descendants of inhabitants of the original ‘Palestine’ mandate. On the other hand, I think the Arabs of Gaza probably have more in common, cuturally, with their Egyptian neighbours than they do with the Arabs of the West bank.
’Jim New’ writes : ‘Palestine was never in any shape, form or stretch of the imagination, a British Colony’
***This is an extraordinary statement. I would love to hear more of his justification for it. It is true that the official designation was a ‘Mandate’, but it had all the trappings and appurtenances of a colony and was governed as such by the Colonial Office. My father, a naval officer, was rather surprised, in 1936, to find himself in Haifa putting down Arab riots, when he was supposed to be patrolling the South Atlantic aboard HMS Ajax. If Mr ‘New’ had told him that Mandate Palestine wasn’t a colony in any shape, form or stretch of the imagination, I rather think my father would have laughed.
Anyway, now we’ve got past that, and I’ve duly infuriated any pro-Arab fanatics who read this blog, I must return to infuriating the pro-Israel fanatics. Oddly enough, they didn’t pay much attention to my last essay on this problem, back in December 2008. The internal politics of Israel were slightly different, but otherwise it was more or less exactly the same controversy.
You can read it here
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2008/12/clueless-in-gaz.html
Its central point could have been written today : ‘ Even though all the usual suspects, the Judophobes, the diplomats, the gullible liberals, say that what Israel is doing now in Gaza is wrong, it really is wrong.
My position, as a strong supporter of Israel in general, is that Israel's action is wrong morally and gravely mistaken politically. Attacks from the air always kill innocents. It is no good pleading that you regret such deaths, when you knew perfectly well that your actions were bound to cause them. This was equally true of our own adventures in Iraq and Serbia, and is true of American bombing in Afghanistan. Israel's moral position is seriously weakened by the deaths of these innocents, and also by the flanneling and evasion of its spokesmen over this.’
Now let me turn to a comment from ‘John Main’ , who asks : ‘The fate of Israel will not be decided in people’s minds by people like us watching TV. We watch TV all the time, we disagree with much that we see, but we are powerless to decide anything. Why should the fate of Israel be an exception to that rule?’
***The answer is actually very simple. Israel has from its beginnings depended on powerful sponsors in democtratic countries who are very much influenced by what people watch on TV, and what they make of it.
The original ‘National Home for the Jews’, (not a state as such) in Mandate or Colonial Palestine, existed under increasingly reluctant but actual British sponsorship, upheld and sustained by British imperial power. Arthur Balfour’s decision to make the declaration had been made at a very bad moment in the First World War, where it was thought that it would weaken Germany and Austro-Hungary (similar belies led to the Allies’ endorsement of Czechoslovak independence).
When Britain began to fear that Arab resistance to Jewish immigration threatened her standing among the Arabs in the entire Middle East, British support for the ‘National Home’ cooled very fast . I personally don’t think it misleading to say that many British officials in the 1920s and 1930 worked quite actively to encourage Arab opposition to the National Home. The (British) appointment of the committed anti-Zionist Haj Amin al Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, over the heads of the local Arab hierarchy, in 1921, might have been designed to undermine Balfour.
When Britain eventually pulled out of the Twice-Promised land in 1948, leaving behind an impossible contradictory mess caused by its own policies, it was only Harry Truman’s strong support for Israel which allowed its successful creation as a state (plus the temporary willingness of Czechoslovakia to provide arms). Without those sponsors, Israel would not have survived , and without American sponsorship it would not have survived the long and difficult period of economic hardship and constant danger which then began.
The importance of the sponsorship is not just military and economic, though of course these things matter hugely.
Israel’s very nature runs against much of the dogma of the modern world. Enemies of Israel describe it as a ‘racist’ state, an extraordinary and almost total inversion of the truth, which si that it is *A state born out of the racialism of others*.
To my amazement, there are still people in this world who think that being Jewish is about religion, a matter of individual choice like Baptism or Unitarianism, and even people who think that Judophobia arises out of religious quarrels.
The people who hate Jews ( and there is no reasoning with such people, who are in often in all other respects perfectly rational, and even charming or humorous, but in this matter quite beyond the edge of sanity) couldn’t care less about religion. It’s Jews they don’t like, and that’s that. Many Jews are atheists, or just non-religious. Neither the Tsarist Black Hundreds, nor Hitler, nor Vichy France, could have cared less about what people believed. It was their bloodlines they wanted to check on, not their religious opinions.
The single most blatant example of this will always be the late Edith Stein, a prominent Roman Catholic theologian and Carmelite nun, German born, who was vindictively dragged from her convent in the Netherlands in 1941, and hauled off to Auschwitz to be murdered, because she had Jewish blood. I do hope this is clear.
It is because people were prepared to do things like that, on logic of that kind, that Israel was founded – to be a place where people could go when other people wanted to kill them because of their blood.
So to say it is a racist state is not just a slander. It is the opposite of the truth. But, given the general unwillingness of the civilized liberal democracies to take in more than a very few rich prominent Jews (and a small number of children, cruelly separated from their doomed parents, on the famous Kindertransport), Israel was determined that it should be able to hold its doors open for the foreseeable future to all people in that position.
The scheme, though not exactly utopian, was certainly idealist, and had all the ruthlessness of idealism. We now know, mainly thanks to Israeli historians who refused to allow the truth to be buried any longer, that the birth of Israel was achieved at the expense of many thousands of innocent Arabs, driven from their homes.
This is horrible, but, as I’ve said before, the USA, Australia, the Caribbean, and many other modern countries arose out of similar brutal drivings out of existing populations. This sort of thing is not unique even in the 20th century, which saw similar horrors (though much greater in scale) in the ‘exchange of populations’ between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, and in Eastern Europe and India during the Potsdam deportations and the Partition, in 1947 and 1948. My point here is that the other comparable actions are forgotten and nobody seeks to reopen them, and one must ask those who wish to reopen the 1948 expulsions why they ( and the UN) concentrate on these, and these alone – and why they don’t take the view generally held in Germany, Poland, the Czech and Slovak lands, East Prussia, India and Pakistan, that no good purpose would be served by reopening such a wound.
But in these complex and unlovely origins lies the increasingly widespread claim that Israel, like South Africa , is an ‘apartheid state’ and so not deserving of UN or US sponsorship. This is not confined to small and sordid corners. The former American President, the much-admired Jimmy Carter, has used the word ‘apartheid’ to describe Israeli action in the occupied West Bank.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/jimmy-carter-israel-s-apartheid-policies-worse-than-south-africa-s-1.206865
This is not as bad as those who suggest that Israel’s actions are comparable with those of the Nazis. But it is surprising how powerfully this obviously false, rather dangerous and hysterical claim (There is not the slightest evidence that Israel has any sort of exterminationist policy towards non-Jews. I put this refutation as mildly as I possibly can) gains acceptance in the minds of those who have decided that Israel is an evil racial state.
Actually the ‘apartheid’allegation (which I attempt to rebut here) http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/02/apartheid-a-few-notes-on-the-use-of-this-word.html
Is probably more damaging, because it has gained acceptance well outside the ranks of the swivel-eyed and the hopelessly bigoted.
And it is because of its power and implications that Israel’s current policy in Gaza is so very dangerous.
I’ll come to that, but first I must deal with a claim repeatedly made by defenders of Israel’s attack on Gaza.
It is that in some way shelling and bombing Gaza ‘protects’ Israel from Hamas rockets.
But it simply doesn’t. Days of shelling have not stopped the rockets in the short term. Weeks of shelling will not stop them in the long term. Just as the 2008 shelling failed to stop the 2014 rocket attack, the 2014 shelling will not stop the next rocket attack from Gaza in – let me guess – 2017? Hamas will actually have gained both recruits and international support as a result of this week’s events, when it was losing both before them, and the Gaza Strip is not, and never will be so closed off that the making of rockets will be impossible.
I might also mention that Hamas’s rockets are inaccurate, carry small warheads (not to mention the fact that Israel has a seemingly effective anti-missile shield which deals with many of the Hamas rockets before they can hit their targets) and have, I’m glad to say, done remarkably little damage and killed and injured remarkably few people despite the length and extent of the bombardment. This is no comfort, I know, to those who have suffered – but on the other hand, there is absolutely no evidence that Israel’s attack on Gaza has prevented a single Hamas rocket from flying, or will do so in the future. To characterize this attack as defensive is just misleading.
I really don’t see why it’s so shocking to suggest that Israel would have done better to endure this attack. It’s often wiser not to be provoked. Franklin Roosevelt wouldn’t allow himself to be provoked by German attacks on US Navy ships (especially the Reuben James) during the undeclared convoy war from 1939 to 1941. Was he weak or wrong? I’m sure there are other instances of the strong not allowing themselves to be provoked by the weak into doing what the weak wanted them to do.
But the propaganda effect on Israel’s public standing, resulting from the scenes of civilian death in Gaza, is enormous and longstanding.
Readers here will know that I do not accept excuses from anybody for the killing of innocent civilians in bombing and shelling of populated areas. Only three generations ago such behaviour would rightly have been viewed with utter horror. Gazans I spoke to directly (who live in what is virtually a police state) were privately horrified when Hamas set up missile sites near their homes, but dared not protest. We cannot blame them, or view their death, injury and ruin as just punishment for their failure to protest – because in the same circumstances we too would not dare to protest.
But this is, as Talleyrand once said in another context, not just a crime. It is a mistake. Israel, back in 1967, had a huge credit balance in the propaganda war, not least in Europe where it has now almost wholly lost it. Bit by bit, it has let that drain away, relying increasingly on the reeking tube and iron shard of unrestrained force, its supporters given to macho statements about how they don’t care if no-one likes them, they will defend themselves. Support remains strong -for now -in the USA - but for how long can this endure unless Israel gets a *lot*more clever?
In modern diplomacy, small and unpopular countries have to have enough friends simply to stay alive.
As I say above, I absolutely reject the claimed parallel between Israel and apartheid South Africa.
But others do not. And their realistic and achievable aim (an aim, alas, much advanced by Israel’s crass flailing in the past two weeks) is to isolate Israel, diplomatically, economically and culturally, as South Africa was isolated, until all the weapons and tanks in the world cannot save it from the pressure form within and without, and from signing itself into non-existence through acceptance of a ‘right of return’ or a ‘one-state solution’, which would end the Jewish state for good. This is a very real danger. The USA is changing very fast, and it is time Israel's overconfident supporters understood just how fast.
