Israel is our front line whether we like it or not
Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday
Israel is the most important foreign policy issue of our time. It also divides opinion at home, in a way which is often slightly disturbing. Yet it is a matter where strong passions are generally matched by weak understanding and limited knowledge. I thought it would be worthwhile to post some thoughts about it which I hope will help understanding of the crisis. It is one of those issues where conventional wisdom is almost overpoweringly strong. Among newspaper and TV commentators and presenters, the following view ( which is not mine, which is why I have enclosed it in quotation marks) is almost universal: I summarise : "Israel needs to make concessions to the Palestinians if it wants to live in peace. These concessions should take the form of land. It may be that Israel was once a small country under siege from more populous neighbours, but Israel has now taken on the role of bully and aggressor, oppressing and abusing the Palestinian people. It will forfeit its right to the support of the West unless it changes this behaviour. The pre-1967 borders of Israel are the correct borders and a withdrawal to those borders would bring about peace. Israel is responsible for the squalor and misery of the Palestinian refugee camps, a wretchedness which naturally breeds terrorism and hatred. There is a 'cycle of violence' in the region which prevents reasonable discussion. " I shall examine this view later. But beneath lies a series of other views, some justified, some ugly and wrong. The first of these is what I call 'Judophobia'. I use this word to distinguish it from the expression 'anti-semitism', and also to annoy people who have embraced political correctness and classify others as suffering from 'homophobia' or 'xenophobia'. For Judophobia, in the form of anti-Israel prejudice, is very common among PC types. Accusations of anti-semitism bounce off these people. Everyone these days has seen 'Schindler's List' and everyone knows that he is not like those horrible, mad Nazis. We are grown-up, enlightened, civilised people who don't suffer from irrational bigotry of this kind. Of course we don't want to send Jews to extermination camps, so we're not anti-semitic. Well, the dislike of Jews existed before the Nazis, and was quite respectable, often among intelligent people. It is in my view impossible to pretend that Shylock in 'The Merchant of Venice' or Fagin in 'Oliver Twist' are not classic anti-Jewish caricatures. Yet these were the work of great artists, and we do not disdain Dickens or Shakespeare because they suffered from this problem. Hilaire Belloc was actively hostile to Jews, yet we still read his poems and his 'Cautionary Tales' (at least one of which has an anti-Jewish undercurrent) are still read by children. Roald Dahl is also thought by some critics to have had a deep dislike of Jews, which appears in a thinly-disguised form in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' . There are even anti-Jewish caricatures in one of the Tintin books, 'The Shooting Star', written in Belgium under Nazi occupation and later altered to remove blatant anti-Jewish references. And let's not even mention Wagner. Unpleasant or prejudiced references to Jews are to be found in John Buchan's thrillers and some of Somerset Maugham' s novels. Some people think Graham Greene's 'Stamboul Train' is anti-Jewish too. Before Hitler came along, this attitude was quite respectable and open. Nowadays, I think it still exists but is much more discreet. And a newspaper journalist whom I like, and whose work I admire, once suddenly confided to me that he 'just didn't like Jewish people'. I'm sure he was and is as disgusted by Auschwitz as anyone else, and doesn't connect his view with the Nazis at all. In some people this view, though seldom if ever expressed, is very deep. There are also some people who are totally irrational about this, and with whom it is quite impossible to argue. The phobia against Jews is a very strange thing, very old, deep and mysterious. Then, in a certain British generation, there is a special bitterness on this subject. Veterans of the final years of the British Mandate in Palestine (1945-47) experienced the disgusting terrorist acts of the The Stern gang (or Lehi as it called itself) and the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the murders of Lord Moyne and of Count Bernadotte, the murders of British soldiers, the atrocious bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in which 91 people died, and body parts of the victims were plastered horrifically all over the YMCA building opposite. This unforgiveable and inexcusable behaviour left those who experienced it - in many cases - permanently and understandably hostile towards Zionism and Israel, and perhaps Jews as a whole. Winston Churchill, a long-time convinced Zionist, was himself badly shaken in his view by the killing of his friend, Lord Moyne. This divide will remain for as long as the State of Israel fails to condemn these actions and the men who perpetrated them, who in many cases became successful political leaders later in life. Not really comparable with this reasoned mistrust is the nasty form of Judophobia now prevalent across the Middle East - the circulating of anti-Jewish rubbish such as the long-discredited 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', as if it were fact, the description of Jews as the offspring of pigs and monkeys, in parts of the Arabic press. For more details of this sort of thing, you can to http://www.memri.org which provides English translations of it. You may find it hard to believe that this sort of thing still goes on, but it does, and it is increasing.
This is much more like the poisonous, diseased propaganda of the German National Socialists.
And it is, in a strange way, linked to them.
For another element in all this is a rather disgraceful attempt by both Europeans and Arabs to argue that the moral debt to Jews, owed by the world because of the German massacre of Europe's Jews, and our failure to take them in or save them, has either been paid in full already or cancelled out by later events. Some also argue that this debt is simply not owed by the Arabs who played no part in this slaughter. The main leader of the anti-Jewish movement in the British Mandate of Palestine before World War Two was a man called Haj Amin al Husseini (Also known as Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, see the Wikipedia reference to him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husayni This man was so opposed to Jewish migration to the area that he eventually threw in his lot with the Nazis (who are now suspected of having sought to foment Arab opposition to Jewish migration in the late 1930s). This of course made it far harder for Jews to get out of Germany when Hitler began his anti-Jewish measures. Al Husseini eventually went to live in Berlin and recruited Muslims to the Waffen SS. He also lobbied against the emigration of Jews from Nazi-controlled areas of Europe to Palestine. It is not known whether he realised what would happen to them if they stayed under Nazi rule. But he must have known it would not be good.
I mention this for several reasons. One, British colonial officials - who disapproved of the policy of creating a National Home for the Jews chose Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and therefore local Arab leader. They did this despite the fact that the Arabs of Jerusalem preferred other candidates for the job.
These officials, notably Ronald Storrs, thought the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Britain supported a 'National Home for the Jews' in Palestine was a mistake. They wanted a wholly pro-Arab British policy. They and their allies spent the inter-war years trying to sabotage the 'National Home' idea and by 1939, when they achieved an almost total block on Jewish immigration there, they had pretty much succeeded. It was only the revelation of what Hitler had done to the Jews of Europe that reopened the issue in 1945.
Two, much of the propaganda against Israel dishonestly and falsely seeks to compare Israeli treatment of the Palestinians to Nazi treatment of the Jews. There is no comparison. And Palestinian spokesmen often ask " Yes, the Jews did suffer in the Holocaust, but why should the Arabs have to play such a part in compensating them?' .This is a partial answer to that.
Three, the late Yasser Arafat is said to have identified Al Husseini as his hero. And finally, Husseini originally believed that the area called 'Palestine' by the British empire (which had for centuries before been a series of unconnected provinces in the Turkish empire) should form part of a 'Greater Syria' . Actually this is almost certainly what would happen if Israel ceased to exist as a Jewish state. Husseini only later adopted the 'Palestinian' nationalism which has been such a brilliant propaganda ploy, turning Israel from David into Goliath. Set against the whole Arab world, Israel looks tiny. Set only against the Palestinian Arabs, it looks huge.
But let's go back to the issue. Alan Dershowitz, in his interesting book 'The Case for Israel', points out that Israel has done many bad things and has many faults, and deeply deserves to be criticised. But he goes on to say that these criticisms need to be kept in proportion. Yes, Israel drove many Arabs from their homes in 1948 and should be criticised for this. But no more - and no less - than the Poles and Czechs and Russians should be criticised for driving millions of German civilians from their homes after 1945; and no more - and no less - than India and Pakistan should be criticised for the horrible expulsions and massacres of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs at partition in 1947. Turkey's treatment of the Armenians in 1915, and the 'exchange of population' between Greece and Turkey after World War One were also appalling. Come to that huge numbers of Jews were cruelly expelled from Arab lands in the years after Israel was founded.
No doubt there are other episodes of this kind, several in British imperial history. If every displaced group of people on the planet had the right to demand its return home, the entire globe would be at war from New South Wales to North Dakota. But it is Israel's which is remembered longest and still kept alive as a military and diplomatic issue, and it is Israel which is subject to more condemnation than any other nation by the UN.
No doubt much of this condemnation is justified, but is it really in proportion? Arab countries oppress and kill their own people, and make war on one another. Christian Arabs face growing persecution from their Muslim neighbours. Syria's President Hafez al Assad destroyed the entire Syrian city of Hama with artillery fire (with the people in it) because they supported the Muslim Brotherhood. Gaza was under illegal Egyptian rule for 20 years and nobody cared about its cramped squalor. The West Bank of the Jordan was illegally occupied by Jordan for nearly 20 years and nobody protested about that either. Sometimes it seems as if the only people who get criticised for being cruel to Arabs, or for occupying Arab land, are Israelis.
If one person or country is condemned for doing something, while another person or country is not condemned for doing the same thing, we have to ask why. And isn't it possible that the explanation is that there is some sort of prejudice in operation? I only ask.
But of course most people don't form their opinions in this way. They pick them up, as they pick up other fashions, from what they hear around them, from the prejudices of the media, which become their prejudices by a subtle process. These, by the way, don't take the form of the BBC correspondent saying "Israel wickedly bombed civilian targets last night". You only catch it on the edge of a remark. The reporters themselves often don't know they are doing it. It is their unconscious choice of verbs and nouns, their tone of voice, the selection of pictures and the attitudes to spokesmen that you have to watch.
For instance, Palestinian and Arab spokesmen tend to be interviewed respectfully and courteously, whereas Israelis are often interrogated fiercely and aggressively (Watch out for this. I'm interested to see if any readers noticed a flagrant example of this on a well-known news programme recently).
Well, if this bias is based on racial prejudice, which I rather suspect it is, then it should stop right now. And if it is designed to appease Muslim hostility to Jews (which I am afraid to say exists, encouraged by some passages in Muslim scripture, and which - unlike Christian Judophobia - is not adequately disowned and denounced by the leaders of the religion) then that is just as bad.
And in that case, the issue is really quite simple. The Western world, under British leadership, agreed after World War One to set up a National Home for the Jews in the Middle East. After World War Two, the whole world, under American and Soviet leadership, agreed in 1948 to the existence of a Jewish State. In the years between these two events, one of the most civilised nations in the world, Germany, actually made the case for such a state, by launching the systematic, industrial massacre of Jews wherever it could get its hands on them.
Remember, just eight years before this massacre began, Germany had been a law-governed democracy, one of the most liberal in the world. France, whose authorities enthusiastically collaborated with the German round-up of Jews, had - only a year before - been a beacon of democracy, liberty and tolerance. For those who think it couldn't happen in Britain, it's worth remembering that Jews in the British Channel Islands were registered and had their identity papers stamped with a large red 'J' . Jewish businesses were forced to display yellow 'Jewish undertaking' signs, Jews were secretly denounced to the authorities, newspapers were required to publish anti-Jewish articles and cinemas to show anti-semitic films. At least one Guernsey Jew was driven mad by persecution, and another hounded to his suicide. Jews from the islands were also, I'm afraid, deported to the death camps, with the co-operation of the local police.
And this, by the way, was not a religious but a racial persecution (I mention this because people sometimes ask me 'Why should there be a special country for people who follow a particular religion?'). Jews who wanted to assimilate in Christian countries were killed as surely as those who did not. Edith Stein, a German Roman Catholic nun, was dragged from her convent to be murdered at Auschwitz - because she had Jewish grandparents. Babies and young children were included in the massacre.
During the preparations for this massacre, the other nations of the world often refused to accept Jewish refugees. When news of the massacre reached the British Foreign Office during the war, an official dismissed it as the complaint of 'wailing Jews'. And nothing was done.
With that in mind, it would be dishonourable and wrong to go back on our pledges. Nobody has yet thought of a better way of avoiding a repetition of the crimes of the 1940s. In any case, weakness and vacillation lead inevitably to defeat. And if we abandon Israel it will not just be a betrayal of our own honour but also an invitation to the West's many enemies to demand more concessions.
As for the conventional wisdom of the commentators, let me take it piece by piece: "Israel needs to make concessions to the Palestinians if it wants to live in peace. These concessions should take the form of land."
**There is no evidence that territorial concessions will bring peace. Far smaller Jewish states were proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937, and by the UN in 1947, but rejected by the Arabs. Palestinian voters recently voted for Hamas, a party which does not accept that Israel has a right to exist. They knew what they were doing.
" It may be that Israel was once a small country under siege from more populous neighbours, but Israel has now taken on the role of bully and aggressor, oppressing and abusing the Palestinian people."
**Israel remains a tiny country and it continues to face the hostility of the entire Muslim and Arab world, including oil-rich Saudi Arabia, nuclear-armed Pakistan, Iran and - despite a very cold peace treaty - Egypt. Yes, Israel is subsidised and armed by the USA, but so, to very similar levels, is Egypt. The 'Palestinian' cause certainly has some justice. The displaced refugees from 1948 ought long ago to have been resettled and compensated. But there must be a suspicion that the oil-rich Arab world - which could have achieved this easily - prefers to keep them where they are for propaganda purposes.
"Israel will forfeit its right to the support of the West unless it changes this behaviour."
**The West is entitled to criticise Israel when it does wrong things ( though Britain's participation in the Iraq war makes it hard for us to take a moral stand on the killing of civilians). But the facts are that Israel was created on our promise, and that it is by world standards a free, law-governed country which tries to abide by civilised standards. To compare Israel to Nazi Germany, or to cast it as the bully in the region, is plain false.
"The pre-1967 borders of Israel are the correct borders and a withdrawal to those borders would bring about peace. "
**Arab propagandists now say they like the 1967 borders. But they did not like them before 1967. In pre-1967 times they harked back to the 1947 borders, which were even more cramped. Actually, Israel long ago returned most of the land it conquered in 1967, in return for peace with Egypt. But while that peace is very cold and not guaranteed to last, the land is gone for good. Land for peace? That's what they said about the Munich agreement for which Neville Chamberlain is rightly reviled. Land was certainly handed over. But there was no peace.
Israel is responsible for the squalor and misery of the Palestinian refugee camps, a wretchedness which naturally breeds terrorism and hatred.
**See above. Israel is certainly to blame for its cruel expulsions in 1948. But much has happened since. That responsibility is not Israel's alone. The Arab world should constantly be asked why it does so little to help the refugees, who seem to have plenty of access to weapons, but not so much to clean water, electricity and good-quality housing."
Bad as the living conditions are in the camps, these are no excuse for terrorist murder. There is never any excuse for terrorist murder, and we in the West should be careful not to offer one. The idea that bad conditions equal desperation equals terrorist murder is a wicked falsehood, which assumes that poor and oppressed people lack consciences and can therefore be excused if they adopt criminal methods.
This is, in a way, a slander on poor Arabs - who in my experience are hospitable and generous people and who have on many occasions in recent history courageously protected Jewish neighbours from murderous attacks. I am quite sure most Arabs would not dream of using such methods and privately condemn them, though there is little free speech on this subject in the Arab Muslim world. And, as it happens, a large number of those involved in terrorist actions come from prosperous and well-educated families.
There is a 'cycle of violence' in the region which prevents reasonable discussion."
**This is simply a way of saying 'six of one and half a dozen of the other'. But Israel has from the start been willing to compromise over territory. In their speeches to their own supporters, leaders of the Palestinian movement have repeatedly made clear that any settlement would be a stage on the way to final victory, the end of the Jewish state which remains their aim. That aim remains a realistic one, as long as the West offers concessions in return for violence. It will only be abandoned if the West shows unflinching resolve to stand by its promise. And then - as should have been done long ago - the plight of the refugees can at last be addressed.
