The war is packaged and globalised. Your sympathy for one side — though the best people care for both — is a signifier of who you are. Are you for the Intifada or the Occupation?
In America some high-school children dance down corridors, singing “from the river to the sea”. I doubt they know which river or which sea. In London posters of Israeli hostages are torn down and thrown to the ground. Elements of the British far-Right side with Israel, which is offensive and transparent. Have they forgotten it’s a Jewish state, or do they just hate Muslims more nowadays?
This has the dimensions of a culture war: between Jew and Muslim, Left and Right, young and old. It shouldn’t be. Israel and Palestine don’t need the world projecting itself onto them for its emotional imperatives, and leisure. They have suffered enough.
This has the dimensions of a culture war: between Jew and Muslim, Left and Right, young and old. It shouldn’t
What are these imperatives? I watch videos of people tearing down photographs of hostages. They are often young women — is this power at last? The only power she has? Any girl can win a fight with a piece of paper. Why would she, a citizen of an affluent liberal democracy, do this? Because that liberal democracy is failing her, and she is failing it. This isn’t just about European anti-Semitism and its totem demonic Jew, now transported to the Middle East. It cannot be.
The language they use is not enlightening, but it is telling; it sounds more like religious liturgy than thought. For instance, genocide is the intentional destruction of a people. The Palestinians have quadrupled in number since 1948. Apartheid is racist segregation, with one group denied rights. Israel is 20 per cent Arab, and they have equal rights in law. (There are no Jews in the Palestinian territories, and almost none in Arab countries). People rally in London for an end to war, said a liberal newspaper. I’m not sure they want to end the war. I don’t think they know what a war is, and if you can’t recognise a war you will never know a peace.
It is true that Europe is unable to process the Holocaust, and this is part of the rejection of it. If Jews are blamed for it — and how could we not be, being genocidal maniacs expelled (as a poster at the recent pro-Palestine rally reminded us) from every European country? — the non-Jewish European has nothing to fear. It’s not that it didn’t happen. But it wasn’t their fault, and that is consoling.
But mostly it is the perception of powerlessness; there is a reason why the far-Left is the incubator of Jew hate in our time. Jewish fear has been a signal for instability for 2,000 years. When people attack us, it is usually an indication that society is fracturing.
It’s a truism that unequal societies are unstable. They don’t just invite extremism, they make it.
I think the women tearing the posters down, without empathy, imagination or even facts, consider themselves avatars for Gazan victims in their hearts: un-listened to, unthought of, crushed. And Jews, so long a bogus avatar for power, are the people that did it to them. This bespeaks of bad times for Europe, and worse for the Middle East.
Charles Walker's prophetic soul
It is just over a year since Sir Charles Walker, Tory MP, walked out of the Commons chamber and said this to a BBC camera in central lobby: “I’m livid.” (The then PM Liz Truss had changed her mind on a piece of procedure and caused chaos in the division lobbies.) “I really shouldn’t say this” — this is key phrase, because he did say it — “but I hope all those people that put Liz Truss in Noâ 10, I hope it was worth it. I’ve had enough of talentless people putting their tick in the right box not because it’s in the national interest but because it’s in their own personal interest.”
This was the cry of despair of the not insane Tory, feeling his party edging its way towards the abyss. He forecast that the Tories would lose 200 seats at the next election. I agree, and his prophecy deserves a birthday party.
