There are two permitted views on the horrors in Gaza, and I don’t hold either of them. What should I do? I simplify only slightly.
The first view, popular among ‘Right-wing’ media, is that the hideous Hamas massacre of October 2023, and the seizure of hostages, justifies Israel’s actions – and that if you oppose them you must therefore be a Hamas sympathiser and an anti-Semite. And quite possibly a terrorist.
The second view is that Israel is committing anti-Arab genocide in Gaza and that the West ought to recognise a ‘Palestinian’ state and condemn Israel on every available world stage as a criminal, racist entity.
Both views are simple-minded rubbish. I have been a critical supporter of Israel’s continued existence for many decades now. This has forced me to recognise that Israel has many faults, has often been brutal, contains many bigots and fanatics, and has a system of government apparently designed by its enemies.
Palestinians gather in a charity kitchen to receive limited rations amid a shortage of food in Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip
Protesters gathered outside Downing Street yesterday to urge Israel to ‘stop starving Gaza’
Its current policy in Gaza is wicked, cruel and indefensible. But to call it ‘genocide’ is to engage in propaganda which will in the end lead to the destruction of Israel. And that would be a grisly disaster, for the hatred of Jews never goes away and there must be a reliable refuge for its victims.
Israel exists because of a real genocide – Hitler’s very serious attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Britain and the USA, though they knew this persecution and extermination were going on at the time, shamed themselves for all eternity by failing to offer asylum to its targets, or to do much to prevent the crime itself.
No serious, informed person can accept the use of the word ‘genocide’ to describe events in Gaza now, because to use it is to join in a campaign to undermine Israel’s very existence. Practically any other term of furious disapproval is correct. I believe myself that the words ‘disgusting massacre’ serve very well.
I used, before the latest attack on Gaza, to have some time for the Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Now I think he is a cruel, deluded fool and I regret my past defence of him. But if he has lost his wits, the rest of us do not have to.
The idea of a ‘two-state solution’ is now once again touted everywhere by the usual suspects in media and politics. But it would not be a solution. An Arab state next to Israel could easily fall into the hands of Hamas or someone even worse. In which case it would be the base for limitless repeats of the cross-border raid of October 2023.
This is not the place to explain what we should do, except to say that it is the search for an ideal solution which has for many years made a workable compromise impossible. Start by considering the actual people who live there, who must be our main concern. Forget about Nobel Peace Prizes.
But I refuse to join either of these fanatical, bloodshot camps. And I urge you to do the same.
Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank in the Gaza Strip
Elisabeth’s drama is all smoke and no fire
Thrillers really are running out of plots now so many of the globe’s villains have been shown up as incompetent, broke or just not that interested. So Channel 4’s The Veil (warning, contains no veils) is a bit desperate.
Elisabeth Moss, having finally escaped her scarlet wimple in The Handmaid’s Tale, is now an MI6 agent grappling with ISIS (is that still a thing?) as it tries to use the Bulgarian navy (I am not making this up) to deliver a dirty bomb to the USA.
The biggest mystery is why Ms Moss smokes so furiously at the start of her tense struggle against Islamist terror, but has given up by the end. Did the product placement people go home in mid-shoot?
Handmaid’s Tale star Elisabeth Moss as an MI6 agent battling Islamist terrorists in Channel 4’s spy thriller The Veil
A LARGE part of the great deception of the people of Britain over Ukraine has been the pretence that Kiev is the capital of a shining idealist democracy, pitted against the corrupt despotism of Russia. It is not true and never has been.
And however they end (this is not yet clear), the events of last week show this. President Zelensky tried to push through laws undermining Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies, amid a nasty stink of political repression and feeble cowardice in the national parliament.
Even The Economist magazine, long a key cheerleader for the war, said of the move: ‘It makes Ukraine look more like the enemy it is fighting and less like the country it aspires to become.’
Farage is clueless about how to fix Britain
The trouble with Nigel Farage is that he is a liberal and so cannot think conservatively. A man who can seriously argue for the decriminalisation of marijuana, as he has done, has no idea what is wrong with this country. His ridiculous bombastic law and order proposals last week only confirm this.
They might as well have been generated by Artificial Intelligence: more police, longer prison sentences, mass deportations. This is the usual thought-free rubbish of the demagogue who knows how to get office but does not know how to use it, and who has yet to discover the iron law that he who leads a mob will pretty soon find he is being chased by it.
We have plenty of prisons and legions of police officers. It is the way we use them that is wrong.
If you want a decent order in this country you have to turn back the flood of selfishness and moral cowardice which laps murkily at our national foundations.
This must be done by restoring the married family, bringing back discipline to schools, putting figures of authority back on the streets, perhaps above all by working to see that boys once again have fathers living at home. Most of these things are actually popular, though we have been made to feel ashamed of thinking them. But they require a deep, thoughtful challenge to the opinions of our new governing class. Mr Farage does not offer that.
Save yourself some trouble and believe me now, rather than waiting the usual ten years to find out I was right all along.
