Israel Out Of Excuses - And Friends

Time was when the state of Israel, its security agencies and forces, its representatives, and its advocates got a free pass from most in the UK. It was the only democracy in a region with so many hostile neighbours. Its explanations were routinely accepted, its lapses tolerated: the other lot, after all, were those ghastly brown people, and they didn’t really count.

The involvement of the Israelis in the Suez farrago did not sully their good name. Lifting Adolf Eichmann from his South American hideaway? Well, that was a Nazi, and he had it coming. Even when Mordechai Vanunu was lifted in Rome and whisked off to Israel, that too was tolerated. Little fuss was made when perhaps the Italians might have been justified kicking off about it.

Not any more. Not when we can see what the IDF is getting up to not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and southern Lebanon. When Mark Regev rocks up to the nearest TV studio and does his panicked schtick about the baddies wanting to drive his country into the sea, when Tzipi Hotoveli slouches in her seat and sneers “Blame Hamas”, little mustard is cut.

It is no longer plausible to play the “self-defence” card when Israel is not only armed to the teeth with modern weaponry, including the nuclear kind, but is seen to have been freely loosing off that weaponry in the general direction of anything that moves in the West Bank and Gaza. Hence the country’s social media cheerleaders getting more and more hysterical of late.

Any question as to whether it is justifiable to cut off power and water to Gaza, an act which almost certainly represents collective punishment and therefore equates to a war crime, is met with howling “anti-Semitism” accusations. Those objecting to the wiping out of Gaza’s health system are instantly smeared as “Jew haters”. There is no peaceable disagreement.

At first, our leaders stood four-square behind Binyamin Netanyahu and his fellow gangsters. But then something happened: the protests at the mass slaughter, the forced starvation, the gratuitous killing of aid workers, the increasingly desperate excuses from the IDF and their cheerleaders, became greater. Those marching numbered in their hundreds of thousands.

Attempts from unappealing and unpleasant politicians like Suella Braverman, who called the overwhelmingly peaceful protests “hate marches”, had no effect, perhaps because those marches, especially in London, contained a sizeable Jewish contingent, which was enthusiastically applauded by their fellow protesters. There was no “Jew hatred”. Just peaceful protest.

So politicians began to move towards calls for a ceasefire, though in the case of Keir Starmer and the rest of the shadow cabinet, this progress came agonisingly slowly. And still the ceasefire calls contained get-out clauses, giving the Israelis sufficient nods and winks to carry on the indiscriminate slaughter. But this week the mood has changed, perhaps decisively.

When it was Palestinians being killed, there was a collective “meh”. But the killing of seven aid workers in a deliberate and targeted drone strike, including three Britons, that was different. The IDF and its apologists claimed this was a terrible mistake: they would learn from the incident. But it was not a mistake, and they will learn nothing. The aid workers were killed deliberately.

Why? Simples. This would frighten aid organisations and stop the aid reaching beleaguered Palestinians. Starvation would be made worse; more would die. The aid organisations were indeed duly frightened off, and this time, the Israeli excuses received little more than ridicule. Worse for the IDF and its apologists, the abusive denunciation of critics is not working.

Showing empathy for the Palestinians is not anti-Semitism. Recoiling in horror at the mass slaughter is not Jew hatred. Willing an end to starvation and a lack of basic healthcare is not an attempt to drive Israel into the sea. And now, at long, long last, too late for tens of thousands already dead, the US President has begun to lean on Netanyahu. He needs to lean a lot harder.

The USA, and other Governments, know they have the power to end the slaughter. They need to use it. Their people will not judge inaction kindly.

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