Modern Israel has existed for 860 months, yet the past 5 will define its culture, its values, and the very basis of its religious inspiration before the bar of history for generations to come.
There is a scene in Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark which describes
how a British Sterling bomber crashed on the factory near Cracow whose
Jewish prisoners Oskar Schindler is trying to save from extermination
using bribery and the pretence they are essential workers.
Schindler is told the crew were Australian, one found “holding the
charred remnants of an English Bible”. They had been dropping supplies
to hidden partisans near Cracow. Schindler was inspired: “That men
should come all this way from unimaginable little towns in the
Australian Outback, to hasten the end in Cracow.”
I remembered this story from another world, when I read that, on 22 February 2024, the Jordanian Airforce had, for the first time, dropped British-funded medical and food aid on Gaza – something I had called for on 4 January 2024 when I wrote that to alleviate the humanitarian disaster, “Egyptian, Jordanian or Saudi Arabian governments could have used clearly telegraphed transport aircraft to drop UN humanitarian supplies on Gaza – which is not a part of Israel – regardless of Israel”.
After 4 months of Palestinian suffering and death, Britain and Jordan managed to get Israeli permission to drop $1.2 million worth of aid without being shot down by the IDF. Literally a drop in an ocean of misery and injury.
It will, of course, help some Palestinians. But, more importantly, without a follow-up daily armada, it will only be a historical fig leaf for the British government and the Jordanian monarchy. Meanwhile, the UK goes on exporting arms to Israel.
Such international ambiguity empowers General Benny Gantz to give the world an ultimatum.
This leading member of Israel’s governing triumvirate has announced that “if by Ramadan our hostages are not home the fighting will continue to the Rafah area.” Not, “if in 3 weeks.” Not, “if by the March 10”.
Ramadan being the most important month in the Islamic calendar, Gantz’s use of such a trope is revealing. If not by Ramadan, then, presumably, more dead Muslims.
There is no proper word for those not enamoured of Islam, and who practice what they preach. “Islamophobia”, for example, is a travesty in search of a name that has the same lode of guilt, gravitas and potency as “anti-Semitism”.
Unsurprisingly, what apologists for the crimes committed in Gaza call “anti-Semitism” has increased. Not the Nazi-saluting balaclava-wearing version, though appallingly that too and other intimidatory forms have appeared, causing fear and allowing genuine criticism of Israeli politicians and personalities to be smeared.
The new dictionary of antisemitism defines the condition as a prejudice that has nothing to do with Jewish race, religion, tradition or culture.
The new form apparently manifests as any criticism of Israel for its depredations in Gaza. And not just criticism of the alleged war criminals in its Cabinet and the IDF, but even of its parliamentarians, its leaders in public administration and commerce, in the judiciary, in the professions, in the universities, in the arts, throughout its entire civil society, who have silently facilitated or passively condoned appalling atrocities in Gaza that 5 months ago were beyond their or our wildest imagination.
Do they deserve such criticism? Just a few months ago, and for months before, hundreds of thousands of these same Israelis were repeatedly defying armed riot police.
They were in conscientious and courageous demonstrations against their ruling cabal which was determined to undermine the legitimacy of their democracy by wilfully subordinating their highest court to blatant party political control.
Faced with the October 7 shock of hundreds of ruthless killings, kidnappings, and outrages by Hamas, such civic activism dissolved overnight into acquiescence in the most rapidly performed mass murder of civilians in Gaza.
The only voices raised in protest then and now are the thousands
justifiably complaining that this criminal methodology will endanger the
very lives of the surviving hostages.
Entitled as they certainly are to so protest, there is no resistance
from the broader Israeli society about the reprisal murders of over
30,000 Palestinian civilians, and the starvation of an entire generation
of Palestinian children.
Of course, forms of censorship in Israel, and the complete exclusion of Western cameras and journalists from Gaza, are designed to mask the horrors, mute the Israeli conscience and depersonalise the slaughter.
Modern Israel has existed for 860 months, yet the past 5 will define its culture, its values, and the very basis of its religious inspiration before the bar of history for generations to come.
To Israelis, let alone the international community, Israel’s war in Gaza is the most immediately pressing issue of our time. Why? Because it could cease immediately with one decision by one man.
Proportionately more has been written in condemnation of Netanyahu in Gaza than of Putin in Ukraine because nothing of honour or decency was or is expected from Putin but a minimum, qualifying level of civilised behaviour and intelligence was expected from Netanyahu and Israel.
Yet despite the atrocious absence of such restraint, the reaction of Western governments has been so uncertain and ambiguous as to amount to either helpless funk, or tacit support bordering on encouragement and complicity.
In such a world, it should be no surprise that black South Africa, not white Europe, is prosecuting Israel before the International Court of Justice for depravities in Gaza that amount to alleged genocide. And it is no surprise that its case has received so little support from Europeans.
People have forgotten the political links that existed between Israel and apartheid South Africa – states that shared virtually the same birthday in May 1948, and that went on sharing up to the point where even the sharing of Israeli nuclear warheads was once rumoured.
People have forgotten, too, the role of South African Jewish anti-apartheid activists, like the incomparable Bram Fischer, in striving to end that regime whose label has now, ironically, been applied to Israel.
Despite the South African effort, and with the complicity of the West, Israeli cabinet members will almost certainly never be at risk of enjoying facilities in The Hague like those that once hosted Slobodan Milosevic.
Either way, without a “change of heart” in the most Biblical sense of the phrase, Israel will remain an armed fortress, a failed pariah state, and a liability to Western civilisation.