It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to understand what is going on in Israel. A few maps over time does the trick, even if it obscures the vast amount of human suffering that has occurred since the state’s formation. Anyone capable of observing a trend will know that since 1948, the amount of land that Palestinians have to live on has decreased in size massively, while seeing a disproportionate rise in oppression and state violence.
It’s not savvy you need to discuss this subject; it’s bravery, and most of the time, that is not even enough. Ken Livingstone is still suspended from the Labour Party for making a factually correct claim, backed up by the historical record, his only purpose now is being resurrected as an anti-semitic zombie prior to any set of elections. His treatment is perhaps emblematic of the problem. What he actually said was Hitler supported Zionism, and he did, and you do not need a lot of sense to see why. He wanted Jews out of his country, the Zionists wanted Jews to resettle Palestine. What he was prosecuted for was a misattributed quote, “Hitler was a Zionist”, which fell out of the mouth of some pundit and was never seriously challenged.
The comments from the pro-Israel commentators and MPs were telling. Almost uniformly, people disassociated themselves with Ken’s comments, but never actually mentioned which comments they found offensive, relying on the overall message that had already germinated. This bloke’s a wrong’un.
Now Livingstone is a divisive character that has made a lot of enemies over the years, but he also has a long record of being an anti-racism campaigner, and the attacks by the likes of John Mann were as unforgivable as they were laughable.
Last year, we saw evidence of a 1m reward being put up by a representative of the Israeli Embassy for compromising information on Sir Alan Duncan, an openly gay pro-Palestine high profile member of the government.
Returning to one of my original points, you shouldn’t need bravery to discuss the policy of a state. We are fiercely self-critical of our own state, and that’s okay. The whole world can criticise US policy, vigorously, and that’s okay too. Some may point out that the French are a bunch of racist fuckwits for their headwear ban, and those people would not be dragged off into the night or destroyed in the media.
Israel gets very upset about people that don’t recognise it as a state, but simultaneously doesn’t want to be judged as a state. That is a serious problem for a world and an existential threat for what remains of what we call Palestine.