One of the worst mistakes anyone can make in politics is to assume that the leader of a country speaks for the entire nation and represents its best interests.
There are, for example, a lot of people in Russia who have taken enormous risks to stand firm against what Vladimir Putin is doing to their country. Alexei Navalny deliberately chose to go back to the country after the attempt to poison him didn’t quite succeed because he didn’t wish to live comfortably in exile and preferred an almost certain jail sentence. He is languishing in extreme conditions in a Siberian prison whilst Putin continues to enable his cronies to syphon off oil and gas revenues to pay for luxury residences.
Many thousands of Russians know that they face similar punishment if they are identified as opponents of ‘their’ president and yet had the courage to sign the nomination papers of an anti-war presidential candidate. Putin’s cronies ruled a tiny number of those signatures invalid on an implausible technicality and banned the only serious opposition candidate from standing.
Whom, on any side, does tyranny represent?
It is therefore important to make the same distinction between the nation and the individual leader when considering what is taking place in Israel. Before Hamas launched an attack on civilians, which has rightly been widely condemned, huge numbers of Jewish people had been taking to the streets for months to protest against Benjamin Netanyahu and the way he was running the country.
The protest started when Netanyahu decided that his government would interfere with the right of the courts to make decisions free of political interference. As they progressed significant numbers of the protestors began to ask hard questions about whether other many other policies he had championed were in the best interest of the country.
Some of those open-minded demonstrators were shot or captured in the Hamas attack on a music festival. That needs remembering by anyone who seeks to justify violence coming from one side whilst condemning it when it comes from the other.
To this day a high proportion of Jewish people inside Israel are reported to believe that Netanyahu’s government failed to recognise the seriousness of the danger that was building up inside Gaza and have very hard questions to ask about whether the attack could have been foreseen and the defence against it better organised.
The blood-dimmed tide
The BBC World Service broadcast an interview with Israeli Defence Force female soldiers whose job it was to staff look-out posts alongside the perimeter fence that surrounded Gaza. Those soldiers told the BBC that they had witnessed a build up of activity and reported it repeatedly only to be dismissed by their superiors and ordered to stop making alarmist reports.
At best, Netanyahu presided over an atmosphere of complacency. At worst, someone at a high level was more worried about protecting his career and keeping him out of jail on corruption charges than they were about preventing terrorism.
Almost everyone in Israel, in Gaza and in the West Bank has suffered terribly as a result of the escalation of the conflict. Along with the deaths of over two thousand people on the day of the Hamas attack, significant numbers of soldiers have died since then as they enter dangerous bombed out streets which are perfect locations for snipers and guerrilla fighters. Those soldiers also have friends, relatives and lovers and their lives also matter.
The death toll and the loss of property in Gaza and significantly also in the West Bank has been much higher. Almost every time the BBC interviews a professional spokesperson for the Netanyahu government, we are told that Israel is conducting a carefully targeted and highly restrained exercise to end terrorism. It is only necessary to glance at the TV footage of the destruction to know that this is a direct lie.
Whole districts are being flattened. People are being shot after such casual checks that three hostages speaking in Hebrew were shot dead. One of them being finished off on the ground after he was injured despite continuing to tell his fellow countrymen in their own language that he was Jewish. A six year old girl left alone in a car calling out on a phone for someone to rescue her after her entire family was slaughtered went quiet on the line. She was later found dead. That is not careful targeting of terrorists.
The wages of savagery
It is common to hear that in war everyone loses. It is not quite true. Without this war Benjamin Netanyahu would almost certainly be out of office and facing jail for corruption. Individual Hamas leaders have died in this war but the organisation has made gains. Regrettably, it seems to have strengthened its bond with the people who have lost homes and lost relatives. It has gained support from the vast majority of people living in the wider Middle East and from across much of the rest of the world.
The organisation is well placed to recruit a new generation of very determined fighters. Something which all of us should find a chilling prospect and which does not make anyone in Israel safer.
… making the whole world blind
What most people in Israel really want is to be able to live in peace and freedom secure in their lives and their property. That is exactly what most Palestinian people want. At the moment the so-called leaders of both communities seem hell bent on confrontation.
The idea that either side can win the confrontation is deeply implausible. There are some very unpleasant forces on both sides who think that ‘their’ people will never be secure until their enemies are wiped out or cleansed from occupation of territory they want. Pursuing that goal has killed thousands without any sign of ordinary people being genuinely safer.
In such circumstances the voices for peace within both communities are the only hope. During the first ceasefire over 80 hostages were freed. The return to war has resulted in the killing by Israeli armed forces of more hostages than have been freed.
A ceasefire is urgently needed. The return of the hostages is a must. There is no way out of this violent cycle by stepping up the violence. We need a negotiated solution that paves the way for internationally guaranteed recognition of the right to a secure existence for both communities.
Until we get that, Britain must stop supplying arms to one side in a vicious conflict that is in the worst possible interests of either community.
