This is why Israeli policies are so utterly incomprehensible. For me there was only ever one justification for some kind of (not this) Israeli state, and it was an incredibly powerful one - the establishment of a place of safety after the unspeakable fact of the Holocaust.
Before the rise of the Nazis Herzl’s Zionist creed was a minority sect, dwarfed by the Bundists’ vision of a Jewish culture celebrated and strengthened in the diaspora where they lived. But the Holocaust wiped out Bundism to the point where most people who express an opinion on the current conflict appear to be unaware of its historical existence - and Zionism came into its own as a literal creed for survival.
Millions of Europeans could relate to that in some form. Some of us went to kibbutz as a statement of solidarity. But the justification for the state became less powerful as its brutality increased and now most people recoil in disgust. Revisionism and Kahanism have spat on the compassion felt by millions post Holocaust, and that is an utter tragedy not just for the brutalised Palestinians but for Jewish people throughout the world.
Antisemitism is a hate crime. When Netanyahu uses ‘antisemite’ as a description of literally anyone who opposes his actions in Gaza, the word loses its power and its meaning. And that is a double tragedy.
- By Tubby Isaacs