Israel is right to fight but I just can’t trust Netanyahu
I think my father might have quite liked to live in Israel. And he nearly did. In late 1946 he was encamped in Palestine with the Polish free army. He was 16 years old, he’d already lived in five countries, nearly starved to death in freezing exile, and for the first time in a long time he felt settled. He’d made friends. He didn’t really want to move again.
Returning to Poland was impossible for a Jew and a capitalist. But my grandfather, Dolu, was enrolled in the Polish Resettlement Corps and had the chance to move to Britain. After his experience in the Gulag and the army he was sick, he was tired, he was broke and he hadn’t the heart for more struggle. And, for all that he liked Tel Aviv, he saw hard years ahead if the family remained in Palestine. More fighting, more war, a harsh economic climate.
So Dolu and his wife, Lusia, came to this country and Ludwik came with them. It didn’t occur to him to stay without his parents. And although Dolu did not live long, his family enjoyed the peace and prosperity he yearned for. Neither my dad nor any of his children ever thought again of living anywhere else other than Britain.
Yet not every Jew after the war - sick like Dolu, homeless like Dolu, broken and broke like Dolu - made Dolu’s choice. Not everyone wanted to and not everyone could. With nowhere to return to, for hundreds of thousands, eventually millions of Jews, Palestine was a refuge for refugees. So a scattered and battered people made their way to a new home and a new start.
This isn’t the story of all Jews or every person who now lives in Israel, but I wanted to tell it because my family’s experience isn’t that unusual among British Jews. We almost all have friends and relations who experienced something similar, and have family in Israel. And that informs our reaction to what happened last year on October 7. It certainly is an important introduction to an explanation of how I feel now.
The news of the Hamas atrocities, the murders, rapes and hostage taking, produced a combination of sorrow, fear, anger and, I must admit it, steely determination. Israel was created so Jews would not again suffer pogroms, yet here we all were again. I resolved to support whatever action was necessary to prevent a repetition and to endure whatever political controversy was necessary to ensure it. It seemed a relatively minor contribution to make.
From the outset I realised that the horror and sympathy for the murdered Jews would last only so long as Israel failed to respond. Some people indeed were already protesting before the response. But the moment Israel acted there would inevitably be those who thought it disproportionate.
I fear I nonetheless underestimated this. There was some perfectly legitimate concern that Israel would start a conflict it could not finish, pursuing aims it could never achieve. There was much, entirely natural and appropriate, shock and grief and resistance to the death of innocent people who were paying the price for Hamas action they did not initiate and could not end. I accepted that would cause alarm and concern. How could it not? What would it say about mankind if it didn’t?
But what I had not accounted for, and continues to dismay, were the number of people who simply adopted the slogan of “Free Palestine” as if it were a fashion accessory and started chanting “from the river to the sea” with only the barest idea of which river and which sea this meant.
I think for many Jews it is a source of genuine despair that so many well meaning young people could adopt a slogan and a cause which means - which can only mean - the exile or death of half the world’s Jews. Palestinian liberation and statehood most definitely is a human rights cause. But so is Israeli liberty and statehood and security.
I tried making every concession possible to the Palestinian cause - opposing the settlement policy, as one example - in the hope of attracting matching concessions. It was hopeless. How can the demonstrators attract liberal allegiance when they fail to see the need to protect Jews from another annihilation? And this is not a theoretical question. Because there has just been an annihilation of Jews. That is how this latest bout of fighting in Gaza started.
If Hamas had the chance they would kill all of us. Every Jew in Israel. And if they could get to me in Pinner they would. This is so completely and terrifyingly obvious, it is bewildering and frustrating that so many can’t see it.
Anyone who can see it will appreciate that Israel had to act, and has to act, to destroy Hamas (and indeed Hezbollah) before they destroy Israel and kill us all. The Israelis are taking on the moral and physical burden of doing this and I am grateful to them for that.
But I must confess three things that must not be detached from this firm support for acting. The first is that I do not trust Binyamin Netanyahu, and that makes it hard to be certain that when he acts, he and his administration are taking due care. I do not confuse the crass populism and hardline nationalism of the Netanyahu administration, which governs in a democracy under rule of law, with the infinitely worse theocratic dictatorship of Iran, but I nonetheless feel uncomfortable relying on his government’s word and being sure about its actions.
This discomfort is compounded by lack of military knowledge. I am certain that describing Israel’s actions as “genocidal” is mere trolling of Jews. I am also certain that Israel is resisting forces that pose a mortal threat to liberal democracy and that the overall campaign is necessary and requires robust support. But it is impossible for me to judge whether an individual action is excessive, unnecessary or careless. I am simply unable to determine that, even when forming a judgment upon it seems a pressing matter. This is a frequent cause of personal disquiet.
And finally, I am certain that peace can only happen with an act of imagination from Israel, and I cannot be sure this will be forthcoming. The war in the Middle East, like most wars, can’t end until at least one side accepts it cannot win through further military action. And when that moment comes, Israel needs to repeat an offer it has made repeatedly before. Perhaps one day it might be accepted.
A Palestinian state including autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza, the rule of law on both sides of the border, an Israel safe from its neighbours. The last year has shaken me to the core but it hasn’t shaken my belief that without these things there can never be peace.
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