The tragic reality of Israel

by A.N. Wilson.
Disillusioned optimists, who hoped that the Palestinians and the Israelis could somehow find a working compromise, nurse bitter feelings against Ariel Sharon for the provocative policy that he has so relentlessly pursued. In yesterday's Mail on Sunday, Gerald Kaufman, a Jew and a lifelong Zionist wrote a courageous denunciation of present Israeli policies. He said that, having visited Israel over 50 times, he never intended to go back, so deep is his revulsion against Sharon's warmongering. There are still plenty of hawks in the Western media who take the opposite
view. For them, the only way for the Israelis to defend themselves is by constant belligerence. Conrad Black, the recently ennobled peer who owns the Telegraph group of newspapers, is one of the most vigorous exponents of this idea. He brands as anti-semitic anyone who hopes that the Jews would withdraw from the so-called occupied territories, in accordance with UN resolutions and international law. Black has also said that what critics of
Ariel Sharon, are too cowardly to say is that they do not really believe Israel has a right to exist.
I have reluctantly come to agree that Lord Black is right - not about the cowardice or anti-semitism, but about the state of Israel's "right to exist". Those of us Gentiles who have seen ourselves as friends of Israel over the years, have gradually watched any hope of a peaceful "solution" being destroyed by the policy of Israeli settlements in land that no international lawyer believes to be theirs. This policy, if pursued by any other nation on earth would be universally condemned and they would be forced to withdraw.
Until President Bush is prepared to put American ground-troops into the disputed lands and force out the illegal Jewish occupiers, then no one in the world is going to believe in American foreign policy in the Muslim world. What greater act of "terrorism" can there be than Sharon's policy of invasion, backed up by (American-made) tanks and bombs? Israel is by definition an aggressor, since it is occupying land that was already someone else's homeland. Conrad Black and his allies are right.
The logic of supporting the Palestinians is to question the very right of the state of Israel to exist. It is to that bitterly sad conclusion that the policy of Ariel Sharon has driven so many of us. Of course we do not want the Israelis to be "driven into the sea" (as in the ominous phrase of 1967).
But the 1948 experiment, - claiming the "Israelis" had the "right" to exist as a state just because a few brave terrorists such as Menachem Begin killed some British army officers - this was lazy thinking, and it was doomed to failure. One now sees that Israel never was a state, and it can only be defended by constant war. Is that what we want?