Israel's fury is disproportionate to the substance

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It’s not quite a golden rule, more a rule of thumb; but sometimes it appears that the degree of fury surrounding an issue bears an inverse relationship to the importance of the substance. Israel’s fury at the long-overdue statement by the UK government that sanctions will be imposed on imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank is clear and visceral. The UK’s condemnation of the illegality is welcome nevertheless; the attempt to conflate disapproval of illegality with antisemitism is nonsensical but just about par for the course. But what is the substance involved?

The amount of trade between the UK and Israeli West Bank settlements is hard to calculate, but certainly tiny. It’s not as if the ‘country of origin’ of settlement-grown dates is going to be emblazoned on the packaging as ‘illegal settlements in the West Bank’. There are rules, of course, banning such goods from being labelled as ‘product of Israel’, (although it seems to be a fairly widespread practice) and perhaps, as this report from the BBC suggests, the ban will act as something of a deterrent to that, although the co-operation of the Israeli authorities is something that maybe we shouldn’t rely on too heavily. Labelling them as having been produced in ‘Palestine’ is another route currently being used, and is accurate in geographical terms at least. One assumes that the intention of the UK government is not to target Palestinian-produced produce, but, again, that’s easier to say than implement.

Al Jazeera (not always the most reliable source, but this piece seems balanced and reasonably well-researched) estimates that total UK trade with settlements amounts to around £40 million annually, but the bulk of that is exports to the settlements (which are not covered by the ban), leaving a maximum of around £6 million annually in imports, a total which may well include goods produced by Palestinians as well as those produced by Israelis. Obviously, other countries imposing a similar ban (whilst facing the same problems of correctly identifying the affected goods) will increase the extent of the economic impact, but it still looks like pretty marginal sums.

It could be argued, not unreasonably, that it’s more of a symbolic gesture than an immediately effective one. No less welcome for that, but hardly an explanation for the ferocity of the response it has provoked. I suspect that the response is aimed less at undoing the sanctions being imposed now and more at mobilising opinion against any ratcheting up of sanctions in the future, when the current sanctions will, inevitably, have proved themselves to be of minimal effectiveness. How willing the UK Government is to go further in the face of that fury is the real test.

Nose-holding might not always be entirely dishonourable

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The deliberations of the committee awarding the Nobel Peace Prize are secret. It’s just as well; it’s easy enough to imagine how much hilarity Trump’s hyped-up claims to have solved several wars (some of which the ‘participants’ didn’t even know had happened) would have caused the members. It’s also easy to imagine the extent to which Trumpian anger would have boiled over had that hilarity become publicly known rather than merely widely assumed.

It's probably reasonable to assume that his blatant campaigning for the prize might just have rubbed a few people up the wrong way as well: it’s not the way things are usually done. It’s hard to believe that a man who renamed the Department of Defence as the Department of War; whose government demands a stronger warrior culture and the abandonment of any rules of engagement which might prevent US forces from unleashing fear and intimidation; who is determined to unleash maximum lethal force on the streets of his own country; and who has taken to random extra-judicial killings of people in boats in international waters might not have struggled a little to be seen as a ‘man of peace’.

He might, though, have just the tiniest bit of justification in his jealousy about how Obama got the award so early in his presidency. What exactly had Obama done at that point to justify the award other than having learned to string a sentence together and avoid being called George Bush? Neither of those two things are entirely inconsequential, but they’re not exactly epoch-making either. Brokering a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel is no mean feat, although since it appears to have happened only because Trump effectively ordered Netanyahu to stop the bombing there are questions about whether it could have been done earlier. His expectation that he could announce the ceasefire one day and pick up the prize the next was always a long way short of realistic.

If the ceasefire holds and turns into a lasting peace, then maybe next year or the year after he might actually deserve some sort of recognition even while continuing to attract condemnation for many of the other things he does. He doesn’t understand the connectedness and maybe we shouldn't even expect him to; for him, the self-styled great deal-maker, every deal should be judged in complete isolation. It’s part of his natural transactionalism. There may even be a sense in which holding out the possibility of the prize which he clearly covets so much might encourage him to stick with the Israel-Palestine peace process for longer than his usual gnat’s length attention span. The probability of that happening currently looks very low, but if a nod-and-a-wink now made such an outcome more likely, might not a bit of collective nose-holding be worthwhile?

Choosing on what to be defeated

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Much of the commentary surrounding the shambles into which the English House of Commons descended earlier this week has been either about the extent to which it was all about party political manoeuvring over what appear to be tiny differences in wording or about whether the Speaker was being partisan in his decision-making. Whilst the difference between an immediate ceasefire, a humanitarian ceasefire and a sustainable ceasefire is indeed important in terms of nuance, the population of Gaza, who have largely been herded over recent weeks into a giant refugee camp right up against the border with Egypt, simply want the shooting and the bombing to stop. Some of the other differences in wording – such as the extent to which Israel deserves criticism – are probably more significant in terms of meaning, but even less so in terms of simply stopping the fighting. On the substance of the issue being debated, there isn’t really much more to say than that the fighting needs to stop.

The shambles also revealed yet another aspect of the arcane nature of Westminster’s rules, something which has received rather less comment. The SNP still hold the majority of Scottish seats (whatever the current opinion polls tell us about their prospects for the next election) and under the normal rules of democracy that might suggest that they have a reasonable right to claim that they represent Scottish opinion. They are accustomed to losing votes in parliament; having Scottish opinion over-ruled by the English majority of MPs (and in this context, Tory and Labour usually seem to act as one) is something which happens on a more or less daily basis. One of the things that emerged from this week’s debacle is that, on three sitting days each year, the SNP get to choose the subject on which the English majority proceeds to over-rule Scotland’s voice. 'They' probably see it as an over-generous concession.

Choosing the subject on which you’re going to get hopelessly outvoted can’t be an easy matter, and since the result is pre-ordained, one could argue that it doesn’t matter a great deal anyway. The wish to be seen to have views on matters other than domestic Scottish issues is an obvious one for a party which wants to avoid being labelled parochial, and which wants Scotland to take its place on the world stage. I can’t help wondering, though, about the wisdom of choosing to lose on an issue which genuinely is a UK-wide issue for as long as the UK exists. It doesn’t add much to the narrative of Scottish voices being ignored. On this occasion, the SNP’s natural desire to twist the knife in a divided Labour Party seems to have got the better of them, and they’ve ended up joining in the procedural fun and games which are so typical of Westminster. It’s not the first time that I’ve wondered what there is about the place which sucks people into its preposterous norms and practices. It's not unique to the SNP. But then sucking people in is what has made the English establishment so extraordinarily long-lived.  

Ultimately, they must negotiate rather than kill

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The reaction of the UK’s two largest parties to the past week’s events in the Middle East has been instructive in terms of their attitudes and priorities. Firstly, they were in competition to see who could issue the strongest condemnation of the BBC for calling Hamas militants rather than terrorists, as though the most important thing is the label used; and they followed that up by competing over who could take the hardest line against any show of support for the Palestinian side. They were, of course, in complete agreement that Israel should be supported in whatever way might be necessary. There was little room for nuance or debate: in this battle there are good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats. Presumably, they think that it makes for good politics, but it does nothing to aid understanding, let alone reconciliation.

History, as ever, is complex. Whilst events are generally indisputable, their significance is always open to multiple interpretations. There is no doubt that Jews have suffered centuries of persecution and discrimination, including the attempt in parts of Europe in the last century to eliminate them as a people. Sympathy for a people who have suffered so much is natural, but it cannot give the state of Israel a free pass from any criticism when it comes to its own actions against others. Criticism of Israeli actions is not, in itself, anti-Semitism. Palestinians have been forced from their homes and land and, even today, Israel continues to encroach on land internationally recognised as being outside the boundaries of Israel and the property of Palestinians. But the grievance of Palestinians, in turn, cannot justify the sort of random killings that we saw last Saturday. A cycle of atrocity, counter-atrocity and counter-counter-atrocity ends up as a never-ending cycle of death and grief on both sides, from which there is no obvious escape.

Applying the label of ‘war crime’, whether to the random violence delivered by Hamas last weekend or to the retaliatory denial of food, water, medicines and power to millions of citizens in Gaza may be technically accurate, but it overlooks the fact that the real crime is war itself. The idea that a war – any war – can be fought according to a set of gentlemanly rules is to ignore the reality, which is that people – mostly, but not exclusively, young men, whether regular soldiers or less organised bands of fighters – are sent to kill or be killed, a situation in which they will feel fear, anger, and hatred towards those they are trying to kill, added to which the inevitable raised levels of adrenaline and the sight of comrades being killed can all too easily result in actions which few would call civilized being perpetrated by ordinary, average human beings.

The total elimination of Hamas – Israel’s stated objective – may buy a period of relative ‘peace’ to the extent to which it is successful. But experience suggests that it will come at a heavy price in lives and will last only until the next generation are old enough to pick up arms, when they will be driven by an even greater sense of grievance and injustice. Ultimately, the only lasting settlement will have to be a negotiated one, and the rest of the world has a responsibility to drive both sides in that direction, using whatever (peaceful) means it has at its disposal. Picking one side, and giving that side unconditional support, is not living up to that responsibility. Yet that’s where the UK is choosing to be. Regardless of which party is in power. Global leadership it most definitely is not.

Agreeing the definition is a side issue

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Godwin’s Law states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1".  I don’t know whether online discussions have ever been rigorously investigated to determine the truth of the law, but casual observation suggests that it conveys at least a degree of truth.  And I’m not sure that it’s limited to online discussions either. 

There is a corollary to the law which states that “when a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress”.  The truth of that one is rather less certain in my mind; it more often seems to be the case that those involved simply double down on the positions that they take.  What is perhaps truer is that once a debate reaches that point it changes direction; it loses focus on the original question, whatever that was, and starts to turn around whether the comparison is fair or reasonable instead.  That in turn makes it a poor argument to use in most - perhaps all - circumstances.

Part of the fuss around antisemitism in the Labour Party revolves around whether the Labour Party should accept the internationally-recognised working definition of antisemitism; and one of the disputed clauses at the centre of that debate is that “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is, by definition, antisemitism.  I find myself in sympathy with those in Labour who doubt whether this should really count as antisemitism at all.  At a purely rational level, comparing the actions of two different governments in two different epochs and finding some apparent similarities is not at all the same thing as taking a hostile position against a whole people or religion.  I can understand, though, why accusing the descendants of those who most suffered the consequences of a particularly evil regime would be considered by them to be exceptionally insulting, and that alone should make people very wary about either drawing such a comparison or arguing about the detail of the wording.

Coupled with Godwin’s Law, it’s a wholly counter-productive line of argument as well; it diverts the debate away from the reality of the effects of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and into questions of semantics and the fairness of the comparisons drawn.  The real issue is not whether Israeli policy is or is not similar to that of the Nazis, nor whether drawing such a comparison is or is not antisemitism: it is about the way that the Israeli government is treating Palestinians on a daily basis.  I don’t need comparisons with what someone else did in another place at another time to be able to see brutality and inhumanity in action, and such comparisons don’t add anything to my perceptions of what is happening.  And I really don’t understand why the Labour Party is allowing others to divert it into a row about definitions rather than the substance of the Palestine issue.

Pots and kettles

Tweet The UK government, in the shape of the ex-Secretary of State for Wales, William Hague, has chided Iran’s leader for suggesting that Israel should sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.  It is, according to Hague, inappropriate for a country which has an advanced nuclear programme of its own to tell another country to give up nuclear weapons, unless it first does so itself.  So Iran must act first, was his basic message.

But if he’s right in his basic position, on what basis does a nuclear-armed state such as the UK, which is itself in breach of treaties over nuclear weapons and planning to breach them even further by building a new generation of weapons and delivery systems, have any right to tell either Iran or Israel what to do?