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When the history books tell the story of peace in the Middle East, the name of Lord Stone of Blackheath, managing director of Marks & Spencer and a Labour peer, will be up there in lights. For he is a soothsayer with unique insights on the region. At least, that is the impression given by his ‘out of office’ email message: ‘I am in Israel for August back Sept 3rd. I said there'd be talks by then! Peace in 9 months!’ You read it here first.
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Amid all the bloodshed in Egypt and Syria at the moment the fact that the Israelis and Palestinians are once again at the negotiating table has received less notice than usual. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. The intense international focus on the dispute seems to me a minor contributing reason why the dispute remains unresolved. But there is one aspect of the talks which really ought to be highlighted. That is the Palestinian demand that Israel release 104 Palestinian terrorists from prison before talks commence. While agreeing to this precondition, Israel has not asked for – and is not getting – anything in return. Of course Israel has been here before. Many times.
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It’s exactly ten years since Iranian dissidents first blew the cover of a secret uranium-enrichment facility under a mountain at Natanz, in a bleak stretch of desert near Isfahan. Ever since, relations between Israel and Iran have headed inexorably towards war. Israeli leaders have insisted that they are ready to launch a military strike — unilaterally if necessary — against Iran if the uranium enrichment continues. Iranian leaders, liberals and hardliners alike, have been equally adamant that the centrifuges will continue to spin. For Israeli hawks like prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the question has been not whether to strike Iran, but when.
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It must be boring for you too, returning to the same complaint, over and over again. Report on the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News about the trouble in Turkey. Not a single mention, in the three minutes, of the words Islam, or Muslim, or Islamification. You had to infer everything. Without prior knowledge of what was going on, you would have been utterly mystified as to why people were unhappy. You noted that all of the protestors were young, middle class, educated and the women fashionably unveiled; well spoken, good English and so on. And you would have wondered then who the alleged ‘50 per cent’ who support the Prime Minister might be; what are they dressed like? Is this an argument about poverty, or what? Not a mention of the causes.
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I thought readers might be interested in this piece by me in today's Mail. It is on the appalling decision by Stephen Hawking to boycott a conference in Israel just because it is in Israel.
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It is hard to overstate the significance of Israel’s surgical strikes against Syrian military positions over the weekend. The raids targeted missiles bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon while also destroying battery launchers and other delivery systems. Beyond the obvious damage this inflicted on Syrian military capabilities, its real significance lies in the broader political objectives it achieved. Benjamin Netanyahu made a strategic miscalculation last November when he launched Operation Pillar of Defence against Hamas operatives in Gaza. He failed to inflict any meaningful damage on the group while the Hamas administration secured a number of victories, not least hitting Tel Aviv.
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There was an extraordinary meeting of the Juche Ideas Study Group (England) in London last week, held to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army. For various domestic reasons I was unable to be present, but I think it went off quite well. Sandwiches, tea and coffee were served after the various speeches. Juche is the political ideology of North Korea, emphasising a steely self-reliance in the face of Yankee and Jap imperialist aggression. The meeting was taken by a chap called Dermot Hudson, who may or may not have recited the poem he wrote a while back about Kim Il Sung, the founder of the DPRK. I hope he did, because it deserves to be recited whenever three or four people are gathered together.
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To my simple suggestion that Owen Jones apologise for claiming that an 11-month old child killed by a Hamas rocket was in fact killed by an Israeli ‘so-called targeted strike’, Owen appears to have answered ‘no’. He starts his reply: ‘In the last couple of years I've learned one thing: the right don't like me very much, and expend a sizeable amount of energy attacking me personally rather than my writing.’ In saying that he has learned even ‘one thing’ I fear Owen exaggerates. He begins his next paragraph: ‘Hard right pseudo-intellectual [Douglas] Murray…’ Nothing worse than attacking a person rather than their writing is there?
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At the (rejuvenated) New Republic, Ben Birnbaum has a comprehensive and comprehensively-depressing survey of the last-gasp prospects for a two-state solution to the Middle East 'peace process'. If the two-state solution (TSS) is not yet on life-support it is hardly a picture of health. The prognosis is not good and time is running out. According to Birnbaum, Mahmoud Abbas and Bibi Netanyahu are, in their different ways, the last remaining men who could make it work. Yet neither man, as he also demonstrates, has much room for manoeuver.
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Last November, during another exchange between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza, the left-wing columnist Owen Jones appeared on BBC Question Time. Invited to comment on recent events, what he read out (or so it appears from the tape) was a catalogue of errors about Israel. Among them were big, sweeping incorrect allegations – such as the claim that Israel is enforcing ‘a siege which stops basic supplies’ getting into Gaza. But there were also some new and more specific errors. Take his striking and emotive claim that Israel’s ‘onslaught’ included ‘targeted strikes’ which killed children. Here is one of the things he said: ‘I don’t want to just throw statistics around – I’ll give you one example of one of those children.
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This week I wrote my last Bright on Politics column for the Jewish Chronicle. Here it is in full: This is my last Bright on Politics column. After three-and-a-half years at the JC, I will leave with a lump in my throat, so please forgive me if this piece is a little sentimental or, dare I say it, schmaltzy. When I started work at the paper, some of my former colleagues warned me I was consigning myself to a backwater. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even before I joined the paper I had always felt it to be a unique publication: an ultra-local community newspaper with global ambitions. From my very first days in the job, I found myself slammed into the middle of an international news story with serious implications for UK politics.
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For a few hours this morning it looked as though Ed Miliband might do something uncharacteristically courageous. The Jewish Chronicle reported that the Labour leader had described himself as a Zionist at a meeting organised by the Board of Deputies. It may be sad that this would need to be considered, as Dan Hodges put it, 'a brave and welcome statement' but that's the modern British left for you. Mr Hodges wondered if Miliband would 'stand by' this statement. His scepticism was sensible. And sure enough, word comes that Miliband's views have been 'misinterpreted' by the Jewish Chronicle. As Hodges relates the story: 'Asked at the event whether he was a Zionist Miliband reportedly responded, “Yes, I am a supporter of Israel”.
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David Ward, Liberal Democrat MP for Bradford East, is unhappy that his recent comments about The Jews attracted such widespread criticism. You see: "There is a huge operation out there, a machine almost, which is designed to protect the state of Israel from criticism. And that comes into play very, very quickly and focuses intensely on anyone who's seen to criticise the state of Israel. And so I end up looking at what happened to me, whether I should use this word, whether I should use that word – and that is winning, for them. Because what I want to talk about is the fundamental question of how can they do this, and how can they be allowed to do this." As machines go, this one seems a pretty Heath Robinson contraption, idiosyncratically constructed and wildly inefficient.
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Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timerman, is in town. He spoke to all the All Party Parliamentary Group on Argentina earlier this afternoon. There are close economic and social links between Britain and Argentina, extending far back into the nineteenth century; but the meeting was dominated by what was euphemistically termed ‘the islands’. Timerman began diplomatically. ‘You can speak to this Argentina,’ he assured the assembled honourable members and lords. ‘This Argentina is ready to talk.’ This sounded encouraging, a welcome contrast to President Kirchner’s bellicosity. Timerman spoke about the need for ‘frank and open’ discussions that did not obsess about ‘the past’. The future is what counts.
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I have a piece in the Wall Street Journal (Europe) this morning: 'Take Iran At Its Word' can be found online here. The piece asks what is required to stop the Mullahs getting nuclear weaponry. And it relates a strange breakfast experience with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini.
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Should Jews leave Britain? The question is prompted by this piece written by the Israeli journalist Caroline Glick. Glick recently came to London to take part in an Intelligence Squared debate. The debate was about Israeli settlements. Glick and Danny Dayan attempted to explain to the London audience that Palestinian rejection rather than Jewish settlement in the West Bank is the primary reason there is still no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The debate is now available on Youtube and there you can see the deeply rancorous tone of the discussion. At one point Lord Levy’s son, Daniel Levy, (arguing against Glick and Dayan) has to be almost physically restrained by his own co-debater (William Sieghart).
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So, that Gerald Scarfe cartoon, then. I don’t like it much, but then I like cartoons which make me laugh, (and especially so if they have animals in them). McLachlan, Honeysett, Rowson et al – and on a daily basis of course, Matt. I’m always at a bit of a loss with those big cartoons in the broadsheets which are attempting to tell me something very meaningful and make me stroke my chin. This one made me averse because it seemed to encapsulate the shrieking hysteria of the metro-left; translated into words, it says: ‘Netanyahu is building walls out of the blood of murdered Palestinian innocents!
From our UK edition
David Ward, a Liberal Democrat MP, is in trouble with his party bosses. He chose Holocaust Remembrance Day to indulge in a bit of anti-semitism, suggesting that the very Jews who suffered under the Nazis in death camps were now meting out the same treatment to the poor old Palestinians. I am not sure why he is in the doghouse: this sort of reflexive Jew-baiting lies just below the surface of most of the supposedly principled anti-Israeli posturing among his party colleagues. Not least those who feel the need to appease vast swathes of Muslim voters – Ward’s constituency is Bradford East. It’s good to get it out in the open now and again, so the rest of us can be sure we’ll never vote for them, had we ever been in any doubt.
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The first story of the exit polls here in Israel seems to be the success of Yair Lapid, the charismatic and populist TV man, who looks set to win 19 seats. Lapid has appealed to a large swathe of the disgruntled secular middle classes, talking a lot about social issues, but not a lot about the peace process. It looks like it still could be good news for Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister. He polled at 31, which is weaker than last week's polls suggested. But I'm told it should be quite easy - though of course this all early speculation - for him to bring Lapid into a broad coalition. And it might be bad for the ultra-orthodox bloc.
From our UK edition
Today's Israeli election does not, it is fair to say, take place in at a moment of supreme hope in the Middle East. Quite the contrary. This is an election whose result seems liable to depress most foreign observers. Bibi Netanyahu is no-one's idea of a moderate but the fact remains that, presuming he is returned for a third term as Prime Minister, he may be one of the more left-wing members of the new Israeli government. Indeed, Netanyahu is liable to be one of the more liberal members returned on the Likud list. Daniel Levy has a very useful primer on the dispiriting 'facts on the ground'. As Levy says: The next coalition will likely find it even harder to pretend to the world that a 2009 Netanyahu speech in which the phrase "two states" was uttered is a genuine policy commitment.