This week’s letter looks at – arguably – the world’s least solvable political problem.
Dear Don,
I happen to be a member of Kilspindie Golf Club, which sits perched out in the Firth of Forth a few miles just to the east of Edinburgh. Until recently I was responsible for the club’s communications, which included building a new website, as well as checking for errors all the little things any public body sends out. I also sent out the odd general newsletter about nature and other things not particularly golf-related.
In the summer of 2023, I circulated a short biography of (arguably) the club’s most eminent member and past Club Captain, the former UK Prime Minister Arthur J. Balfour, who served as Conservative PM from 1902-05. Balfour, though, is a man far better known abroad than in his own land. In 1917, a group of international politicians gathered to decide on a possible permanent homeland for the Jewish people, resulting in the ‘Balfour Declaration’. Its key sentence stated:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.“ (The underlining is mine)
Balfour knew and feared that this could go wrong, but in 1917, with a collapsing Ottoman Empire and a likely postwar redrawing of the Middle East map, it probably seemed the least bad option. One thing we can be certain of: if Balfour were alive now, he’d have suggested something else.
7th October Hamas Attack and Gaza Aftermath
Israel doesn’t have that large a population – fewer than 10 million – which must have brought the Hamas attack during the music festival on the 7th October 2023 into all the sharper focus. 1200 dead and 250 hostages taken led to a sense of national shock. It’s not relevant that most of the world sees these settlements as being in Occupied Territories rightfully the home of Palestinians. Any military action, especially against civilians, carried out without warning is an act of terror, not an act of war. There can be no excuse for what Hamas did. (An ‘explanation’ is not an ‘excuse’.)
Israel doesn’t have that large a population – fewer than 10 million – which must have brought the Hamas attack during the music festival on the 7th October 2023 into all the sharper focus. 1200 dead and 250 hostages taken led to a sense of national shock. It’s not relevant that most of the world sees these settlements as being in Occupied Territories rightfully the home of Palestinians. Any military action, especially against civilians, carried out without warning is an act of terror, not an act of war. There can be no excuse for what Hamas did. (An ‘explanation’ is not an ‘excuse’.)
In the immediate aftermath, a Ukrainian friend wrote to me expressing solidarity with Israel. I wrote back immediately saying that I thought this would go a very different route from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There was nothing more certain than Benjamin Netenyahu would use the atrocity as an excuse to do something truly dreadful.
What Israel is doing to Gaza at present is truly immoral. As I write this, an entire nation, everyone, is starving to death; if that’s not genocide, I don’t know what is. Nor is it going to get the hostages back any quicker – that’ll only happen with some sort of political deal. Meanwhile, we have to pussyfoot around the Israeli government for fear of being accused of being antisemitic. But it is no more antisemitic to criticise Netenyahu and his thugs than it is islamophobic to say that Hamas are terrorists, or it’s racist to criticise Vladimir Putin’s government.
Balfour was concerned about unintended consequences of his plan. Long-term, I genuinely fear for the Israeli state. At present, they’re by far the most powerful player in the Middle East, and perhaps still might be capable of taking on every other Arab nation at once, as it did in 1967. But that balance of power won’t last for ever: one day, another state will be able to dominate. When that happens, the map of the Middle East will take another spin.
People have long memories. History becomes part of our culture, our identity. I can’t see how anyone will forget – or be allowed to forget – what Israel is doing to Gaza right now. Sure, there was the 7th October, but two wrongs don’t make a right. I’m pretty certain I already know which will linger longer in the memory.
I fear that we just might be seeing the seeds of destruction of the Israeli state being sown here. It won’t happen in my lifetime, perhaps not even in my children’s. But eventually.
Till the next time,
Gordon
Tales from the Heart of the City 