A new breed of Israeli academics classify Israel as an ‘ethnocracy’ rather than a liberal democracy, arguing that the institutionalised discrimination against Israeli Arabs, the ‘Judaising’ of public space, the enduring interference of the Jewish Diaspora and Zionist organisations like the JNF in Israel’s affairs, as well as the lack of defined borders and the influence of the extra-territorial settlers who live in the occupied territories, disqualify Israel from being a democracy.

David Grossman, one of Israel’s foremost writers and figurehead for its main peace movement, makes it possible to believe, for a moment, that the Ariel Sharons and Ehud Olmerts are not the real upholders of Zionism’s legacy, merely a temporary deviation from its true path.

The decision of Ehud Olmert to invite Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party into the governing coalition caused a brief and revealing furore. Like many of his fellow politicians, Lieberman harbours a strong desire to see the Palestinians of the occupied territories expelled, ideally to neighbouring Arab states or Europe.

The Middle East, and possibly the world, stands on the brink of a terrible conflagration as Israel and the United States prepare to deal with Iran’s alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel, it becomes clearer by the day, wants to use its air force to deliver a knock-out blow against Tehran. It is not known whether it will use conventional weapons or a nuclear warhead in such a strike. At this potentially cataclysmic moment in global politics, it is good to see that one of the world’s leading broadcasters, the BBC, decided this week that it should air a documentary entitled “Will Israel bomb Iran?”. It is the question on everyone’s lips and doubtless, with the imprimatur of the BBC, the programme will sell around the world.

The message delivered to Condoleezza Rice this week by Israeli officials is that the humanitarian and economic disaster befalling Gaza has a single, reversible cause: the capture by Palestinian fighters of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in late June from a perimeter artillery position that had been shelling Gaza. When Shalit is returned, negotiations can start, or so Rice was told by Israel’s defence minister, Amir Peretz. If Peretz and others are to be believed, the gunmen could have done themselves and the 1.4 million people of Gaza a favour and simply executed Shalit weeks ago.

A mistake too often made by those examining Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories is to assume that Israel is acting in good faith. Even its most trenchant critics can fall into this trap. Such reluctance to attribute bad faith was demonstrated this week by Israel’s foremost human rights group, B’Tselem.

Kadima and the government are in trouble as the Israeli public steps even further towards the right in politics, writes Jonathan Cook in Nazareth Israelis saw in the Jewish New Year on the weekend with a flurry of opinion polls showing that they feel more insecure now than they have at any time over the past 10 years and that they no longer trust the leaders they elected just six months ago. Both results reflect the bitter public mood that has followed Israel’s military humiliation at the hands of Hizbullah over the summer. A survey in The Jerusalem Post revealed that 56 per cent believed Israel was less safe than a decade ago, when the country was recovering from the assassination by a Jewish extremist of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and facing a spate of Palestinian bus bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

In an article article criticising Human Rights Watch for singling out Hizbullah rather than Israel for harsher condemnation of its military actions during the Lebanon war, I made sure to quote the organisation fairly and accurately before seeking to refute its arguments. Unfortunately, in her recent response HRW’s Sarah Leah Whitson did not return the favour.

The trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began more than four years ago. At that time, he drafted the Israeli media into the fray. Local newspapers began endlessly highlighting concerns about the rise of a “new anti-Semitism”, a theme that was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by the muscular Zionist lobby in the US.

Because of the business that human rights defenders are in, they must be held to a standard higher than we demand of others. Unfortunately, one of the best – Human Rights Watch – has failed that test during the war in Lebanon this summer.

During Israel’s attack on Lebanon this summer, Robert Fisk did sterling work debunking the main myths that littered the battlefield. But possibly in an attempt at even-handedness, he also muddied the picture over Hizbollah’s actions and thereby contributed towards the very mythical narratives he sought to undermine.

In a state established on a founding myth – that the native Palestinian population left of their own accord rather than that they were ethnically cleansed – and in one that seeks its legitimacy through a host of other lies, such as that the occupation of the West Bank is benign and that Gaza’s has ended, deception becomes a political way of life.

Israeli scientists have developed a “missile-trapping” steel net that can shield buildings from rocket attack. The Israeli government, it is claimed, could use the net to protect vital infrastructure, while citizens could buy a net to protect their homes.

 The scheme tells us more about Israel’s vision of the “new Middle East” than acres of analysis.



As soon as the guns fell silent on the battlefields of South Lebanon Monday, the knives came out: Israel is in for a lengthy period of bloodletting among its political and military classes following the army’s failure to inflict serious damage on the Lebanese militia Hizbullah in a month-long confrontation. Ehud Olmert, the recently elected prime minister who had hoped to prove that despite his lack of military experience he could fill the shoes of his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, is a certain victim. Although he may cling to power for some time, the question is not whether he will fall but when. Few in Israel appear convinced that the terms of the UN-brokered ceasefire — pushing Hizbullah back from the border and replacing it with an international peace-keeping force and Lebanese troops — were worth the cost in blood or that they will ever be properly implemented.

During Israel’s war against the people of Lebanon, our media, politicians and diplomats have colluded with the aggressors by distracting us with irrelevancies, by concocting controversies, and by framing the language of diplomacy. One example is the “faked Reuters photograph” affair.

It occurred to me as I watched the story unfolding on my TV of a suspected plot by a group of at least 20 British Muslims to blow up planes between the UK and America that the course of my life and that of the alleged “terrorists” may have run in parallel in more ways than one. Like a number of them, I am originally from High Wycombe, one of the non-descript commuter towns that ring London. As aerial shots wheeled above the tiled roof of a semi-detached house there, I briefly thought I was looking at my mother’s home. But doubtless my and their lives have diverged in numerous ways. According to news reports, the suspects are probably Pakistani, a large “immigrant” community that has settled in many corners of Britain, including High Wycombe and Birmingham, a grey metropolis in the country’s centre where at least some of the arrested men are believed to have been born.

A reader recently emailed to ask if anyone else was suggesting, as I have done, that Hizbullah’s rocket fire may not be quite as indiscriminate or maliciously targeted at Israeli civilians as is commonly assumed. I had to admit that I have been ploughing a lonely furrow on this one. Still, that is no reason in itself to join everyone else, even if the consensus includes every mainstream commentator as well as groups such as Human Rights Watch. First, let us get my argument straight. I have not claimed that Hizbullah targets only military sites or that it never aims at civilians. According to the Israeli army, more than 3,300 rockets have hit Israel over the past four weeks. How can I know, or even claim to know, where all those rockets have landed, or know what the Hizbullah operatives who fired each rocket intended to hit? I have never made such claims.

If there were any remaining illusions about the purpose of Israel’s war against Lebanon, the draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a “cessation of major hostilities” published at the weekend should finally dispel them. This entirely one-sided document was drafted, the Hebrew-language media have reported, with close Israeli involvement. The top adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked through the resolution with the US and French teams, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry had its man alongside John Bolton [yet another of Israel’s men, Eds ] at the UN building in New York.

 The only thing preventing Israeli officials from jumping up and down with glee, according Aluf Benn of the daily Haaretz newspaper, was the fear that “demonstrated Israeli enthusiasm for the draft could influence support among Security Council members, who could demand a change in wording that may adversely affect Israel.”

Seconds after the air raid siren fell silent, it came. A deep rumble shook windows and doors and made the earth tremble. This was nothing like the familiar crump of a Katyusha rocket. At the weekend Hizbullah fired for the first time what it calls a Khaibar missile into Israel, creating a deep crater and setting fire to woodland outside Nazareth. According to reports in the Israeli media, the shell was packed with 100 kilogrammes of explosives. The missile can apparently reach up to 90 kilometres; given that Nazareth is only a third of that distance from the border, it was probably fired from deep inside Lebanon.