After the Green Party adopted its policy that “Zionism is racism”, Prime Minister Andy Burnham correctly, if belatedly, labelled this “antisemitic”, telling Labour councillors to end power-sharing agreements with Green colleagues who do not reject it. With his customary courage in leadership, the Greens’ Zack Polanski attempted to duck the issue entirely, dodging his own conference to lose the contest for Sir Keir Starmer’s former parliamentary seat, then saying he would have voted against the “imperfect” motion. One is reminded of Brave Sir Robin, from the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail – he who nearly fought the fierce dragon of Angnor, and almost stood up to the vicious chicken of Bristol: “When danger reared its ugly head/He bravely turned his tail and fled”.
Identifying as an anti-racist sits at the core of any Good Person™’s self-image. So too, lately, does a monomaniacal, existential loathing of Israel. This creates an irreconcilable dichotomy, because as every Good Person™ knows, antisemitism is bad – in theory. One must be seen to oppose it, or at least make generic noises to that effect, while avoiding any awkward specifics. But how, then, to advocate for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish majority state?
Enter the fashionable ruse, deployed in the Green motion, of the one-state solution. Simply place the Jews and Palestinians together, in one big, happy democracy. Why, it’s so obvious, it’s a wonder they’ve wasted all these decades attempting anything else. Surely the only thing that has been prolonging the conflict is not furious rejection on the Palestinian side of any continuing Jewish presence in the region, including that the majority of Israeli Jews descended from families ethnically cleansed from the Arab and Muslim world since the Second World War. Nor the poisonous Islamist adoption of Nazi-brand antisemitism. Nor the reciprocal hostility that has undeniably arisen in Israel, feeding the ultra-nationalist Right. No, it’s just that the silly things haven’t tried living in Kumbaya-flavoured unity.
One wonders whether the One-State Solutionists would be so keen on the idea if (a) Jews in this putative federation would likely outnumber Palestinians, rather than vice-versa; and (b) Israel was actually, not purportedly, genocidal towards its antagonists – rather than vice-versa. And when I say one wonders, I mean one does not wonder at all.
Israel exists precisely because Jews can’t trust a non-Jewish majority to protect them, and as evidenced by Hamas’s 2023 pogrom, the only reason a real genocide isn’t happening right now is that Israel has borders and a military.
The one-state solution is a classic example of the abstract utopianism long indulged in by a certain type of leftist, without skin in the game and safely shielded from the consequences, eager to risk catastrophe for others to gratify their own particular ideological fetishes. Call it the Lord Farquaad phenomenon, after the preening princeling from Shrek: “Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
Curiously, no prominent One-Stater has proposed the same remedy for the long and lethal quarrels of the Indian subcontinent. Then again, there are no Jews involved. True, some of the loopiest also seem to think a one-state solution is the answer to Russia’s war on Ukraine, but most would be rightly appalled by the notion.
The number of countries in which Arabs constitute the majority or largest plurality – not including Palestine, whose national status remains unresolved – is 18. The number of countries in which the same is true of Muslims is 50. The number of Jewish majority countries: one.
The One-Stater would have these figures change, respectively, to 19, 51 and zero. When the only country you have set your sights on wiping off the face of the Earth also happens to be the only Jewish majority country, it’s theoretically possible that you’re not indulging a racism you are psychologically incapable of recognising, all the while projecting it onto its target (“Tell me what you blame the Jews for,” wrote Vasily Grossman, “and I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.”) But what are the odds? To adapt an American colloquialism: do the maths.
When words are hammered home
How heartening to see numerous literary luminaries rally to defend Irish novelist Sally Rooney. It is an outrageous attack on free expression for her books to be removed from sale in the UK simply because she promises to channel her royalties to the campaigning organisation Palestine Opinion. If, hypothetically, she had intended to give the money to a proscribed group deploying serious violence for political ends – attacking factories, businesses and even police officers with sledgehammers, say; such an outfit might call itself “Palestine Action” – that would be different. Then these luminaries would be promoting, perhaps wilfully, a puerile falsification of what censorship means. If they furthermore likened her to Salman Rushdie, persecuted, maimed and very nearly murdered by terrorists himself, that would be an extraordinary insult to Rushdie’s suffering and courage in the face of betrayal by so many of his fellow writers.
Thank heavens that is not the case, though, and we do not have to bracket these illustrious authors among those moral toddlers who think that violence they approve of is speech, and speech they disapprove of is violence.
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.