The other day, travelling on the Met Line, I sat down opposite a student carrying one of those student type over the shoulder bags with badges on it.
I didn’t recognise most of the figures represented, but they looked like the ones my friends used to wear. You know, Debbie Harry, The Clash, Siouxsie of Siouxsie and the Banshees just brought up to date. Only one of the badges was political and you can guess what it said. Yep. Free Palestine.
The whole getup, his clothes, his bag, the buttons was such a cliché that I couldn’t help smiling. But it was, of course, also deeply depressing.
In his recent book When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows, Steven Pinker explains how protests work as co-ordination mechanisms. People follow each other, until small numbers of individuals have spread their views to large numbers of people, each doing what everyone else is.
Every supporter of the state of Israel has noticed this mechanism at work. People with little general interest in world affairs and with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of the history of either the Jews or of Israel or of the Palestinians or of the Middle East have developed strong support for the “Free Palestine” cause.
Whatever that means. Because most of the badge wearers haven’t much thought about whether that slogan means a “Free” Palestine alongside Israel or instead of it. They mostly haven’t thought either about what “free” might mean or how to ensure such freedom.
Yet despite this shallowness, the badges and the slogans are everywhere. Which is very dispiriting. It is not, however, something that we can ignore. Or something that Israel can ignore.
The attitude of the Netanyahu government seems to be that left liberal opinion is predictably wrong and can be overlooked for three reasons. First, because facts on the ground have always been more important than anybody’s opinion. It should never be constrained by anything except its own opinion. Second, because Israel maintains the support of Donald Trump and third, because Israel has the support of the right worldwide.
I too agree that left liberal opinion is often wrong. But I nonetheless think Israel’s strategy is a mistake.
Donald Trump cannot be relied upon. He is only interested in himself and what he thinks makes him look good. He shares the Israeli government’s concern about Iran but he is obsessed with not looking like a loser or being played as a fool. And when he shares Israel’s objectives, his attention wanders.
Even if he could be relied upon, he will, in any case, not last forever. He is reaching the half way point of his final term. After him may well come a Democrat, making liberal opinion on Israel absolutely central. Unless Israel has come to the conclusion that even the position of the US doesn’t matter to it, which would be quite eccentric.
Yet even if Trump is followed by another Republican, it could easily be a much less sympathetic Republican. J D Vance, for instance, is very much against US involvement in Middle East arguments. And he would be much less easy for any Israeli leader to bamboozle.
The support of the right in general has been strong but it would be foolish to believe it will be everlasting. In the US there is already a strong grassroots movement against Israel (and Jews) on the right among young people. In Britain one can see just the beginnings of this attitude coming on shore through the Restore Britain party.
Earlier this week Yair Netanyahu posted on social media that the Falklands belonged to Argentina, suggesting that the Israeli right reciprocates Restore’s feelings and no longer cares about even the British right.
So simply writing off everyone to the left is, while I appreciate the temptation, a mistake. World opinion may not be sufficient to keep Israel safe but it is necessary. We can’t just shrug as the British Labour government turns away from Israel. And we can’t hope to make progress merely by telling them that they are wrong.
The community in this country and Israel itself need to consider the language, campaigns, networks and media necessary to be more successful with left liberal audiences. We can’t just surrender.
And beyond this Israel needs to consider whether, for instance, its settler policy, is compatible with retaining world support and achieving long term security.
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