The unforgivable failure of liberals to confront anti-Zionists

Ah, but these are unrepresentative extremists, say mainstream liberals. So they may be. But they are extremists whom liberals never confront.

Instead of debate, there is a deep silence and a wilful ignorance.

I must have read tens of thousands of words on the Bondi Beach massacre. And nowhere did I find the normal liberal clichés about the futility of murdering your opponents.

No one said:

“Islamists must understand that violence solves nothing.”

“Hamas should have learned that terrorism never works.”

“All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

I am not mocking well-meaning liberals who want a just settlement for the Palestinians – I am one myself. I am simply saying that in the case of Israel/Palestine they are not prepared to stand by their principles and take on the far left and radical Islam – loudly and consistently.

And not only for the sake of fighting antisemitism and saving Jewish lives.

In any other conflict, the type of people who dominate discussion on the BBC would be saying that terrorism discredits a cause.

They would add that the demand for the abolition of Israel is not just a threat to Jews but has been a provable disaster for the Palestinian cause for over 70 years. Since 1948, when the invading armies of Arab countries tried to destroy the new state of Israel at birth, every attempt to wipe Israel off the map has rebounded against the Palestinians.

From the failed Arab invasions of 1967 and 1973, through the collapse of the Oslo peace process in 2000, to the Hamas atrocities of 2023, each new attack has made the Israeli right stronger.

During the civil war in Northern Ireland, exasperated British negotiators would throw a bitter line at Ulster Unionists.

“The next deal you will be offered will be worse than the last deal you rejected.”

The same applies to generations of Palestinian negotiators.

I read some of the most left-wing journalists in Israel at Haaretz and elsewhere. However many brilliant and well-justified criticisms they make of Netanyahu, I detect a note of hesitation in their writing, as they draw back from pushing their arguments into full-throated approval of the global left.

I can almost hear them saying to themselves: “Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas just want to kill us because we are Jews. It doesn’t matter what we think. It doesn’t matter what we do. They want us dead.

“And the global left, the people who ought to be our allies and comrades, are out on the streets, egging them on with cries of ‘globalise the intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea’.”

Israeli leftists, and indeed all Israelis, are right to be suspicious because the aim of the pro-Palestinian movement is to destroy Israel by shunning all Israeli Jews. As with the killers at Bondi Beach, nothing else matters. The fact that they are Jews is enough.

Consider the extraordinary case of Peter Beinart, an American-Jewish academic and author. He could not be more supportive of the Palestinian cause and has protested long and loudly about what he called the Israeli state’s infliction of “mass slaughter and starvation” on innocent civilians in Gaza.

But that was not good enough. Because Beinart addressed students and academics at Tel Aviv University, the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign forced him to deliver a horribly demeaning apology last month for a supposed failure to show “solidarity.”

Beinart’s crime was simply to speak to Israeli academics and students – the very people who protest against Netanyahu. If the global left regards cooperation with Tel Aviv leftists as an unconscionable sin – because they are Jewish leftists – then the global left is worse than racist, it is stupid.

Needless to add, the briefest glance at the BDS website confirms the folly. It shows that the movement is committed to the absolutist position that Israel must be destroyed – in this case by letting descendants of refugees from the 1948 war return to the country. I think it is safe to predict that the movement’s absolutist demand for the destruction of Israel will fail just as all other attempts in 1948, 1967, 1973, and 2023 failed.

You could write a book on why mainstream liberal opinion cannot make a stand against the Islamists and the far left – indeed, I have written books about it myself.

There are many reasons. Many people are genuinely horrified by the war in Gaza and don’t want to complicate the narrative by tackling Palestinian and Iranian extremism.

The chances of compromise in Israel seem almost non-existent so there is a temptation to be lazy and not put in the hard but necessary work.

Meanwhile, many liberal institutions are genuinely frightened of the far left and dare not risk the accusation that they are colluding with “Zionists” or endorsing “Islamophobia”.

Then there is antisemitism. It is simply naïve to believe that it only exists on the far right and far left and cannot be found in the respectable liberal mainstream.

Fact is, the failure of that liberal mainstream to shout from the rooftops that violence is not the answer, and that compromise is essential, remains shockingly negligent.

If they cannot urge moderation for its own sake, they should grasp that they are playing into the hands of their enemies in the Israeli government.

Would they rather back away than stand by their principles? I am afraid to say, it looks like they intend to do just that.