Please note that, in accordance with our established policy on this particular area of international politics, comments will be moderated prior to publication.
Last Friday, we heard David Mencer, an official Israeli spokesman, defending the Israeli government on the BBC Today programme, after increasing settler violence in the West Bank had been condemned by the British Foreign Office.
It was put to him that failure to protect the West Bank Palestinians was a breach of Israel’s legal obligation to protect people in territory where they were the occupying force. Mencer denied that Israel was failing to protect the Palestinians from violence, but went on to say that although he thought the violent settlers were a minority (a few juvenile delinquents), the invading settlers were in effect the true owners of the West Bank, because Abraham had lived and died in Hebron many thousands of years ago, and that conferred on all Jews ownership of Judea and Samaria for all eternity.
I accept, as an atheist, that there are people with very deep belief in the divine intervention in human affairs described in the Bible, and there are no doubt many Israelis who think the way David Mencer seems to. However, it does seem surprising that God intended such open-ended support to people like the Russian immigrants to Israel and the West Bank, who are converts, not descendants of biblical Jews, and are unrelated to Abraham.
Given that the other strand of Israeli thought about the Palestinians – that they are born terrorists, whose only purpose in life is to destroy Israel – has absolutely nothing to do with any God-given property rights, we have to wonder if the innate paranoia engendered by the way Israeli children are educated isn’t simply finding an excuse for what they are doing.
One of the many ironies in the Israeli desire to attack and destroy all its near neighbours is that they claim they want to get people away from their borders who they deem dangerous, and therefore will tolerate no Palestinians or Palestinian state, no-one in Lebanon who objects to Israel, the same in Syria, and the same in Iran. It never seems to occur to the Israeli leadership that the best way to ensure that you are loved rather than hated by your neighbours is to stop treating them like vermin, and to start treating them as people who have their own rights to existence. Pushing back the borders in places like Lebanon simply moves the danger zone to another place.
Paranoia isn’t cured by eliminating the people you are scared of, it’s cured by embracing the real world, in which there are things a militaristic state can’t tolerate, like love. All of us who support the Palestinian people who are living in fear in the West Bank and in squalor in Gaza would like to embrace the scared people of Israel, and say we can love you too. Why not let us do that?
* Andy Daer is a member of the Liberal Democrats in South Gloucestershire.
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29 Comments
You say you want to love the scared people of Israel, but you hardly admit they exist, rather you amplify the “not a real people” dehumanising racist line of the extremists who want to destroy them.
And it is not Israel that has refused time and time again to make peace, it is Palestine and the Iranian proxies that have spread murder and mayhem throughout the region.
I remember visiting Hebron in 1985 while on a two-week visit to the Holy Land, and what I witnessed left a deep impression. At that time, an Israeli ‘settlement’ had been established in the heart of the town that was nothing more than a handful of older building surrounded by barbed wire and sandbags, with Israeli flags flaying proudly for all to see.
That sight was not, however, my main lasting memory – the sight I will never forget was the sight of one of settlers walking in the nearby market wearing his skullcap…he was walking holding a woman’s hand with his left hand (while she was holding a child’s hand) and with his other hand was holding what appeared to be an AK47 or something similar.
I had a deep sense then that compromise over the West Bank was going to be impossible and that the Palestinians would be gradually squeezed out with Israeli settlers taking their place. Sadly the last 40 years has just confirmed this view. It is happening, and will continue to happen, because Western countries in particular are allowing it to happen.
At the very least the Liberal Democrats should demanding trade sanctions against Israel but, I’m afraid, the Party seems afraid to take a principled stand.
Joe Otten 17th Aug ’26 – 1:23pm….And it is not Israel that has refused time and time again to make peace, it is Palestine and the Iranian proxies that have spread murder and mayhem throughout the region….
Let us review the Oslo Agreement;…..The PLO, under Arafat, agreed to give up 78% of their historical Palestinian land in return for just the ”aspiration’ of future negotiations towards an independent state on the remaining 22% of Palestinian land..
What happened was that Israel reneged on its side of the deal.
The Jewish leader who might have held back Israeli expansion (Rabin) was assassinated by a right wing Jewish fanatic who aimed to prevent the fragile peace. In 1996 the rightwing Likud returned to power under the leadership of Binyamin Netanyahu. He made no effort to conceal his hatred of the Oslo accord, denouncing it as incompatible with the historic right of the Jewish people to the whole land of the “god given Abrahamic Covenant of Israel”. And he spent his time as PM in successfully undermining and subverting the accords concluded by his Labour predecessor.
Netanyahu actively supported policy of expanding Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory despite such actions being illegal under international law… Year on year these illegal settlements have been ever increasing and expanding accompanied by ethnic cleansing and the expulsion and murder of Palestinians..
Today Palestinians are barely surviving on the west bank and ANY chance of a two state solution has all but disappeared being replaced by a “Greater Israel”..
Joe, you have excelled in misinterpretation. Israel has alienated almost the whole world. It started badly in 1948 and has continued that route since.
My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and I am proud to stand with the Holocaust Survivor and Decedents Against the Gaza Genocide network on marches along with the increasingly growing Jewish block, who are as sick and appalled as I am about the persecution and elimination of an innocent people. Israel helped to create and fund Hamas to destabilise Palestinian politics. Hezbollah was created because of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
I did a DNA test as my mother was 100% Ashkenazi. I was pleased to have some Canaanite DNA! That is pre the very first invasion and occupation of that land. Many Israelis don’t have any Middle Eastern DNA and most Palestinians do. BUT, that should all now be irrelevant. It does not matter who occupied the land 1, 2 or 3 thousand years ago, what matters is that what Israel is doing is not true Judaism. We are told to care for the stranger in our midst, not to ethnically cleanse them!
Judea and Samaria were actually part of Greater Syria under the Roman Empire.
When Israel was created, despite it’s unfortunate and bloody beginning, there were high hopes for that ‘democracy’. It is Israel that has destroyed that good will. It needs to learn that violence does indeed beget violence and, as the occupying and belligerent power it needs to stop that cycle.
@jana “At the very least the Liberal Democrats should demanding trade sanctions against Israel but, I’m afraid, the Party seems afraid to take a principled stand.”
Party Conference in Autumn 2021 passed a motion which called for a ban on trade with settlements. This was based on an amendment put forward by the Lib Dem Friends of Palestine and there was very little opposition. https://www.libdems.org.uk/conference/motions/autumn-2021/f39
A motion passed at the Autumn Conference in 2024 reiterated this call for a trade ban and went further in calling for a ban on arms exports to Israel. https://www.libdems.org.uk/conference/motions/autumn-2024/f32
The Party Leader, Foreign Affairs team and many MPs and Peers have consistently called on the UK government to implement both policies and of course we were the first major Party in Parliament to call out the genocide that has clearly been taking place.
A fairer complaint is that, while we have been strong in Parliament, we have not communicated our positions clearly to the electorate which has led to us underperforming in local elections in areas with large ethnic minority populations and in towns and cities with universities. The Greens have been less shy. Many Labour Party members (possibly a majority) are dissatisfied with the Government’s stance and our opportunity to attract more members and voters away from Labour has to a large extent been missed. Unless Andy Burnham makes a very radical change the opportunity may still be there for a bit longer.
Of course I don’t endorse settlement expansion, but it is blinkered to focus on this as the driving force of the conflict when Palestinian leaders have never been willing to agree a deal to live in peace alongside Israel; rejections generally each coming with a fresh Intifada to prevent further negotiation. If there is an offer to live alongside Israel in peace and I have missed it, please post a link.
I am of course highly suspicious of anyone (Nathan Cofnas for example) who tries to argue politics from genetics. Obviously the Jewish people exist, and obviously their point of origin is the area around Jerusalem. They are not the only people with that origin so one self-determination should not exclude another.
The spectacular brutality of Oct 7 – forcing people to unlock their phones so their torture and murder could be livestreamed to their families – spoke to the same logic as this article – the Jews are not really a people, don’t really belong here, can be driven away with terror. But this is the driving naivete of the cause. But if you succeed in preventing peaceful coexistence, this doesn’t mean you will win, it may just mean you are killing and dying for nothing.
Joe Otten 20th Aug ’26 – 9:52am…. Palestinian leaders have never been willing to agree a deal to live in peace alongside Israel; rejections generally each coming with a fresh Intifada to prevent further negotiation. If there is an offer to live alongside Israel in peace and I have missed it, please post a link…..
Read the “Mutual Recognition” section of the Oslo Agreement… e.g. How, post Rabin, Israel funded Hamas in direct contradiction of their acceptance of the PLO as “The representative of the Palestinian people”.. The list goes on..
Regarding ongoing expansion… Ed Miliband has issued a rebuke to Israel after it published a tender for construction of a settlement in the occupied West Bank, calling it an “unacceptable and destructive act”.
He said the UK would not “stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution”, as he pledged to set out measures in response to Israeli policies in the coming weeks.
I, for one, won’t be holding my breath…
@Joe Otten, I’m grateful to you for taking the time to comment on my article, which seems to have contained, for you, quite a lot that I didn’t intend – about the Jews not being a “real” people, and that Israeli Jews should be “driven away with terror”. Those were not my words at all, and in fact I said I wanted them to replace hate with love.
There has been further debate in the comments about whose fault it is that the Palestinians don’t already have a state. I think we should all acknowledge that it is convenient for Israel to say “they don’t know what they want, so we’ll have it all”. It seems pretty likely that Israel’s leaders have kept offering deals which they know will be unacceptable to the Palestinians, and as Expats has already pointed out, when Israel had a prime minister who looked likely to conclude a deal with the Palestinians, he was promptly assassinated.
Putting all of the actions of many of Israel’s leaders together, it’s hard not to conclude that they want to get rid of the Palestinians and take their land, whether for genuine religious reasons or not. My original argument was that because Israeli Jews are educated to constantly fear annihilation, they can’t see their neighbours in any other way than as terrifying aggressors, so I would say that lasting peace would simply require Israel’s leaders to stop using the Orwellian tactic of putting the fear into the Israeli public which is the source of their aggression.
@ Joe Otten: you cannot excuse Israel’s behaviour by saying Palestinian leaders “have never been willing to agree a deal to live in peace alongside Israel”. How about:
1- Begin’s rejection of Sadat’s attempt to forge a comprehensive Middle East peace when he visited Jerusalem in 1979 because of his ideological desire for an Israel that stretched from the river to the sea;
2- the failure of the Oslo Accords because Israel refused to admit that East Jerusalem was occupied territory or that the Palestinians were entitled to a state on the entirety of the Occupied Palestine Territory as of right;
3- Israel’s rejection of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative which was accepted by Arafat and reflected the rights of both sides in international law;
4- Even Hamas effectively committed itself to this in its 2017 “Document of General Principles and Policies” although it refused to accord Israel any moral legitimacy.
Remember it was Zionism that brought strife to Palestine. When Israel declared its independence it could only be created by a war of conquest. At the time there was only a Jewish majority in one of Palestine’s sixteen administrative districts.
Guardian Headline ….Burnham to face pressure at Labour conference to recognise Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide…Grassroots groups to urge PM to break with Starmer policy and impose full arms embargo on Israel..
Will he/won’t he?.. But at least the ‘wider’ Labour Party are making forceful overtures for a change to our relationship with Israel..
This party, with it’s long history of fairness and morality, should be leading this change BUT “will we/won’t we?
@miranda “ started badly in 1948 and has continued that route since“
It started with 6 Arab countries invading Israel intent on killing it’s Jewish population
@Simon McGrath – “It started with 6 Arab countries invading Israel intent on killing its Jewish population”.
That is just simply untrue and an outrageous statement. Read the works of Benny Morris such as “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited” and the book edited by Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim “The War for Palestine” https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Palestine-Rewriting-History-Cambridge/dp/0521791391 .
@JSimon McGrath 25th Aug ’26 – 9:14pm
The intention of Zionists, long before 1948, was the establishment of an Israel in line with their “Abrahamic Covenant with god” in accordance with the dimensions specified in Genesis 15:18–21.
The 1937 Ben-Gurion’s (Israel’s first PM) letter should leave no-one in any doubt about that, his “My assumption which is why I am a fervent proponent of a state, even though it is now linked to partition) is that a Jewish state on only part of the land is not the end but the beginning…. This is because this increase in possession is of consequence not only in itself, but because through it we increase our strength, and every increase in strength helps in the possession of the land as a whole. The establishment of a state, even if only on a portion of the land, is the maximal reinforcement of our strength at the present time and a powerful boost to our historical endeavors to liberate the entire country”
Ben Gurion also advocates the ‘expulsion of the Arabs’ (although apologists for Israel’s ambitions try and claim the opposite)
Arguing about 1948 ‘who did what to whom’ is pointless.. Just look at the current map, compared to 1948, and the ongoing expansion of Israel..
I won’t dignify the words of Israel’s security minister (Itamar Ben-Gvir) by writing them here; however, they express the sentiments of Zionists since long before 1948..
Finally, hand on heart, does any supporter of Israel believe that Israel will willingly cede an inch of their current state?
The sad truth about Israel/Palestine is that whenever there has been a prospect of peace or a settlement one side or the other has started firing missiles, lobbing bombs, or shooting at the other side.
I am driven reluctantly to the conclusion that neither side is seriously committed to a peaceful settlement and that the supporters of both sides have no intention of forcing them to come to the negotiating table. Unless and until that changes, this brutal and bloody confrontation will continue and all the world is doing is writing its hands and continuing to supply arms.
Sadly the party is terrified of the zionist lobby yet another issue where we hesitate to do the right thing. A wonderful councillor (who writes here regularly) was suspended by the party for wait for it ‘anti-Semitic ‘ remarks based on saying the labour party is dominated by the zionist lobby after lobbying by the jewish chronicle (you can’t make this stuff up). To say im outraged is an under statement.
Mr Daer is right that the West Bank is regarded internationally as occupied territory, Israeli settlements as unlawful, and settler violence as a serious problem. But much of his wider argument is misleading.
Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, not a Palestinian state, in the Six Day War. His portrayal of Jewish claims as essentially biblical also ignores Jewish indigeneity: Jewish civilisation arose there, ancient Jewish states existed there and Jewish communities remained for centuries. In Hebron, Arab rioters murdered 67 Jews in 1929 following false rumours that Jews planned to seize Muslim holy places.
His claim about Russian “converts” is particularly misleading. Many Soviet immigrants requiring conversion were already ethnically Jewish or of Jewish ancestry but were not halachically Jewish because they lacked a Jewish mother.
Nor is Israeli “paranoia” simply taught to children. Israel has experienced repeated wars, terrorism and 7 October, while Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Iran have all, in differing terms, sought or envisaged Israel’s elimination. Conversely, Mr Daer’s claim that Israel wants to “destroy all its near neighbours” is contradicted by its longstanding peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
His criticism of settlements and settler violence is therefore well founded; his sweeping account of Jewish history, Israeli motives and Israeli security fears is not.
@CarlPierce I am surprised that the moderators allowed your post through, given everything that can be reasonably inferred from your comments about the “Zionist lobby”.
Would you equally say that those Labour politicians who are openly afraid of losing anti-Israel voters to the Greens are in thrall to the “anti-Zionist lobby”?
Is being pro-Israeli – as opposed to pro-Indian, or pro-Palestinian, or pro-Ukrainian – the one foreign policy stance which one cannot adopt without being accused of being part of a ‘terrifying’ “lobby”?
The British Palestinian writer John Aziz is brilliant on this at https://substack.com/@johnaziz/note/c-306817014?r=7xhpk&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action, where he writes: “I’m literally a Palestinian and I’ve had enough of this s***. No, you claiming that Zionists control the world or whatever bull**** conspiracy theory you want to push today does not actually help Palestinians. Yes, the status quo sucks, yes, military occupation sucks. And still. All I want to hear about is real solutions, so there can be peace. No more of this bull**** Israel-hatred.”
Matthew thanks for your opinion. I’m very grateful to the moderators for allowing free and fair debate. To claim there are no lobbies – yes on both sides – defies reality. You know there is a lobby when others try to police what you can say about an issue. The pain and suffering seems incredibly one sided – its about time this is reflected in the media and government policy.
@Matthew Harris 29th Aug ’26 – 11:13am..
May I refer you to my post of 27th Aug ’26 – 8:30am?
A basic definition of Zionism is ” A nationalist movement that supports the right of the Jewish people to have their own independent state in their ancestral homeland of Israel..
Do you agree with that definition and what area would you accept as ‘their ancestral homeland of Israel’? To Zionists it is defined in Genesis 15:18–21.. Should that be the case?
As for your “In Hebron, Arab rioters murdered 67 Jews in 1929 following false rumours that Jews planned to seize Muslim holy places.” Why point that out as unique? In countries as widespread as the UK, Germany Russia, Spain, etc., throughout the ages, there have been far more severe attacks on Jews..
@Matthew Harris, I don’t think Israeli territorial claims, and the desire to expel Palestinians, are essentially biblical, although that is increasingly something we hear from right-wing Israeli politicians. The reasons for the conflict are more complicated, and I said in my article that another element is Israeli paranoia. Manufactured paranoia is what Orwell famously described as the dictator’s way of ensuring that a ‘strong leader’ is what the people want (to protect them from the ‘enemy’), and I see that in Netanyahu’s way of maintaining his power.
No doubt there is real hatred of Jews in the world, including, of course, in Gaza and the West Bank, but I’ve been told that all Israeli schoolchildren are shown photographs of Nazi death-camps at a very young age. There must be a reason for that, and to me it appears that traumatising Israeli children is designed to make sure they grow up believing the world is against them. That makes them want leaders like Netanyahu, to protect them from the Palestinians and others.
I could be completely wrong about that, but I’m simply trying to understand why Israel is locked into what seems like an endless spiral of violence with its neighbours. I’m not trying to denigrate anyone, or score points off people like you. Ancient history is involved, but I think the real issue is what is in the minds of present-day Israelis, and what can be done to change it for the better. The same could be said for the minds of violent extremists in Hamas, but only Israel has the power to end the struggle.
@CarlPierce I don’t think that when black, Jewish, gay or Muslim people draw attention to a comment that reflects a perjorative unconscious bias on the writer’s part that it means that we are trying to ‘police opinion’.
@expats I referred to a massacre of Jews in Palestine (in Hebron) rather than to other massacres of Jews in other countries because it’s Israel/Palestine that we are here talking about.
Zionism began in the 19th century as a movement to create one country in which Jews were a majority and so could not be persecuted as a minority. The original Zionists didn’t even care where that country was or whether or not it it was in Palestine, so long as it was somewhere that was recognised internationally as a sovereign place of refuge for persecuted Jews.
It is absolutely true that Jews (like Palestinians) are among the indigenous peoples of Israel/Palestine. It is equally true that, like many other peoples, they have a national myth about how they came to be in their homeland, which in Jews’ case was written down in those Biblical passages that say that God promised the land to the Jews – which is what religious Jews, Christians and Muslims believe. With no disrespect to people of those faiths, whatever is written in the Bible has nothing to do with what the modern boundaries of the contemporary State of Israel ought to be. How about we start by recognising Israel under its UN-recognised borders and negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state alongside it? That would be my preference.
@Matthew Harris 1st Sep ’26 – 12:06am…..How about we start by recognising Israel under its UN-recognised borders and negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state alongside it? That would be my preference.
Matthew , I agree…. but it’s not me, you nor the rest of the world that has to accept that premise; it’s Israel..
@expats Er, actually, the following countries do not recognise Israel at all, even within its UN-recognised borders, so perhaps they too need to “accept that premise”?
Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Comoros, Cuba, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Venezuela and Yemen.
Plus these major non-state actors: Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Hezbollah, Ansar Allah (the Houthis), and various Iran-backed Iraqi and Syrian militias.
@Matthew Harris 1st Sep ’26 – 6:49pm…
Matthew, As I wrote, “it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks”, so why you seem to think that the Maldives, et al, are an important factor confuses me..
The existence of Israel is a fact; what needs to be sorted out is is her boundaries and her relationship with her neighbours..
As for ‘non-state players’…. just, as in N. Ireland, hard line IRA supporters still refuse to accept the ‘Good Friday agreement, but they have been completely sidelined having lost the support of the majority.. If Palestinians had a viable state so would Hamas, etc.
It is the refusal of Israel’s leadership to even consider such an option that keeps Hamas etc. alive..
Netanyahu’s promise that There will be no Palestinian state.” “Moreover, we have doubled the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, and we will continue on this path.”
that, together with the obscene comments from Israel’s security minister (Itamar Ben-Gvir), ensures the survival of terrorists.. A people with no hope will always be a fertile recruiting ground..
The answer lies with Israel and Israel alone
@expats Why does the rest of the world not matter? Surely the international community has an important role to play in resolving conflicts such as this?
Matthew Harris 2nd Sep ’26 – 2:22pm……@expats Why does the rest of the world not matter? Surely the international community has an important role to play in resolving conflicts such as this?
Semantics! I didn’t say the rest of the world doesn’t matter..I said, But it’s not me, you nor the rest of the world that has to accept that premise; it’s Israel.”
As of September 2025, 157 of the 193 United Nations member states—representing about 81% of the international community—recognise a Palestinian state..
And that recognition hasn’t changed a thing; if anything it has reinforced the “Brave little Israel” narrative supported by many on here..
Only ACTION by the rest of the world can change it.
As of yesterday.. Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in what has widely been condemned as a potential war crime.”
This is my last post on this thread as “words alone will not sway Israel or their supporters”
Matthew, you’re right that the rest of the world could play a role – if Israel would let it. So far they’ve turned down an offer by the Arab League (about two years ago), and have half accepted help from Donald Trump, a man whose ‘peace plan’ could be called half-baked if you wanted to be extremely charitable.
Israel’s current leaders still think that killing everyone they’re frightened of is going to solve the problem Israelis have with their fear of annihilation. Advisors from other countries could point out that that will never work, because eliminating people (including innocent children and babies, because they ‘might grow up to become terrorists’) simply breeds a new generation of Palestinians with a grudge against Israel – unless you exterminate every last one of them, which I don’t think even Smotrich or BenGvir advocate. Foreign advisors, less affected by the emotions swirling round Israel, could tell the Israelis that giving Palestinians a reason to hate them is what is fuelling the ‘terrorism’ they so fear, and that they are creating a feedback loop. They could break that loop by accepting that Palestinians have a right to existence, and a right to a country of their own, now that much of it has been stolen by European Jews ‘returning’ to Israel, a country some of their ancestors may have lived in thousands of years ago.
@AndyDaer Out of interest, I asked ChatGPT for a fact check of your last comment:
There are legitimate arguments here, but also some serious factual distortions.
Israel never accepted the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, but it did not simply dismiss it: Israeli leaders objected to key provisions, particularly on refugees and borders, while at times treating it as a possible basis for negotiations. Nor has rejection been one-sided: Palestinian leaders have also rejected or failed to accept major peace proposals or negotiating opportunities, including in 2000 and 2008, although the circumstances remain disputed.
Claiming that Israeli leaders believe in “killing everyone they’re frightened of”, including babies because they “might grow up to become terrorists”, is inflammatory rhetoric, not an accurate description of Israeli policy.
There is a legitimate argument that occupation, displacement and civilian deaths can fuel radicalisation and perpetuate violence. But reducing the conflict to that feedback loop ignores other causes of Palestinian violence, including Hamas’s ideology, rejectionism, antisemitism and religious extremism.
Finally, describing Israel as land “stolen by European Jews” is historically misleading. Some land was purchased; other territory changed hands through war, displacement, confiscation and occupation. Around half of Israeli Jews are wholly or partly descended from Middle Eastern and North African Jews. And Ashkenazi Jews are not simply Europeans with a speculative ancient connection: genetic studies consistently show substantial Middle Eastern/Levantine ancestry, consistent with the extensive historical and archaeological evidence of Jewish origins in the region.