Tag Archives: palestine

The story of Israel is possibly the world’s oldest and saddest. It stretches back Millennia to God’s land deal with Abraham and encompasses wars, slavery, a long and bitter diaspora, pogroms, and the Holocaust.

And that is just the Jewish side. On the Palestinian side (or if you prefer, Arab), there is colonialism, wars, displacement, refugee camps, unemployment, and their own diaspora.

But let’s start with the Jews and relatively modern history. In 1917 the British government issued the Balfour Declaration which set aside the British mandate of Palestine (as it was then known) as a homeland for the Jews. But there was a proviso, Jewish rights were not to be realised at the expense of the resident Arabs.

This obvious contradiction led to The Israelis fighting against the British and Palestinian Arabs for the right to create their own state.  In 1948 they succeeded and emerged as underdog heroes; rising from centuries of discrimination and the horrors of the Holocaust. However, the tactics they used to achieve their political success was terrorism.

When the infant Jewish state defeated the Arab armies in 1948, 1967, 1956 and 1973 its leaders morphed from terrorists to soldiers. Now they were heroes carving a modern successful nation out of an arid wilderness.

But there are two sides to every story. If the Jews are the most oppressed people in 3,500 years of history then the Palestinian Arabs are possibly the most oppressed in modern history.

It is true that in 1947 they were offered a separate Palestinian state in an UN-partitioned Palestine. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight they should have accepted the deal. But at the time they saw no reason to give up the land that their families had lived on for centuries. The Jews said their God had given them the land. But the Jewish God was not their God.

In fact, it was not the Palestinians themselves who fought in 1948. It was mainly the Arab states with the help of poorly equipped and ill-trained Palestinians. The Arab states were more interested in an anti-colonial war to stop the establishment of a Western outpost in the Middle East than they were in upholding Palestinian rights.

The ongoing debate over anti-Semitism within the British Labour Party plus Israel’s planned annexation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has revived old memories of a visit to Israel.

The year was 1976. I was invited as a guest of the Israeli government.

The reason for my invitation was that I was a young (27) American recently appointed diplomatic correspondent. The Israeli government regarded – with some justification – the bulk of the British foreign affairs writers as a pro-Arab write-off. But an American-born diplomatic correspondent at the heart of the British journalism establishment had the potential to be a real coup.

They were, in theory, right. Americans imbibe pro-Israel sentiments at their mother’s breast. This is probably the result of the Jewish lobby, Holocaust guilt, Biblical teachings, Israel’s democratic government in a sea of absolute monarchies and dictatorships and, finally, Israel’s geostrategic position in the oil-rich Middle East.

When I arrived in London, I, like most of my countrymen, was pro-Israeli. When I stepped off the plane at Tel Aviv I was still pro-Israeli. And for the next few days the Israelis worked hard to confirm my opinion. They set up interviews with Teddy Kollek, the charismatic mayor of Jerusalem, foreign minister Yigal Allon, scandalous Mandy Rice-Davies who had set up a couple of night clubs in Tel Aviv, and even organised a dinner date with the talented, beautiful and young prima ballerina of Israel’s state ballet company.

To make certain that I travelled safely from A to B the Israeli foreign office provided an air-conditioned limousine and a young Israeli diplomat to keep me out of trouble, answer questions and entertain me. He was charming – until about halfway through the trip.