We need to talk about Israel

It’s like that old saying goes, ‘you wait for one anti-semitism scandal, and then three come along at once’. First was the election of Malia Bouattia as NUS president, whose labelling of Birmingham as a Zionist outpost was quite problematic, then came the four-year-old posts of MP Naz Shah saying that the people of Israel should be relocated to America (okay, more than a little more problematic). Finally, the nail in the coffin for the Labour party’s anti-semitism problem, the former Mayor of London compared the intentions of Israel to that of Hitler. Well. That is very problematic.

This has led to calls for Jeremy Corbyn to address the “rife anti-semitism” within his party, and indeed the left as a whole. Okay, so how do I say this? Ken Livingstone was completely wrong, Naz Shah posted things that should not have been posted, but maybe, just maybe, not being a fan of the state of Israel is not anti-semitic, and has more to do with distaste for its foreign policy and the 50 year occupation than for Jewish people?

One of the principal problems is that the term ‘Zionist’ carries the baggage of centuries of anti-semitic sentiment in the form of the belief that Jewish people are part of some shadowy organisation that controls the world from behind the scenes – obviously this belief is anti-semitic and a hokey conspiracy theory.

It should also be acknowledged that the idea that Jewish spiritual, cultural, and political identity resides in the land they were forced out of – and indeed the idea of creating a state to unite the Jewish people – was in response to the continuous persecution of the Jewish people.

My issue comes with the fact that these anti-semitic allegations may soon become shorthand for any accusations towards the state of Israel, thus denouncing any constructive discussion on foreign policy. Ken Livingstone’s statement comparing Israel’s motivations to those of Hitler was the headline-grabbing statement; however, the rest of his statement was this: “The simple fact in all of this is that Naz made these comments at a time when there was another brutal Israeli attack on the Palestinians”.

It is my personal opinion, and that posed by the three figures mentioned in the first paragraph, that the State of Israel continues to get away with human rights violations that it commits in the name of self-defence in the 21st century.

Politicians must be able to voice valid criticisms of Israel

Here is a quick rundown of those committed in the last 12 months, according to Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International: In a report published in April 2016, it was found that the number of Palestinian children arrested and detained along the West Bank had doubled since October, defying international laws that dictate a parent or guardian must be present, and this came along with reports of child abuse by the Israeli security service towards these children.

In March 2016, it emerged that Abd al-Fatah al-Sharif, who was alleged to have stabbed an Israeli soldier, was executed with an assault rifle after being wounded. This has been re-ordered and a legal case to prosecute the soldier in question for war crimes continues; however, the Israeli forces rarely prosecute any of their soldiers accused of war crimes.

Finally, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched an aerial offensive in Gaza on July 8th, followed by a ground offensive on July 17th. The UN has identified 538 children among the 1563 Palestinian civilians killed.

It is also worth noting that Palestine is not an entirely passive country – there are frequent suicide bombings and stabbings which are attributed to Hamas, meaning they are not blameless in the conflict.

To any normal person, the vocalisation of objections to the murder of children and the violation of human rights should be able to be placed in a public forum without fear of being labelled as either racist or anti-semitic, two of the worst things I could ever imagine being called.

Equally, politicians must be able to voice valid criticisms of Israel, for they are supposedly the ones that could enact some change, make them criminalise torture, hold those responsible for committing war crimes accountable. However, if every time we try to have a constructive conversation about Israel it is shut down by either offensive racial slurs or a reluctance to criticise, then what’s the point?