Re: the Left and Israel

no, wait! where's everybody going?

Oh, suit yourselves.

Anyway...

Re: the Left and Israel, it may be worth saying that there is a genuine misunderstanding in there.

The question is, if Peake wanted to talk about repressive policing, why did she mention Israel?

(NB I am not *asking* this question and will mute anyone who offers an answer.)

What, in other words, does "Israel" mean?

Under what circumstances would somebody think "and it seems particularly telling that somebody's found a link to *Israel* - I'll mention that to clinch my argument!".

From one angle it's simple: there's a spectrum which goes something like
full Netanyahu: Israel = Jewish nation, can do no wrong
Zionist: Israel = Jewish nation, lots to criticise tho
person in street: Israel = Jewish nation
antisemite: Israel = Jewish nation, we hates them we do

If that's the spectrum you're operating on, why would you drag in (and speculate over-confidently about) some Israeli training US police forces may or may not have had? The only hat that fits is the last one.

But that's not the only spectrum.

There's also a Right-Left spectrum which goes
Right: Israel = key ally of the West and bulwark of democracy
person in street: Israel = nation in the Middle East that won Eurovision the other year
Left: Israel = brutally repressive occupier of illegally held lands

I honestly think that a lot of people who give houseroom to the idea of the Left being antisemitic have no idea that this second spectrum exists, or that there's any good reason to hold the 'Left' position on it.

And, absent that information, why wouldn't you default to the first spectrum? People like to make sense of things, and it's not as if people were boycotting Eurovision because they disliked Netta personally.

I'd love to be clever and nuanced about this. I'd love to stroke my lockdown beard and say "we've got to have message discipline" and "appearances are important" and "if people think something's offensive it *is* offensive" and "we can't afford to put a foot wrong" and...

But I'm tired of that shit, and - outside a few quite specific and time-limited circumstances, like election campaigns - I don't actually think it helps.

Remember when Fidel died? Some of us did the appropriate thing, paying heartfelt tribute to a great revolutionary. Others - notably Owen Jones - pointed out that the Right were actually correct in calling Castro a brutal dictator, and stressed that This Was Not What We Wanted.

You know what, Owen? We knew. You know what else? Paying tribute at the death of a great revolutionary doesn't imply you endorse everything the Stalinist bastard ever did, let alone that you want to emulate all those things. Life's complicated like that.

To be fair, it did work, as witness the bucketloads of shit the Right regularly dump on everyone on the Left with the sole exception of Owen J...

what's that, Sooty? it *didn't* work?

Good heavens. It's almost as if the Right weren't playing fair, or something.

To sum up: Israel is a brutal occupier of illegally-occupied land; policing the West Bank has given Israel lots of experience in counter-insurgency, which it shares with police forces elsewhere; lots of people aren't aware of these things; and none of this is antisemitic.

Reinstate Rebecca Long Bailey!