The story goes like this: before 1948, the Zionists/Israelis were saintly; in more recent times, they have grown brutal (or inefficient). This version of history, as implied by Max Hastings in his essay in the Guardian last Saturday, might accurately reflect the radical mood swings of a disenchanted admirer. Whether it serves up historical truth is another matter.
The simple truth is that since before its inception, the Arab world has laid siege to the Zionist enterprise and tried to destroy or badly weaken it, in war after war and terrorist campaign after terrorist campaign, by continuous political delegitimisation, assault and boycott. And that much that is bad about Israel today – insensitivity toward Palestinian suffering, declining school standards, even the growing power of religious parties – is, directly and indirectly a result of this Arab belligerence.
Even today, after two Arab states (Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994) have formally signed peace agreements with the Jewish state, the Arab League – which includes those two countries – is offering Israel a "peace" settlement that must include Israel's acceptance of a mass refugee return ("a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN general assembly resolution 194").
That resolution, of 11 December 1948, which the Arabs universally regard as endorsing the 5 million-odd refugees' right of return, states that "the refugees willing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date". Flooding Israel, with its 5.7 million Jews and 1.4 million Arabs, with the refugees would instantly turn it into just another Arab-majority state (the world already benefits from 23 such states). And that is the goal of the "moderate" PLO and Palestine Authority: Why else do President Mahmoud Abbas and his aides refuse to recognise Israel as a "Jewish State"? Why else do they endorse a "two-state settlement" – but not "two states for two peoples"?
Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in 2006 and took over the Gaza Strip in 2007, is more candid. If its charter of 1988 is to be believed, it simply wants to destroy Israel.
Hastings quotes the young Israeli novelist Amos Oz, whom he met in 1979, as telling him that Israel was "becoming a Middle Eastern society" and hoped that it would not "behave worse than other Middle Eastern societies". In his conclusion, Hastings flatly tells us Oz's "prophecy … has alas been fulfilled".
Israel is far from perfect. Arab citizens suffer discrimination; there is growing polarisation between rich and poor; the army occasionally commits excesses in anti-terrorist operations. But is Israel really just another Middle Eastern country, or "worse"? Does it cut off the arms of thieves (Saudi Arabia), jail homosexuals (Egypt) or deny their existence (Iran)? Does it stone to death adulterers and "fornicators" (Saudi Arabia, Iran)? Is it, like the bulk of the Arab Middle East, a cultural and scientific wasteland ruled by the might of censors? Is it an economic backwater?
Hastings implicitly takes Israel to task – "whatever government is in power in Jerusalem" –for failing to negotiate peace and preferring "its military capability". What of the Begin government, which gave up the Sinai peninsula in exchange for peace with Egypt? What of the Rabin government, which gave up slices of territory for peace with Jordan? What of the Barak government, which agreed to give up the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and 95% of the West Bank in December 2000? What of the Sharon government, which unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in the hope this might pave the way for a resolution?
Hastings delivers the familiar condemnation of the "disproportionality" of Israel's response in 2008 to Hamas's decade-long rocketing of Israel's southern border communities. He speaks of Israel exacting "a blood price from the innocent of a severity which only tyrannies have historically thought appropriate". Does he also condemn the "blood price" or "disproportionality" involved in the second world war allies' ("tyrannies"?) carpet-bombing of Germany's cities – leading to about half a million civilian deaths – that countered the German bombing and rocketing of Britain's cities, which caused 60,000-80,000 civilian deaths?
Countries at war do not normally think in terms of "proportionality". Israel has been at war for more than 60 years – and has acted better than most throughout. The Israeli army chief of staff in the 1982 Lebanon war, Rafael Eitan, was correct when he said, responding to critics, that in terms of combat morality, the Israeli army has steadily improved since 1948. But the evidence that bears that out matters little to those swept up in the (moral) relativism that is so de rigueur in the west today.
Benny Morris