The worst racism in Europe has always been anti-Jewish racism or antisemitism when for hundreds of years Jews suffered all types of discrimination: theft of their property, expulsion from homes and countries, violence, pogroms (‘devastation’ in Russian, in reality massacres) and ultimately an industrial style genocide of about 6 million people in the 1930/40s. (Arabs are also Semites so etymologically ‘antisemitism’ could also refer to them, but it is never used that way ever since ‘Antisemitismus’ was created as a German word in the 19th century.)
ANTISEMITISM AND POLITICAL FACTORS
Extreme right fascists consider Jews not ‘real’ French or Russians or whatever, thereby ‘polluting’ national purity with Nazi racial laws defining Jews as ‘sub-human’ Untermenschen. Since some Jews were prominent in the theory and practice of the Bolshevik Revolution (Marx, Trotsky etc) they were all said to be communists, but at the same time controlled international banks like the Rothschilds. Jewish-communist-capitalists supposedly menacing civilisation was a constant theme in Hitler’s speeches; Stalin took out the communist aspect and made similar speeches particularly towards the end of his life.
In reality as opposed to theory, both political extremes of right and left are antisemitic. The Nazi Party full name was the ‘National Socialist Party of German Workers’ and many political fascists like Mussolini started political life as socialists. Theoretical communists like Lenin or Stalin killed, tortured and imprisoned those against or suspected of being against their version of communism and communist ideology has led to millions more deaths even than fascism. The only difference is that communism starts with an agreeable theory that everyone is equal whereas fascism starts with the disagreeable theory that they are not.
Extreme right antisemitism still exists, but is now relatively marginal compared to the extreme left whose political philosophy includes detesting Western civilisation, historically based on a Judeo-Christian heritage. Antisemitism is widespread in the UK Labour Party, in European Socialist/Communist/Green Parties and now even in the US Democrat Party. All these political groups have alliances with Western Islamists as seen by their joint-participation in endless anti-Israel demonstrations. Of course, the anti-Israel left categorically refuse being described as anti-Semitic, loudly proclaiming that they cannot possibly be racist believing in absolute equality for everyone. However, in respect of Jews, some people are clearly “more equal than others” (Orwell) so they claim to be merely anti-Zionist. Jews unlike other peoples, apparently do not have the right to their own country and Israel should be destroyed as an evil and illegitimate colonial regime created by Europeans and which involved stealing the country from Palestinian Arabs.
This is an absurd rewriting of history, but to quote Orwell again, “he who controls the past controls the future; he who controls the present controls the past.” If historical events are completely rewritten, those doing so justify their views today because of a false historical narrative. In historical fact as opposed to rewritten myth, as the Bible relates, archaeologists have proven and as all serious historians agree, Jews have lived for over 3000 years in the Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judea. These ancient lands largely correspond to what is now the modern State of Israel, a country absolutely legal under international law, being explicitly recreated by the UN as a Jewish homeland in 1947. Recreating Israel was rejected by Arab neighbours at the time, is still rejected today by some Arab countries as well as by Western Islamist-left political parties.
Historically, Arabs come from Arabia and Jews come from Judea, it’s not complicated and the real history is that the Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judea became provinces of the Roman Empire by conquest around 64 BCE. Jewish-Roman wars from 66 to 135 CE eventually led to all Jews being expelled from the region thus starting a 2000 year Jewish ‘diaspora’ or dispersion. About the year 30 CE, Jesus (or Christ for Christians) was executed for rebellion, along with many other Jews refusing to pray to pagan gods such as Roman Emperors. In 136 CE the Romans renamed Israel and Judea as ‘Syria Palaestina’ to remove the historical Jewish connotations, the origin of ‘Palestine’ being the Philistines, literally a ‘migrating’ people originally from Crete. ‘P’ as in Palestine does not even exist in Arabic, Palestine is never mentioned in the Koran and Arabs living there are ethnically Egyptian, Syrian or Arabian. Palestine as a distinct country has never existed and the so-called ‘Palestinian people’ cannot refer to Muslims alone for the obvious reason that Islam was created 600 years after the Roman invention of the name.
The fiction that Palestinians constitute a distinct Arab and Muslim people was a myth created after the Israel-Arab war in 1967 by the Soviet Union and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and was done for 2 reasons: 1) the Arab countries and the PLO came to the conclusion that it was unrealistic to defeat Israel in a conventional war despite 3 attempts in 1948, 1956 and 1967 so Israel as a concept had to become illegitimate; 2) Israel’s principal ally was (and still is) the USA and Soviet policy during the cold war was to oppose US influence in the Middle East and elsewhere by denying Israel’s existence, thus attracting support from both Arab and ‘non-aligned’ countries. (This was a ‘volte face’ by the Soviet Union who had been the first country to recognise Israel officially only 3 days after Israel declared her independence.) This Soviet policy of non-recognition of Israel continued until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and was imposed on satellite communist countries in Central/Eastern Europe. Replacing the Soviet Union, Russia changed policy, the newly independent former Soviet bloc countries also and all these countries now have diplomatic relations with Israel and some are among Israel’s closest allies.
2 events influenced what became modern Israel and the Palestine region:
1) the defeat of Germany and allies in World War 1 in 1918 led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Much of this former Empire became modern Turkey and elsewhere Christianity was re-established in Romania and Bulgaria. The League of Nations mandated the British and French governments to administer Ottoman regions where nation states were inexistent and in 1920, Britain was given various territories including Palestine, a poor and undeveloped desert with small populations of Jews, Christians and Muslims. Immediately and probably illegally, the British gave 72% of this mandated territory to Arab Hashemite family tribes to thank them for their support during World War 1. This territory became the Kingdom of Jordan in 1921 where most Palestinian Arabs now live.
2) the emigration of (mostly) European Jews to Palestine from about 1880 to 1940 with the double objectives of recreating a Jewish homeland and escaping persecution at home. This emigration was encouraged by the Balfour declaration in 1917, named after the British Foreign Minister, promising Jews the right to recreate their national home in (all of) Palestine. However, many Arabs in Palestine objected, attacking and sometimes massacring the arriving Jewish immigrants. No doubt thinking of oil supplies and in some cases for reasons of antisemitism, the British changed policy and reduced the quota of Jews allowed into Palestine to almost zero by the 1930s with many trapped in Europe becoming victims of the Nazi genocide. (Ironically, the arrival of the Jews who did manage to emigrate to Palestine led to economic development and Arab immigration from surrounding countries looking for work.) Exhausted by World War 2, the British abandoned their mandate in 1947 and the new United Nations (UN) agreed to partition the 28% of Palestine not given to Jordan into Jewish and Arab sections. This idea was very reluctantly accepted by the Jews who pointed out that all of Palestine should constitute the new Jewish homeland as per the Balfour Declaration and more importantly as agreed by the previous and unmodified League of Nations San Remo agreement of 1923. (Under international law, agreements were automatically transferred from the League of Nations to the new United Nations unless modified or cancelled.)
Despite this, the UN’s 1947 ideas were not accepted by the Arabs and seeing no possible agreement after years of violence, the Jews in Palestine chose the biblical name of Israel and declared their independence unilaterally in May 1948 on this remaining 28% of Palestine outside Jordan. 5 surrounding Arab countries invaded literally the next day with the intention of “driving the Jews into the sea” and Palestinian refugees today are descendants of these Palestinian Arabs who left during this 1948 war. Also contrary to rewritten history, these Arabs mostly chose to leave rather than being obliged to do so, the Arab countries being so sure of victory that Arabs living in the area were told to get out of the way of the invading armies and return home later. Unexpectedly, Israel was not destroyed at birth although it lost much of the 28% of Palestinian territory that it claimed and 700 000 Arabs who did leave found themselves homeless around the ceasefire lines. 150 000 Arab Palestinians stayed during the 1948 war proving the point that they were not all obliged to leave and their descendants are now Arab citizens of Israel, numbering about 1,9 million or 20% of Israelis.
This situation of Palestinian Arabs should be compared to about 850,000 Jews who lived in Muslim countries in 1948 when Israel was created. These Jews were either genuinely thrown out or left in circumstances where they had no choice like German Jews in the 1930s. They have restarted their lives elsewhere usually in Israel or often in France since many lived in previous French colonies in North Africa. Otherwise they live today in the USA, Canada and the UK although small numbers can be found almost anywhere. These Jews were never given any help nor a refugee status by the UN and no refugees anyway in the world have ever been given the permanent refugee status of the Palestinian Arabs. This special status can be legally transferred from generation to generation meaning the original Palestinian Arabs displaced by the war now represents about 5 million. Jews today in Muslim countries are insignificantly few, Christians are not numerous either and many are leaving because of (sometimes violent) discrimination, civil wars, collapsing economies, corruption and other reasons typical of many Muslim countries.
The key question in this debate is that If Israel is so bad, why didn’t the Palestinian (now Israeli) Arabs emigrate to any of the 22 surrounding Muslim countries after 1948? The true, if politically incorrect answer is that they don’t want to as they live better in Israel than elsewhere. As far as those who did leave and became refugees, no Muslim country has ever seriously helped them and they still suffer enormous discrimination living in Jordan and Lebanon where they are prohibited from many jobs, unable to buy land and usually refused nationality. When they protested too much and created militias threatening Hashemite power, they were massacred by the Jordanian army in 1970 and were partly responsible for the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s. Arab-Muslim solidarity is as much a myth as European solidarity before 1945.
The pro-Palestinian Arab view claims a supposed ‘genocide of Palestinians,’ an odious allegation against Jews who have suffered a real genocide in living memory and a statistical absurdity in view of the vast increase of the Palestinian Arab population since Israel was recreated. The other argument endlessly repeated including in the Western media, is that Israel ‘illegally occupies Palestinian territories,’ but this is also completely untrue. Following the Arab refusal to accept a division with the Jews of the 28% of Palestine that was left after 72% became Jordan, the so-called ‘occupied territory’ has always been legally disputed, so by definition it cannot be illegally occupied. As seen, Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence led to the invasion by surrounding Arab countries and the territory in dispute was first occupied by Jordanians until 1967 and the Israelis since. (This Jordanian occupation was even opposed by the Arab League pending a settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute and was never recognized by any country except Pakistan and bizarrely by the United Kingdom. Jordan finally accepted in 1988 that they had no claims to this territory.) International law allows any country to take measures to defend itself including occupying territory and Israeli presence beyond the 1948 ceasefire lines began precisely when Israel was threatened again with destruction in 1967. Israeli presence increased further after yet another Arab attack in the 1973 war and although various UN resolutions do indeed demand an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied after the 1967 Arab-Israel war, this is only and specifically on condition that secure and permanent borders are established and Israel is recognised by all its neighbours. This has never happened with some of Israel’s neighbours still considering themselves at war and calling for the destruction of Israel completely. Realpolitik led Egypt and Jordan came to the conclusion that they should recognise Israel so permanent borders have been established with them along with (cold) peace agreements.
Palestinian Arab politicians say in English and French for Western audiences that peace with Israel is possible based on the pre-1967 borders, but as seen, there were no borders pre-1967, simply ceasefire lines from the previous war in 1948 and another in 1956. For Palestinian politicians, there is no suggestion of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state and to add to their hypocrisy, they also demand that their new state will be judenfrei (no Jews) to the quote real Nazis when Israel has a 20% Muslim population. Palestinian Arab politicians say in Arabic that their real objective is to destroy Israel completely. Those disbelieving this should consider why Palestinian Arabs not only refused the 1947 UN proposal for the division of the remaining 28% of Palestine, but have also refused several similar offers since. Those still unconvinced can study the PLO logo showing a new State of Palestine where Israel does not appear; they can read geography textbooks in Palestinian Authority schools where Israel does not exist on the maps; they can think about the slogan “from the (river) Jordan to the sea, Palestine will be free” and decide whether the Jewish state of Israel will exist afterwards. (Iran and its proxy allies, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza along with Hezbollah in Lebanon do not even pretend that Israel should exist. Israel should be removed by force and all Jews massacred, either in the region or the whole world.)
ANTISEMITISM AND RELIGIOUS FACTORS
The religious origin of antisemitism was historically Christian with the invention that Jews killed Jesus and that the whole Jewish people were both collectively and individuality guilty of deicide since they never accepted the divine nature of Jesus as the Christ (Messiah in Greek.) Christian Monarchs considered Jews as possessions like cattle to be used as they wished and locked them away in ghettos. In the Russian Empire, Jews were forbidden from living in most regions so as to avoid contact with Christians. In much of the Christian Europe, they had to wear special distinctive clothes and kept away from ‘contaminating’ Christians rather like witches supposedly exercising evil spells over the general population. Jews were supposed to have killed Christian children for their blood to make bread during Passover (!) and poisoned wells to kill everyone. This appalling blood libel was repeated at the European Parliament in 2016 by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas with reference to poisoning Muslims. After going viral, the claim was withdrawn with half-hearted apologies 2 days later, but almost as bad was the applause from some Members of the European Parliament. (Mahmoud Abbas’ Doctoral thesis in Moscow in 1982 claimed that Zionists wanting to re-establish the modern State of Israel worked with Nazis in the planning and carrying out of the Jewish genocide.)
Jews were massacred by Crusaders on their way to and from Jerusalem trying to reestablish Christian control from Muslims who had invaded and occupied the region in the 7th century CE. Unless they converted to Christianity, a choice not always available, Jews were expelled from most European countries starting in England in 1290 and copied elsewhere. These expulsions varied from a few years in parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to 450 years in Spain, but Jews were eventually allowed back into Europe for 2 reasons:
1) a people spread all over the world had diaspora contacts that helped develop trade. In Europe, Jews were forbidden from owning land so not farmers, forbidden from joining guilds so not artisans, forbidden from universities so excluded from most professions, forbidden from the military since considered as disloyal so apart from commerce not much was left. They were allowed them to collect tax since Christian Monarchs did not want the unpopularity; they were encouraged to lend money, an activity forbidden to Christians, but with absolutely no guarantee of repayment. Otherwise, most Jews were usually very poor simply buying and selling a limited number of products in local markets, but a few had international commercial contacts that Europe’s Christian Kings found useful. (During their expulsion, many Jews settled in Muslim countries in North Africa or in the Ottoman Empire where they were tolerated and generally better treated for the same commercial reasons.) The prejudice continues suggesting that Jews are only interested in money and are always rich and somehow control the world financially and politically. The infamous and invented ‘Protocoles of the Elders of Zion’ in 1905 about a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world was used by Russian Tsar Nicolas to shore up his régime by blaming Jews for everything wrong in Russia at the time. It led to anti-Jewish pogroms, was believed by Hitler who used it an excuse for the Nazi genocide and more recently was believed by Osama bin Laden. Islamic terrorists justify their acts on this basis and revere the book almost as much as the Koran.)
2) the schism in the Christian church in 1054 CE between the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodoxy, followed by the Anglican and Protestant movements in the 16th century led to religious wars between Christians that lasted for centuries. One consequence was a view that the established Catholic church in Europe was perhaps not 100% correct on everything and that other religious believers should be allowed. Since Jews had lived in Europe before Christianity even developed they were the obvious group and France was the first European country to grant Jews full citizenship after the 1789 Revolution. Other countries followed, Jews legally became full citizens throughout Europe in the 19th century even if persecution and discrimination against them continued and still does.
Anti-Semitic dogma was officially abandoned by the Catholic church in 1962 and is only believed today by a small minority of Christians of any denomination. However, some church leaders continue with anti-Israel rhetoric, showing nauseating double standards when attacking Israeli policies, but not criticizing much worse behaviour in Muslim countries even where Christians are the victims. Also too many Christians continue with anti-Jewish prejudice about money or even Jewish responsibility for killing Christ. The ‘good news’ is that Evangelical Christians believing in a more literal interpretation of the Bible are big supporters of Israel and not anti-Semitic. The Evangelical movement is growing in many parts of the world, notably, but not only in the USA. The worst Christian anti-Semitism today comes from ‘fringe’ churches, not affiliated to the mainstream Catholic or Orthodox denominations.
For Muslims there are 2 issues: firstly, some Koranic texts call for the murder of Jews specifically or of infidels generally including Christians, apostates and non-believers. Fortunately, the vast majority of Muslims choose not to kill infidels, but some Islamists do and precisely quote Koranic texts as their justification. (Violent texts also exist in the Bible, but are related to self-defence and wars.) It should be said that some Koranic texts are contradictory since there are also texts allowing Jews, Christians and other ‘people of the book’ to practice their religion in return for a secondary ‘Dhimmi’ status of limited rights, extra taxes, regulations about place of living etc. As seen Jews were often historically better treated by Muslims than Christians and they were accepted (with restrictions) in Muslim territories after being expelled from most of Christian Europe in the Middle Ages.
The second issue relates to one of the fundamental bases of Islamic faith according to which the world is divided into Dar al-Islam or ‘territory of submission to Allah’ and Dar al-Harb ‘territory of war.’ The objective is that the whole world becomes Dar al-Islam by ‘jihad,’ not necessarily by violence, but better defined as a ‘struggle’ or ‘striving’ that can be spiritual, by persuasion or indeed by military conquest. Islamic doctrine also says that once a territory becomes Dar al-Islam by one of the methods just mentioned, it can never be given back to the previous rulers. Therefore, Muslims must deny the existence of the modern Jewish State of Israel since what is now Israel had already been conquered by them in the 7th century. The same logic applies to Spain, Portugal, regions in South-West France and South-East Europe, also historically conquered by Muslims, but realpolitik applies. These countries and regions are not in the spotlight like Israel, being further from Islam’s origin in Arabia and not containing Jerusalem, considered by Muslims as the city of Mohammed’s ascension to heaven and the 3rd most important city after Mecca and Medina.
WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE?
The theoretical State of Palestine is recognized by 138 countries, almost all dictatorships of various kinds and the Israeli position against this idea is supported by 50 countries, almost all Western style democracies. This is an unsurprising division and legally Palestine does not exist since unlike Israel, it has never been recognized as a country by the UN, simply having observer status even if UN organisations like the World Health Organisation lists Palestine as an independent country. EU Member States do not recognise Palestine either except Sweden who decided to break ranks with the official EU policy being that any second Palestinian Arab state (after Jordan) comes into existence only following negotiations and agreement with Israel. There have been no serious negotiations for years despite the promises made during the Oslo accords in the 1990s that were supposed to set the path for a mutual and comprehensive peace. More resolutions criticize Israel at the UN than all other countries in the world together, but dictatorships get little criticism and the 56 Member Countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, (OIC) none of which could be called democracies, gets no criticism at all. The UN’s so-called Human Rights Commission’s current 47 Member States includes perhaps 10 democracies, with the majority being shining examples of Human Rights such as Eritrea, China, Cuba and Pakistan. The UN is realpolitik par excellence not morality.
Of course, it is not anti-Semitic to criticise specific policies of Israeli governments and Israelis themselves with their own open media do that perfectly well all the time as seen in the news every day; however, it is anti-Semitic to apply discriminatory and racist opinions only applying to Jews or Israel that are not applied elsewhere. This includes agreeing with genocidal governments or movements (Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas etc) wishing to destroy Israel or to kill all Jews anywhere. It is anti-Semitic to claim that Israel is a racist and fascist state practicing apartheid when the Muslim minority population have identical legal rights as the Jewish majority, have absolute freedom of religion, access to all universities, to all professions and become military generals, Supreme Court Judges or less seriously Miss Israel. Israeli Arabs have representatives who are Members of Parliament and an Israeli Islamist party joined a recent Israeli coalition government. It is playing with words to pretend not to be anti-Semitic, but simply anti-Zionist when promoting a Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) agenda targeting Israel alone in the world. Israel is not a perfect country, nor is any other, but it is a functioning Western style democracy as proved by the Muslim (and Christian) minorities happy to stay and by large numbers of illegal immigrants trying to get in, something again ignored or unknown by most media.
Despite this, those on the extreme left pro BDS often describe Israelis as Nazis, a deplorable description, but regrettably often used by the Western left where anti-Israel or blatant anti-Semitic sentiment has become ‘fashionable.’ Academic institutions and so-called intellectuals are often among the most anti-Semitic as was seen in German Universities in the 1920s before Hitler and the Nazis even came to power. This continues today in the US and other Western universities where pro-Israel speakers are simply de-platformed by university authorities for reasons of anti-Semitism dressed up as a fear of public disturbance. Sometimes pro-Israel speakers are invited and actually allowed to give their opinion, (big deal!) but their speeches are either boycotted or violently disrupted. The latest hysterical woke nonsense typical in academia claims that white people (Jews) are guilty of racism against black or brown people (Arabs.) Quite apart from the absurd theory of systemic racism, itself a racist idea, there are many black Jews from Yemen, Ethiopia etc and Arabs are rarely black or brown so the stupidity of this view hardly requires rebuttal. Israel is simply a soft target as a minuscule country that defends its culture and commits another unpardonable sin for many being an important ally of the USA. A BDS campaign is unlikely against China about Tibet, Hong Kong, the illegal occupation of islands in the South China sea, creation of new artificial islands for military bases using slave labour, political prisoner re-education camps or the dreadful treatment of Uighur Muslims.
Although there have been about 80 000 victims in various Arab-Israeli wars since 1947 (about 25 000 Jews and 55 000 Arabs), about 5 million Muslims have been killed by other Muslims in endless regional conflicts during the same time, something under reported by the Western media. The Syrian civil war has claimed over 500 000 victims in the last 10 years and another ongoing war attracting little attention is between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. A long list of terrorist movements (Islamic State, Al-Qaïda, Boko Harem, Taliban, Moudjahidin, Front al-Nosra, Muslim Brotherhood etc) wage wars against official governments in the region with the Israeli-Palestinian issue a relatively unimportant secondary issue. It attracts disproportionate attention, partly because the media is free to report from Israel, partly because it is easy to blame all these problems as Israel’s fault with the false Palestinian narrative. In reality, there is no possibility of an agreement on the Israel-Palestinian dispute when Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is not recognised, nor is this issue the “key to peace in the Middle East.” The inconvenient truth remains that even if a solution could be found, it would make no difference to all the other conflicts in the region which are between Muslims since there are almost no other religious groups present. Blaming Jews or indeed Christians when Muslims kill each other is like blaming Jews or Muslims when Christians killed each other as they did in European religious wars for centuries.
Geopolitics concerns defending interests and realpolitik requires being realistic and considering what is practical to achieve objectives. If politicians find it in their interests to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East, then they will continue to do so. In purely electoral terms, how important is the Jewish population in the Western world compared to its Muslim population? This is cynical realpolitik at its worst leading many people to feel that politics is indeed a dirty game. It always was as anyone who has read about political manoeuvering in Ancient Greece or Rome or anywhere can confirm. Machiavel did not discover much new when writing in the 15th century. The USA and UK chose political and military alliances with the unspeakably evil Stalin in their attempt to defeat Nazism in World War 2, but at least it was in a good cause. The good cause in allying with Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah as some do in the West today is more difficult to understand.
Someone once said, “if Israel had oil and the Arabs had oranges, the Middle East would be a different place” and in the 1960/70s, pressure from the Arab led OPEC oil cartel meant that (West) European countries led by France followed a strongly pro-Arab foreign policy. During the 1973 ‘Yom Kippur’ war launched on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, European governments claiming to be neutral decided to freeze the sales of weapons to Israel despite the fact the weapons had already been paid for and about to be delivered. They also refused the US the right to fly over European airspace when airlifting weapons to their Israeli allies, a US policy decided despite Soviet opposition in the height of the Cold War. Fortunately for Israel, Portugal broke ranks and allowed the planes to refuel in the Azores, the Portuguese islands off the African coast. This airlift changed the course of the war and the Arab armies were defeated again.
(At the start of the Yom Kippur war Israel was completely unprepared, not believing intelligence reports about the probable Arab attack and with most politicians and generals praying in synagogues. After 2 days it looked as if Israel would be destroyed so Israel then informed the Americans that if necessary, they would defend themselves using nuclear weapons. This was never confirmed, but it is considered an open secret like the Israeli nuclear defence capacity itself which was originally provided by France in the 1950s when French foreign policy was pro-Israel.)
Today, OPEC is less important since various important oil producing countries not members for political reasons. Israel has found natural gas offshore and exports it to Jordan and Egypt and exports water to Arab countries having a surplus by desalinating sea water, an obvious, but very high-tech solution to water shortages. Tel Aviv has more start-ups per capita than any other city in the world and Israel is an international leader in high technology research in agriculture, telecommunications, military equipment and the pharmaceutical/medical research/health equipment sectors. Boycotting Israel is unrealistic.
The other issue is the Iran nuclear weapons programme, (denied by the Iranians, but believed by Sunni Muslim states) that has led to Saudi Arabia and some Gulf States discussing defence issues quite openly with Israel; to put it bluntly, they prefer Jews in Israel to Shi’ite Muslims in Iran on the purely realpolitik basis of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend; the friend of my enemy is my enemy.” Israel is a major ally of the USA and knows perfectly where its interests lie and is one of very few countries with good relations both with the USA and Russia. (Whether relations with Russia change in view of Ukraine remain to be seen and there is a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia at the time of writing.)
The recent ‘Abraham Accords’ saw Israel establishing diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrein, Sudan, Morocco (and Kosovo in Europe) adding to previous agreements with Jordan and Egypt. The 11 day 2021 war in Gaza was a triple war crime by Hamas terrorists launching indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians and using civilians in Gaza as human shields and storing ammunition in civilian districts. As usual, the ‘progressive left’ in the West became hysterical in their denunciation of Israel defending itself, but interestingly, the Arab street was much quieter than usual. No Arab country broke off diplomatic relations with Israel contrary to previous wars involving attacks from Gaza. A similar war lasting 3 days in 2022 between Israel and Islamic Jihad in Gaza saw exactly the same war crimes as the previous year with children killed in Gaza almost all from terrorist rockets not arriving in Israel, but exploding inside Gaza itself.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas continues to spread his antisemitism by announcing at a meeting in Berlin with German Chancellor Scholz in 2022 that not only he did not condemn the massacre by Arab terrorists of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games, but that Israel was responsible for “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinian Arab population. Israel is supposed to negotiate with people like this…
Israel and Turkey have announced that full diplomatic relations will be restored along with exchange of Ambassadors and direct flights between the 2 countries. The UN, the OIC and the self-hating political left in the West can complain endlessly and uselessly about Israel; realpolitik means the real world continues behind the headlines of the mainstream media whose attention is now more turned towards Ukraine.