http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/
Tuesday, 17th November 2009
I have not had a moment until now to post up a comment on Robin Shepherd’s new book about the relationship between Israel and Europe, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel (Weidenfeld and Nicolson). It is a remarkable book by an author with a remarkable history.
Until a short while ago Shepherd, now Director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society, was a senior fellow at The Royal Institute of International Affairs -- commonly known as Chatham House -- in charge of its European programme. After two years he left in bitter circumstances, claiming he had been forced out principally because of his publicly expressed support for Israel – a version of events that Chatham House contests.
"Sir Galahad" By George Frederic Watts, 1862 Oil on canvas 75 1/2 x 42 1/8 inches (191.77 x 107 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachussetts, US
The fact remains, however, that his attitude towards Israel is one that is indeed unsayable within Britain’s foreign policy establishment, because it does not take an Arabist position but starts from the premise that Israel was not born in sin but is a legitimately constituted country legitimately entitled to defend itself against attack – and that the entirely illegitimate and unwarranted attacks upon it emanate not merely from the Arab and Muslim world but from the British and European intelligentsia, which in some ways are potentially just as lethal.
His book is therefore remarkable because it is a work by a member of that foreign policy intelligentsia which actually tells the truth about Israel and the Middle East conflict, and the often disgusting European attitude towards it which is unique in its mendacity and virulence. As he says, the terms and images with which Israel is associated in Europe – ‘shitty’, ‘Nazi’, ‘racist’, ‘apartheid’, ‘ethnic cleanser’, ‘occupier’, ‘war criminal’, ‘violator of international law’, ‘user of disproportionate force’ and so on -- are used about no other state, let alone one that is fully signed up to democracy and human rights for all its citizens, Arab as well as Jew, and are unique in their intensity and relentlessness. And as he says, the difference between the European demonisers of Israel and the likes of Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and David Duke in the US is that the European demonisers have a substantive presence right within the mainstream.
Shepherd wades through this filth and shows how it rests upon egregious falsehoods and twisted thinking. He observes correctly that
‘No-one of any degree of seriousness could claim that liberal-democratic Israel’s human rights record is worse than North Korea’s, China’s or Sudan’s and that it deserves the level of censure it attracts. There is not even the slightest shred of intellectual justification for charges that Israel is like Nazi Germany of apartheid South Africa.’
But of course, people of purported seriousness do subject it to just such censure and make precisely such charges.
He points out that this virulent and unique prejudice against Israel goes across the political spectrum from left to right. He observes that America is not immune from the contagion, and analyses the pathology of Mearsheimer /Walt and their support in the American academy. He cites the 2004 letter from 52 retired British diplomats, which expressed horror at the support for Israel of Bush and Blair, as evidence of the perverse and alarming tendency of such diplomats to sign up to narratives of hatred and deceit, tyranny and dictatorship. Offering a way out of the usual ‘anti-Israel attitudes are not the same as antisemitism’ conundrum, he suggests persuasively that the argument is all but irrelevant because the anti-Israel attitudes on display are bigotry, pure and simple, and all such bigotry is unacceptable. And asking why such perversity is consuming Europe, he suggests that a key reason is the loss of European self-belief. He writes:
‘The sickness here is civilisational. It reflects and draws upon the worst and the weakest in western political culture: its lack of self-belief, its ideological pathologies, its historical traumas, its relativism, its tendency to appease. It has rekindled an old problem which has sometimes appeared in traditional garb but more usually in a fully modernised, neo-antisemitic form in denigrating the most important Jewish project of our time.’
As a result of his experiences, Shepherd now writes a blog principally devoted to commenting upon the frenzy of bigotry against Israel and the Jews in British intellectual life. Shepherd is that increasingly rare phenomenon, a British intellectual of moral integrity. His principled and courageous stance on this, the greatest moral test of our age, reminds us of a Britain that is still there but alas fast disappearing -- a Britain that embodied decency and fairness and intelligence and a quiet but unyielding determination to stand up for right against wrong and face down the bullies and the bigots. Shepherd’s book is a must-read for all who want to understand this troubled continent of Europe and its British satellite (and cultural leader), and just how and why it is failing the civilisation test once again.
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