The end of Israel?

Perhaps the least important aspect of Sunday night’s events in international waters off Israel is what actually happened. In the world in which Israel operates, the rights or wrongs of what Israel actually does are irrelevant. Reaction to Israeli behaviour is no longer governed by facts or by rational responses. The country is judged — and found guilty in advance — in the context of a perception on which all right-thinking people agree — that Israel is the enemy of peace.

Whenever Israel acts, the default response is to condemn first and inquire later. That has certainly been the pattern this week.

The pattern is well established. Remember the Jenin ‘massacre’ in April 2002? The condemnation travelled round the world, and became accepted fact before the truth could get its boots on. According to a Guardian leader, the events surrounding Israel’s destruction of suicide bomb-making factories in Jenin on the West Bank during the second intifada were ‘every bit as repellent’ as Osama bin Laden’s attack on New York on 9/11.