A vote to save Democracy

I jumped out of my Jeep and tossed a Jaffa orange to a little boy with wide eyes and outstretched hands. Suddenly, he was joined by two boys and a girl, all about the same age as my own children were at the time. They beckoned me towards their village. I walked forward with more oranges in one hand and my loaded M16 rifle in the other.  This was Lebanon in the 1980s. I was a battle medic attached to a specialist infantry unit, based in Sidon and, at that moment, operating in the Shouf Mountains. As I entered their dimly lit home, I realised that it might be a trap. I dropped to the floor. The oranges spilled across the room, and I saw the child’s face in my gun’s crosshairs.  It was not a trap, and I did not shoot.

Going into Lebanon, driving Arafat and the PLO across the Litani River, and destroying much of their fighting capability were objectives for which I had signed up. Remaining in Lebanon for another 18 years was Israel’s own Vietnam. After Sabra and Shatila, when Christian militias were allowed through our lines to attack people we regarded as terrorists, but instead indiscriminately killed almost everyone they encountered, I felt that the legitimacy of warfare had been violated. In an ethical protest, I removed my uniform and demonstrated against what had happened. I then put my uniform back on and returned to Lebanon to serve.

Although I live in London, I have a home, children, grandchildren and a step-daughter in Israel, as well as business interests and many friends. For many of us in the diaspora, the mass murder and terrorism of 7 October 2023 was an event that shook us to the core. On 24 October 2023 I flew from the United Kingdom and drove south towards Gaza to deliver much-needed supplies to those in need. Along the way, I did what I could to support the civilians, families, and soldiers at the front.

Since 7 October it seems like the entire country has been in an entirely understandable collective trauma.  The murderous Hamas not only succeeded in killing, brutalising and wounding many Israelis on that terrible day, but it seems to have been successful in creating even more division in Israeli society – convincing many liberal Israelis, who were previously supportive of a two state solution, that that is no longer a viable option. I find this to be deeply depressing as Hamas’s insidious ideology may succeed in destroying Israel not from without but from within.

Having seen war and violence at close quarters, without in any way seeking to diminish the trauma that terrible day wreaked on the nation, I am convinced that continued conflict is not and never will be the answer.  While the destruction of Gaza in pursuit of every terrorist involved in the events of 7 October possibly could be justified (although why this can be argued as protecting Israel, when it will undoubtedly be an effective recruitment tool to an entire generation of young Gazans) the events in the West Bank that are increasingly broadcast on our screens across the world are seemingly out of control . How come we can defeat Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran and yet not be able to control a few of our own hotheads. Or maybe the government is encouraging them?

When the country is attacked, some people fight and die while others do not. Some pay taxes; others do not. Some build and scale remarkable businesses that change lives. Others demand subsidies for religious study while some of their leaders refuse to accept the legitimacy of the secular Jewish state that provides those subsidies.  Some people interpret biblical stories literally and exclusively and, ignoring the rights of others, demand the right to live anywhere in the country and beyond its legitimate borders. Many of the most hard-line settlers are themselves immigrants yet appear to see no irony in seeking to expel people whose families have lived there for generations. And they are supported by politicians whose primary moral principle appears to be political survival.

While Israel’s external enemies are clear and, in some respects, honest (sic) about their intentions to destroy the Jewish state, the UK Green party included,  the hard reality of history has taught Israelis to believe that their enemies will try to do what they say, and that they must defend themselves so that they cannot be destroyed. This is entirely understandable.  But when continuous warfare becomes a means of avoiding justice, imprisonment and any meaningful political process towards peace or a two-state solution, then we need to recognise the motivation of those in power. If the rule of law is attacked and delegitimised for the benefit of short-termist politicians, and they fail to distinguish between wars of defence and salvation and wars of occupation and dehumanisation, and refuse to confront the divisions within Israeli society, then they are failing the future for a Democratic Israel.

When the extreme and myopic application of distorted religious texts by men pursuing their own deluded ends causes some to resemble those who want to kill Jews, we should recognise the danger. When there is almost no difference between us and them, democracy too will be extinguished by the hatred of theological absolutism.

I believe the only way forward for Israel is to see a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, not a single state that would proscribe Jewish rights to a homeland but two states, connected by rail and road and with a genuine port in Gaza. I want this not only because I would hope it would benefit Palestinians, but primarily because eventually it would benefit Israelis and indeed all Jews in the diaspora. It might not prevent the next war, but more importantly it would turn future conflicts into wars between countries, rather than warfare conducted within one state and across its extended borders, which currently gives the world an excuse to delegitimise the state of Israel and only see the Palestinians as victims and the Israelis as perpetrators, without any nuance, and which increasingly conflates the hatred of the current Israeli government with anti-Zionism, and anti-Zionism with anti-semitism.

I feel it is essential that we need to find a solution that will bring peace to Israel. The longevity of Israeli political parties is rather like that of an ice cream cone in a sauna. But I do know and hear, because they tell me, which parties and interest groups preach hate and harm and need to be removed from the umbilical cord of corrupting public subsidy.

Over forty years since serving in Lebanon, I have renewed my passport and will return to Israel to vote and in doing so try to protect, as much as one old man can, the country’s democracy, and to oppose attacks upon its democracy not only from without but within. To that end, I am hoping to persuade people to vote and to persuade them, if I can, to vote for one of the centrist parties that seeks political solutions before violent ones, that seek peace rather than a continuation of senseless and growing violence.

As Churchill wisely said. Jaw jaw is better than war war.