When I was foreign minister the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council directed a furious effort at trying to block even routine criticism of settlements, as if this were more vital than advocating a two-state solution or opposing boycotts of Israel. Settlers themselves shatter all sympathy, as on the ABC’s Four Corners on Monday when Daniella Weiss stated they deliberately had occupied land to block the creation of a Palestinian state because “this land was promised to the Jewish nation by God”.
In Louis Theroux’s BBC documentary The Ultra Zionists, religious settlers declared Palestinians an inferior race. “This is the Jewish homeland and there’s never been a Palestinian people,” declared one, standing on a property formerly occupied by Palestinians. In one blast they defied centuries of priceless Jewish liberal and humanitarian instinct.
No one from the centre-Left of European politics is going to do anything other than repudiate this ultra-religious vision. “The kibbutz used to be the symbol of Israel,” a British Labour MP told me. “Now it’s the settlement bloc.” American Jewry is increasingly detaching itself from what it sees as a chauvinist, illiberal strain in Israeli politics.
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