I’m always curious what the ‘Free Gaza’ and ‘Recognise Palestine’ crowd would do were they Jews living in Israel. Many of this ‘set Gaza free’ bunch who are university age may not know it but Israel occupied Gaza from the 1967 war till 2005. Then, two decades ago, Israel opted to take a gamble and to close down some twenty-one Jewish settlements in Gaza, leave behind a massive greenhouse agricultural business and get out in order to leave Gaza to be run by Gazans. The border with Egypt would be policed by Egypt and Israel would control the seas. But there’d be plenty of United Nations and European and Middle East and international donor monies and goodwill. Plenty. Gazans could focus on lifting their economic well-being and the general plight of those living there. If that’s what they wanted. But in the first election held they voted out the old Yasser Arafat Palestinian Authority and voted in Hamas. Needless to say, there has not been a second election since. Meanwhile missiles have been fired into Israel from Gaza near on daily. The 7 October attack came from Gaza.  Millions of Gazans, especially the young, are subjected daily to vociferous anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda – the stuff in the schools there dehumanises all Jews and is frankly sickening.

So tell me how this supposedly much-desired independent Gaza being called for is supposed to work? We know that it would soon resume being a launching pad for missile attacks into Israel. Hamas would make sure it became a de facto Iranian puppet regime. Sure, all those people shouting ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to the Jews’ might just be indulging in a bit of good-natured exaggeration and weekend fun, but would you bet your life on that? In life it’s generally best to assume people mean what they say.

As for Palestine, then US President Bill Clinton got Israel to offer Arafat as much as any Israeli government would or will ever offer. A better deal will never be on the table in terms of land and everything else. It was turned down flat by Arafat. In part, I suspect that’s because any Arab leader who accepted any deal with Israel, of any sort, would be assassinated faster than a US Ivy League transgender homosexual grad student, on a solidarity visit to Palestine, would be thrown off the roof of the nearest big building there – and that would be pretty quick I suspect.  Here’s the serious question: How do you make peace when the other side doesn’t want peace? When it wants you dead and out, ‘from the river to the sea’ and all that.  Anyone living in Israel who is not on a suicide-watch list, be he or she a Netanyahu supporter all the way over to a Green party voter, needs and will insist on enforceable security guarantees as regards Gaza. And for the life of me I can’t see how those wouldn’t involve, or effectively amount to, some sort of Israeli military occupation.

Remember, after the second world war, the Allies left troops in post-war Germany for well over half a century. And we in the West were far less scrupulous about German civilian deaths in the second world war than Israel is when fighting Hamas. Recall that we near on levelled Dresden to the ground, civilians and all. Because when other people attack you and kill you and try to destroy your country, you will respond. As the great Douglas Murray often says, ‘starting a war has consequences’. Similarly, parking your fighters in schools, hospitals, mosques – which even the Nazis didn’t make a habit of doing – also has consequences. So does gleefully raping babies (and filming and bragging about it online, something again absent from even the Nazi playbook). So just what is it that we expect of an Israel under constant attack and surrounded by countries and peoples who simply want to see it and them obliterated?  To just give up? To speed things up and kill themselves? Leave aside the trite, obfuscating abstractions and why don’t all you ‘Free Palestine’ types tell us in specific terms what Israel should do. And how what you suggest is compatible with its continued existence.

I’ll be honest. I admire the fighting spirit and patriotism of Israelis. I admire their resolve in being the only island of liberal democracy in a surrounding sea of authoritarian, illiberal theocracies and military juntas. (Quick question: would you rather be an Arab in Israel or a Jew in Gaza/Palestine/Syria/Iran?) I think that across the political spectrum in Israel there are few policy divisions over Gaza – rather Israeli politics today seems to revolve around those for and against deposing Netanyahu, not any great policy divisions.

And all the while have readers noticed that no Islamic state has offered to take and resettle any Gaza refugees, not a one?  That Egypt keeps its border with Gaza shut tight? Nor are Middle Eastern countries in any hurry to recognise a Palestinian state.  No, that’s for the effete Western countries of France, Britain, Canada and Australia.  And if you can say out loud, with a straight face, that this Palestinian recognition doesn’t have anything to do with the last few decades of massive Muslim immigration into these Western countries under the follies of a mendacious, elite-imposed multiculturalism that has plainly failed in many respects – in other words, that a key motivating factor for recognising a Palestinian state is domestic politics – then you should move to Los Angeles and look for acting work.

Of course the recognising of a Palestinian state by four lefty leaders in the broken-down countries of France, Britain, Canada and Australia will have very little effect on Israel. Why? Because any diplomatic and security relationships between them and Israel is pretty much nonexistent already.  Of course this sort of Albo-Starmer-Carney-Macron virtue-signalling (to deliver some hoped-for political rewards) does serve to embolden and harden Hamas. And Hezbollah. And Yemen. And Iran. They observe that their tactics bring rewards. Be obstreperous and the legacy media will take your side and left-leaning leaders in the West will capitulate. Negotiation gets them less. That’s the message being sent. This virtue-signalling may well have caused a negotiated ceasefire to collapse, by emboldening Hamas.

Meantime President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio are standing firm with Israel. President Trump has just bunker-busteringly bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. And to make clear who has what say in today’s world, in a joint press conference Mr Trump laughed at British Prime Minister Starmer about his impotence in stopping mass illegal migration and mocked that ‘nasty person’ who is the Labour party mayor of London and whom Mr Trump said (rightly) is doing a terrible job. My bet is that for Israel one Trump is worth an infinite number of Albos, Carneys, Starmers and Macrons.