Israel is not a terrorist organisation or a failed state. It is founded on the highest principles of civilised values and is a pluralist democracy with a strong tradition in the protection of human rights. The world was shocked when three of its young citizens were abducted and murdered for no reason other than the fact they were Israeli. As world leaders condemned the outrage, Israeli leaders lined up to condemn the killing of children as a depraved way of scoring points off a rival or an enemy. All stood with them.
Then we learn that a Palestinian lad has been abducted, apparently by Israelis, and burned alive. Before the dismay of that has sunk in we we watch a video in which two Israeli police beat senseless a teenage demonstrator, who turns out to be American of Palestinian origin, and whom the authorities shamelessly parade in court with a face so battered and swollen as to make him all but unrecognizable. Meanwhile Hamas fires rockets and Israel resumes air strikes.
Neither the rockets nor the air strikes will change anything. But and this is a fundamental but, the endless cycle of violence in large part provoked by Israel’s obdurate and unyielding hard line over settlements, has not just cost Israel most of its friends in the world. The violence has become a contagion which has infected the very soul of the Israeli dream. In short Hamas can stand down. Israel is now destroying its own core values and in so doing it is destroying itself.
It is not too late, but unless the Jewish people wake up to what is happening in their name, it soon will be.