Any truthful and well-informed observer of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would acknowledge that the slaughter which we are witnessing today - the overwhelmingly one-sided slaughter where almost all the victims so far have been Palestinians and Israeli Arabs - is the beginning of the endgame of this conflict. It is an endgame which could see a vastly disproportionate number of Palestinians killed in comparison to Jews, but one which, nonetheless, will be long-drawn-out and murderous to the extreme and in which neither Israelis nor Arabs will emerge as winners.
Yet even at this late stage there is a minute chance that, before we go too far down the killing fields and before the walls of blood become insurmountably high, reason and the desire for justice will prevail. But, for this to happen, we must go back to the basics of this tragedy and be absolutely clear about the moral and legal truths of this conflict - about whom is the aggressor and whom is the victim, whom the usurper and whom the dispossessed - basics which have become fudged in the eyes of some in the West thanks to the well-oiled Zionist propaganda machine and the guilt complex of Europeans who seek to "redeem" themselves of centuries of persecuting the Jews by denying the basic rights of the victims of Israel.
It is precisely because the balance between peace and prolonged ethnic slaughter is so fine that any outpourings of cheap propaganda and emotional self-indulgence, which could further obscure Westerners' vision of the core issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, would be criminally irresponsible. For, in order for reason and the desire for justice to prevail in the Middle East, it is imperative that, at this eleventh hour, the non-Zionist Jews in Israel should prevail over the Zionists in the battle for Israeli public opinion. The Israeli public, in other words, must be awakened to the disastrous outcome of territorial expansionism and the desire to dictate to the Palestinians not so much the terms of peace, but the terms of surrender; it must be made to know that the only starting point for a just and lasting peace can only be the complete withdrawal of the Israeli forces to the pre-June 1967 lines in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolution 242 and an acceptance of the Palestinians' right to statehood. Conversely, the Zionists must be reined in and discredited by exposing their real arguments and objectives and by highlighting the likely catastrophic consequences of their policies and prescriptions.
In this context and at this sensitive historical juncture it is morally incumbent upon the Western media, which has played such a central part in blurring the core issues on behalf of the Zionists through their shameless bias, their demonizing of the Palestinians and their denial of their basic rights, to weigh in on the side of the Palestinian Arabs and the real "Israelis with a conscience", the non-Zionists .
However, sensing that they are beginning to lose the moral argument in the eyes of the Western public, the Zionists have begun to wage a counter-offensive in the media. What is more, they have chosen the relatively more enlightened parts of the media as their mouthpieces. Thus, writing in the 12 November issue of the London Observer ("The desert conscience of Israel" - page 29), the broadcaster and New Labour peer Melvyn Bragg hails the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, for going "further even than the [Israeli] peace movement dared hope" during the Camp David talks in July 2000.
In a nauseatingly sycophantic piece in which he expresses his "admiration" for Israel, a country which, he says, "has an infinite attraction for those like myself whose childhood was saturated in Christianity [and for whom it] is some sort of home", Bragg castigates the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, for rejecting Barak's offerings at Camp David - limited sovereignty over some buildings in the illegally-occupied Jerusalem, the disbandment of a fraction of the illegal Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, and the granting of permission for a few thousand Palestinians to return to their homeland, but only if they do so over a 20-year period.
Indeed, only someone deeply immersed in the prejudices of Zionism and Eurocentric Christian bigotry could have failed to mention the 3.6 million indigenous inhabitants of the Holy Land denied the right to return to their homeland, or the fact that, under international law, Israel's occupation of Jerusalem - all the city, and not just the eastern part that is claimed by the Palestinians - is illegal, as are its occupations of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the very existence of Jewish settlements there. Seen in this light, Barak's offerings are akin to a squatter offering the rightful owners of a house partial abode in the garden shed, but only on condition that they surrender the ownership deeds.
Bragg admits that he has neither the "material" nor "experience" to judge the issues in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Yet he not only damns the victims of Israel, but he also blames them for shattering the alleged dream of his friend, the Israeli novelist Amos Oz, of Palestinians and Israelis living as "one happy family". But Bragg forgets to mention that Oz is a Zionist and, therefore, could not possibly have any dream of Jew and Gentile living together, for any such "one happy family" would run counter to the very principles of Zionism on which Israel rests. In fact, as a Zionist, Oz is against the only formula which could conceivably see Jews and Palestinians living together in the Holy Land, that is, a secular, democratic state in which Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews live as equal citizens, believing instead in strict apartheid - for that is what Zionism is - between the colonial settlers and the natives. And, in the well-established tradition of Eurocentric Christian bigots, Bragg could see only a future in which the natives would, submitting to the "superiority" of the settlers, graciously accept being confined to "Bantustans" or reservations in the shadow of Israel.
Despite having no exposure to or understanding of the Arab-Islamic world, which he refers to as "the other side", Bragg has nonetheless chosen to share his ignorance with us, thereby giving moral support to the Zionist aggressors and inflaming an already inflamed situation. Like other imperialists and colonialists before him, Bragg's prejudice leads him to trivialize the victims, with whose pain and suffering he seems totally incapable of empathizing. "Fundamentalist societies leave us rather baffled and we tend to stand off from them," he says. Conveniently, he omits to mention the likes of the racist Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef who in August this year described the Palestinians as accursed "snakes" despised by God, and said that all Arabs are "accursed evil people" whom God "regrets having created". Or the Likud bloc and its leader, the architect of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres, Ariel Sharon. Or the 50 per cent or so of Israelis who vote for Likud. Or the ultra-religious and growing Shas party. Or the former Israeli Labour prime minister, Golda Meir, who infamously said that the Palestinian people "do not exist". Or the 70 per cent of Israelis who oppose the return of any part of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Or the 33 per cent of Israelis who wish the peace talks with the Palestinians to fail. The list is long, but not long enough to temper Bragg's simplistic black-and-white world view.
Unfortunately for the Palestinians, the Israelis and everyone with a conscience, Bragg is but one of a species which lies at the very heart of the British establishment, an establishment which bears an overwhelming responsibility for the dispossession of the Palestinians but whose bigotry and affection for Zionism also blinds it to the pain and suffering caused by Britain's policies in the Middle East.
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