Howard Jacobson, The Guardian
"In an unusually honest and soul-searching article, even by her own standards of candour, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown told earlier this week of the cracks appearing in a small discussion group of Muslim, Jewish, Asian and Black Britons to which she belongs, whose raison d'être , to put it at its simplest, is the exploration of common sympathies. An admirable group, it sounds, with admirable aims, committed to finding understanding and friendship where we are accustomed to expect only hostility. Now, suddenly, these alliances, "painstakingly stitched together, are stretched to breaking point." The reason - the connection some members of the group see "between what we are threatening to do to Iraq and what we tolerate in Israel."
Forgive the bitter scepticism of a Jew. It isn't pretty seeing film footage of Jews in Israel rehearsing in their gas masks against whatever Iraq has the capability to drop on them in the name of making a "connection." It isn't pretty learning that Jews with second passports are renewing their European originals, in case they have to flee. And no, it hasn't been pretty seeing Jews charging into Gaza in their tanks. None of this was meant to happen. Zionism had other plans for Jews, chief among them a settled place to live and a freedom, at long last, from looking over their shoulders. The pioneering Jewish socialists who arrived early in the century had no intention of being an occupying army, or of daily burying their dead. None of this was meant to happen. That it has, we can ascribe to history, as long as history includes the intransigence of both Muslims and Jews."
