You don’t have to be a Corbynist anti-Semite to hate Israel, but it helps

You can always count on the adherents of liberal-left orthodoxy to agree on one thing: their pathological demonisation of Israel. Corbynist anti-Semites refer to Jews as “Zios”, which says it all. In their warped mindset, to be a Zionist is tantamount to being a Nazi — a comparison which, in their ignorance of both historical and contemporary reality — they often make.

Well, I ’ve just returned from a few weeks touring around the Holy Land and it is blatantly obvious that our Western leftists, those ever-so-useful idiots for the Palestinians, from the PLO to Hamas, have never actually been to Israel. Because a single visit would blow their idiocies out of the water.

For a start, one is daily struck by the sheer, harmonious multi-ethnicity of this home to many cultures and religions. So much for it being an “ apartheid state ” run by Jews, in which others are somehow oppressed. The Left would have you view Israel’s Arab population as almost on a par with black slaves in the pre-Civil War American South. The truth is that Israeli Arabs are so well integrated into mainstream society, it is often hard to tell Arabs and Jews apart, as they all speak Hebrew and tend to share the same physical characteristics.

We in the UK proudly call ourselves a multi-cultural society. One in twenty of us is Muslim. In Israel, one in five citizens is Arab, and as this 20 per cent figure is reflected in the number of Arab members of the Knesset, they are well represented in the political sphere. So which country is actually the more multi-cultural?

Nazareth is a fascinating case. There is a small Jewish community on the outskirts, but it is essentially an Arab city. Some two-thirds of the Arabs are Muslim, one third Christian. (Yes, of course Israel has many Arab Christians: they can live there in safety and security, unlike the Christians in Arab countries, who are systematically persecuted and frequently murdered.) As befits the home town of Jesus, there are many beautiful churches in Nazareth, and when I was there the Christmas decorations were already up in the busy central shopping street. I had to remind myself at times that I was still in the Jewish homeland.

But why stop with the major religions, when there are minor ones too? How many people are aware that Israel is the global capital of the Baha’i faith? Followers of this peaceful Middle Eastern religion continue to be persecuted in Islamic countries, unsurprisingly, but on Mount Carmel, overlooking the ancient port city of Haifa, they have established their beautiful World Centre buildings and gardens.

Then there are the Arabic-speaking Druze, who live mainly in the Golan and are fiercely loyal to the Israeli state — perhaps because, unlike governments elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel recognises them as a unique ethnic and religious community. The Druze are prominent in Israeli politics and in the Israel Defence Forces. (One day we stopped for lunch in a Druze village, and I discovered that they make a remarkably good wienerschnitzel.)

And I haven’t even mentioned the Black Hebrews — the mystical tribe of black Americans claiming to be descendants of the ancient Israelites — based in the Negev Desert town of Dimona. They chose to emigrate from the USA to Israel en masse at the end of the Sixties and, although they couldn’t prove they were Jews, they were allowed to stay and eventually granted citizenship. Today they have a famous touring gospel choir and run vegan restaurants in Israeli cities. What’s more, in 2006 a Black Hebrew singer called Eddie Butler represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest.

What a fabulous patchwork of humanity, co-existing in peace on this tiny sliver of land in the midst of what Golda Meir memorably called “a dangerous neighbourhood”. Are there problems in Israel? Of course. Conflicting interests that are hard to reconcile? Naturally.

Apart from anything else, it is currently going through a political crisis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — now 70 and definitely past his sell-by date — has been indicted on corruption charges. Both he and his main challenger, Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party, have been unable to form a government, and it looks as if the country will be facing its third general election in less than a year to try to break the stalemate.

A lot of Israelis are thoroughly fed up, and rightly so. But there are no violent protests in the streets — no rioters setting shops and cars on fire, no brutal police using tear gas and truncheons. Over the past few weeks public demonstrations against the governments of Iran and Iraq have led to hundreds being killed, hundreds more injured and untold thousands of people thrown into some of the world’s most unsavoury prisons.

In Israel, on the other hand, street life goes on as usual and divisive national issues are being worked out through patient, if somewhat exasperating, negotiation. Welcome to the freedoms of a remarkably stable democracy.

Diversity — of religion, culture, lifestyle, sexuality — flourishes in the Jewish state in a way which is sadly impossible in today’s Islam-dominated countries. But I don’t expect the wilfully blind ever to recognise Israel for the tolerant, liberal democracy that it is. Once indoctrinated, the Left has a habit of sticking to its cherished beliefs, despite all evidence to the contrary. There are plenty of people, not only in Russia, who still revere Lenin and Stalin, after all that we now know about those two bloodthirsty monsters. Some of them work for Jeremy Corbyn. And they all hate Israel.