2016 / 2017 THE ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSOCIATION 1 WHO WE ARE FOUNDER COUNCIL The Late Brigadier General Lady Sainsbury (Chairman) Sir Wyndham Deedes, CMG, DSO Lady Anderson Sir Andrew Burns, KCMG HON PRESIDENT The Earl of Balfour CONTENTS HE The Ambassador of Israel Mrs E Corob Dame Vivien Duffield, DBE Chairman’s Message 5 HON VICE-PRESIDENTS Mr JM Greenwood Mr M Green Mrs M Park Shimon Peres: A Great Statesman, a Tragic Politician 6 Mrs L Hochhauser The Marquess of Reading Mr J Marshall Mr D Sumberg New Beginnings, stronger ties by HE David Quarrey, HM Ambassador to Israel 10 Mr GR Pinto The Lord Weidenfeld Lady Sainsbury The Rt Hon The Lord Woolf, PC Jews and the Temple Mount 12 Mr A Yablon EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE (TRUSTEES) Doves and Hawks in the Israeli Political Debate 18 The Lord Bew (Chairman) DINNER COMMITTEE Mrs J Atkin Lady Baker (Co Chairman) Palestinians: The Power Struggle between Young Guard and Old Guard 20 Lady Baker Mr A Reeve (Co Chairman) Mr R Bolchover (Co-Deputy Chairman) Ms L Diamond Ethnic Harmony in an Israeli City you never heard of 23 Miss B Dingle Mr B Streather Professor D Hochhauser (Co-Deputy Chairman) Mrs E Tarling UN has Lost Credibility, Integrity Due to Unfair Treatment of Israel by Yair Lapid 24 Mr D Kessler Mr H Lewis FCA (Hon Treasurer) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Palestinian terrorism and Muslim hypocrisy: An open letter from a Muslim woman 25 Ms O Polizzi Mrs Ruth Saunders Mr A Reeve In the News 26 Mr B Streather Mrs E Tarling Israel’s First Master of Wine 29 Mr T Vince Brits on tour to the Start-up- Nation 30 Innovations from Israel 32 FOLLOW THE ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSOCIATION ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER AT: ‘Catch the Jew’ 48 ‘A Reflection’ 50 facebook.com/AngloIsraelAssoc/ @AngloIsraelAssn The Eleventh Anglo-Israel Colloquium 52 Debating Matters Israel 56 7th Ambassadors’ Round table 58 ANGLO-ISRAEL ASSOCIATION Informal Fallacies and Israel Discussion 60 PO Box 47819, London NW11 7WD T: 020 8458 1284 F. 020 8458 3484 E: [email protected] Florentin 64 www.angloisraelassociation.com Registered Charity No. 313523 ‘Why do Foxes, Jackals and Hyenas cross Israel’s Highway1? 68 The articles in this magazine reflect the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the Anglo- The Improbable Happiness of Israelis 70 Israel Association. If you have a comment on any of the articles or on the magazine in general, we would be pleased to hear from you. Letters or emails should be addressed to the Editor and sent to email: [email protected] or The AIA, PO Box 47819, London NW11 7WD Editorial Team: Ruth Saunders (editor), Linda Diamond, Grace Reginiano Cover: THE ELEVENTH ANGLO-ISRAEL COLLOQUIUM REPORT Design by WEARECAPRI.com 2 3 HAIRMAN’S CMESSAGE Alas, I have to begin with the state of the Labour Party in the wake of the Chakrabati report. To say the least, controversy concerning anti-Semitism in the party is still alive. The respected journalist Dan Hodges wrote in mid-August ‘casual anti-Semitism amongst Corbyn supporters is now ASSISTING BY DONATING so widespread it is no longer possible to argue it is a small TO WELLBEING AND minority’. This is the real problem. The exotic use of small change historic factoids in order to obscure the significance PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE CAUSES of deeper and more profound realities is only a symptom. To those of us familiar with the traditions of the British Left this is a profoundly shocking development and, it can only be hoped, a temporary one. In his new memoir Benedict Anderson notes that four major WISH THIS FUNCTION Jewish scholars of nationalism – Kedourie, Smith, Gellner and Hobsbawm, despite widely differing places on the left right spectrum, loved the United Kingdom as a tolerant SUCCESS multinational state with no time for fascist and anti-Semitic extremism. It is an ideal worthy of preservation. FOR NOW AND IN THE FUTURE As for Israel itself, the tough neighbourhood remains as tough as ever. That said, the opportunities for diplomacy are far from extinguished. Despite the boycott activists, trade with the UK continues to grow. We can only insist, not that reasoned criticism of Israel ceases but that it ceases to be based on double standards. The work of the AIA is more important than ever. It is vital to combat confusions and historical distortions. I appeal again to our friends to help us in this effort. Lord Bew Chairman of the Executive Committee 4 5 SHIMON PERES: A Great Statesman, a Tragic Politician Shimon Peres, who died at the age of ninety-three, was to choose sides, Ben-Gurion decided to abandon Israel’s a one-of-a-kind biological and historical phenomenon. neutrality and to place the two-year-old country square- After all, other than Peres, can we name a single person ly in the American-led camp. The decision was costly—it who played a major role in the creation of a new state and earned Israel decades-long hostility from both the Soviet who some sixty-five years later held what is formally the Union and Communist China. highest office of the state he helped create—the state’s The second decisive move took place when, by 1954, it presidency? Indeed, while rarely if ever are there clearly became clear that due to its broader regional and global right or wrong answers in the realms of history and poli- interests, the United States was not yet prepared to be- tics, one college exam question about Israel’s history that come Israel’s primary arms supplier. Assessing that Israel has only one correct answer is: name two individuals who and France shared the same security threat—Egypt’s new contributed more than anybody else to Israel’s existence. president Gamal Abdel Nasser inspired Arab masses with The correct answer: David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres. pan-Arab rhetoric centered on hostility to Israel, and with Publically, Peres liked to refer to David Ben-Gurion as anti-colonial rhetoric that centered on hostility to Brit- the grand master and to call himself the student. But in ain and France—Israel shifted its pursuit of an external reality, while Ben-Gurion was the grand strategist, Peres big-power ally from Washington to Paris. was the one who executed: he made it all happen. During The decision to bet on France was Ben-Gurion’s, but the Israel’s formative years—the late 1940s, and through the execution was left entirely to Shimon Peres. Within less 1950s—Peres built at least three pillars of the grand strat- than two years, and still in his early thirties, Peres planted egy that Ben-Gurion had designed. He was also in charge all the seeds of a full-fledged military alliance that result- of managing the inbuilt tensions between these pillars. ed in the launching of a major war: the 1956 Suez-Sinai The first of these pillars was self-help: the Jewish state War. The alliance lasted more than twelve years, and was would not rely on others’ good will for its security and sur- only gradually replaced by significant U.S. military assis- vival. And so, as a very young director general of Israel’s tance after 1970. Ministry of Defense, and later as its deputy minister, Peres A less remembered chapter in Peres’s contribution to Isra- set out to create the country’s armament industry, first the el’s security and survival was his critical role in an equal- Israel Military Industry (IMI) and later its Israel Aircraft In- ly important relationship established by Israel during the dustry (IAI). 1950s: that with West Germany. Barely a decade after the The second pillar of Ben-Gurion’s grand strategy was the Holocaust, in an effort to avoid becoming an economically pursuit of an alliance with a major power. The first deci- failed state, Israel sought reparations from West Germany. sive move he made in that direction was to side with the This met with huge resistance in Israel—from the far left West. Although Israel’s creation was supported by to the far right—by Holocaust survivors and many others both Truman’s America and Stalin’s Rus- who argued that it was immoral and unethical to accept sia, when in 1950 the War in financial compensation from people who perpetrated the Korea forced Israel greatest horror ever inflicted on the Jewish people. 6 7 For Ben-Gurion, however, the Holo- with Israel should include the supply of the West Bank—first by supporting insufficiently patriotic. Consequent- caust imposed a different moral im- of a twenty-six-megawatt nuclear re- the construction of Ofra, not far from ly, time after time he was defeated in perative: to prevent such a catastro- search reactor in Dimona, close to a Jerusalem, and later with his visit to the polls by his right-wing opponents, phe from ever happening again. And small development town. Thus, the Sebastia, then an illegal settlement who accused him of being prepared to the only insurance policy Ben-Gurion eight-year-old ministate launched a close to Nablus. Until then, Israeli “divide Jerusalem.” saw as effective against the recur- nuclear project that until then no one settlements in the West Bank were Thus, Peres’s political life story pre- rence of such a catastrophe was the other than the great powers would confined to sparsely populated areas sents the most glaring example of a existence of a robust Jewish state. And dare to attempt. that were deemed a security impera- phenomenon we see all too often in if the latter goal required the accept- tive by the post-1967 so-called “Allon To do this, Peres had to overcome the Western democracies these days: ance of German financial support, the Plan.” strong opposition of two of Israel’s the inverted relationship between the imperative was well worth surrender- most formidable power centers—the In the mid-1980s, Peres’s attempt to essential properties of a great lead- ing a measure of ethical purity.