Past is prelude.

SOMEONE encountering the Middle East conflict for the first time in the current pages of the Western media could be excused for assuming that Palestinian-Israeli history began on Oct 7, 2023, with the spectacular Hamas breakout that led to unconscionable acts of violence in Kibbutzim adjacent to the Gaza Strip.

Some of the victims, murdered or abducted, were peace activists, with mentalities far removed from the belligerent attitudes of all too many illegal West Bank settlers. Primarily, though, they were human beings subjected to the kind of violence no one should have to endure. Much the same could be said about what Palestinians have been subjected to since 1948, with the effort redoubled in 1967.

But in reckoning with what became of Palestine, one should go back at least to the Balfour Declaration, 1917, wherein colonial Britain offered Zionists a homeland for European Jews, who suffered under outrageous anti-Semitism long before the Nazis emerged and adopted extermination as an exemplar of extreme misanthropy.

Before adopting the unspeakable concept of a 'final solution', however, the Nazis toyed with the idea of mass expulsion. Madagascar was once seen as a possible destination, and they weren't entirely averse to Palestine as an alternative. This led to a degree of Nazi-Zionist collaboration, which has been anathematised as a wicked lie despite historical evidence.

The history of Israel and Palestine did not begin this month.

The campaign wasn't successful, because most German and other European Jews preferred the idea of emigrating elsewhere, including the US and UK. A possibly apocryphal anecdote from the 19th century mentions a couple of emissaries to the 'promised land' who reported to the rabbis in Vienna: 'The bride is beautiful, but she is already married to another man.'

In the early 20th century, Zionists who leaned towards communism and fantasised about establishing a country where they would resist the depredations of both Jewish and Arab capitalists by teaming up with the Palestinian proletariat were opposed by other Jewish groups represented at the first few Comintern congresses.

More broadly, though, the backing for the establishment of Israel by its initial advocates in many cases had less to do with belated empathy for the Jews than with the wish they would go away. At the same time, Stalinist Soviet Union and its supporters in the West, especially the US, were enthusiastic about the Israeli project at its inception...