The original title for this fine post, as seen under the banner “Israel’s biggest enemy is itself” on Liberal Conspiracy, was (marvellously) Self-Clowning Lunatics Strike Again. The money shot:

Shorter – there really is an urgent and perilous threat to Israel. It’s called “the Israeli government”.

A neat line, but that’s not really what this is about, and that’s the problem.

The Zionist argument has always been that certain ethical contortions have to be made to protect the state of Israel from its aggressors, and from the threats that imperil its very existence.

This argument resonates with those who were alive to remember the Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt and Syria used Judaism’s holiest day to pour across the border and reclaim their lands, leading to a scramble for mobilisation in which the existence of the state of Israel itself looked, very briefly, to be genuinely imperilled. Israel rallied, and the US (who viewed Egypt as a Soviet proxy) shipped in emergency military assistance; the invading armies were thus pushed back, losing the land that they had reclaimed and more.

The argument hasn’t changed, but the truth is that the situation has. Israel is, up to a point, at peace with its neighbours. In the aftermath of Yom Kippur, Egypt fell out of the Soviet periphery and is now as much a client state of the US as Israel is. Even if that wasn’t the case, neither Egypt nor Syria have the hardware to mount a serious invasion of Israel that wouldn’t be immediately and brutally punished by the Jewish State’s comprehensive and well-equipped war machine.

In short, despite the protestations of those – from both the left and the right – who remember the day when it looked like the Jews were going to lose the only state they’ve ever had, Israel faces no real external threats today. Israeli commandos killed more people last night in international waters than Hamas has killed in Israel during a decade of resistance.

Israel is no longer defending itself.

What it is defending is the siege. It is defending the status quo in Gaza and it is defending its steady encroachment into the West Bank. But it is continuing to use the language of self-defence in order to do so, and that’s a huge problem. For those who remember Yom Kippur, it’s an emotive issue. But times have changed.

It’s no longer possible to argue that criticism of Israeli actions automatically implies a rejection of the legitimacy of that state, because it’s no longer the case that Israel is acting purely in self-defence. By continuing to assert otherwise, the Israeli government and the Zionist movement is perpetrating a deceit that cannot be upheld.

It is now the will of most people – even in the Arab states surrounding it – that Israel be allowed to live in peace. By clinging to a past version of the truth, which asserts that Israel is surrounded by enemies and in a state of constant peril, the Israeli government and its supporters risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Israel will always have enemies, but by pursuing the politics of arbitrary cruelty it risks creating more.