What is the difference between history and deep history? I only ask because yesterday, after Keir Starmer had aligned British foreign policy with Hamas, the elfin liberal opinionator Lewis Goodall appeared to draw such a distinction.
“So much of the commentary on Palestine today without much sense of the deep history”, he lamented on social media with a virtual toss of his floppy locks. “You can say this is a debt which has long been owed. The Palestinians expected a state a century ago when the British took on the mandate.”
Helpfully, Goodall then posted a link to the source of his “deep history”: a page on the Imperial War Museum website featuring a handful of sentences seemingly written for children and a 15-minute YouTube video.
Deep. Very deep. But in Goodall’s rendering, glaringly incomplete. The part that he appeared to overlook was when the Palestinian Arabs, led by the fanatical Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husseini, rejected the offer of a country of their own and instead launched a genocidal war upon the nascent Israel.
That marked the first time the Palestinians turned down the two-state solution in favour of bloodshed, a pattern they have sadly repeated many times since.
Deep history, it seems, is just a version of events that aligns with comfortable liberal prejudices rather than the facts. Shallow history, in other words.
You’ve got to feel for the Left. If only the real world matched their assumptions, they wouldn’t have to resort to slight of hand.
Wouldn’t life be easier if the Palestinians hadn’t sided with the Nazis during the war; if they hadn’t rejected a state of their own in favour of war with Israel in 1948; if they hadn’t blown up the Oslo Accords in the Nineties; if they hadn’t walked away from the Clinton deal at Camp David in 2000; if they hadn’t snubbed the Ehud Olmert plan, which accommodated their demands, in 2008; if they hadn’t turned Gaza into a terror enclave after Israel pulled out in 2005; if they hadn’t embarked upon an orgy of butchery, rape, mutilation and kidnap on October 7?
Well, with deep history, all this can be yours. Just pretend it didn’t happen. But the real tragedy is that deep history now seems to drive British foreign policy.
In this worldview, everything is Israel’s fault. In June, Keir Starmer threatened to recognise a Palestinian state unless the IDF withdrew, leaving Hamas in power and their citizens starving in the tunnels. It was as if Israel had started the war and the hostages didn’t exist. What did he demand of the Palestinian side? Nothing.
Hamas, of course, responded by cancelling the negotiations and doing all it could to continue the fighting. Lo and behold, Starmer then recognised a state of Palestine. Well, thank goodness for that. Just when you thought the conflict was intractable!
You thought that Golda Meir was right when she observed that “if the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence,” but “if the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel”?
Well, think again. According to the principles of Starmer’s deep history, the truth is in fact the opposite: all Israel needs to do is lay down its arms in Gaza and peace will magically descend on the back of a winged horse while cherubim sing hymns to the two-state solution.
The problem with these liberal elites is that when it comes to the Middle East, they have no theory of mind of the main players involved. The Arabs do not reject the State of Israel because of a dispute over borders or “occupation”. They snubbed a state of their own before a single Israel boot trod upon “occupied land”.
As a matter of honour, they cannot accept a state alongside Israel; they can only accept one that replaces it.
The problem Israel faces is not the one that the West thinks it faces. The solution imposed by the West, therefore, is inadequate. After all, Israel has already tried the two-state solution to destruction. Now it is supposed to try it again?
For that matter, Starmer and his Government have not shown any understanding of Israeli psychology, either. How is Jerusalem supposed to respond to British recognition of Palestine? This was the jihadi strategy all along. As Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad reportedly put it, “before October 7, was there a country that dared to recognise the state of Palestine?... The fruits of October 7 are what made the whole world open its eyes to the Palestinian cause.”
Israel remains at war. Its hostages remain in captivity. The current international pressure is just the latest front, with the West now siding with the jihadis. Israel has only one option: to dig in and show that its enemies will never win. Without such deterrence, it is done for.
‘Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself’, by Jake Wallis Simons, is out on October 2
What is the difference between history and deep history? I only ask because yesterday, after Keir Starmer had aligned British foreign policy with Hamas, the elfin liberal opinionator Lewis Goodall appeared to draw such a distinction.
“So much of the commentary on Palestine today without much sense of the deep history”, he lamented on social media with a virtual toss of his floppy locks. “You can say this is a debt which has long been owed. The Palestinians expected a state a century ago when the British took on the mandate.”
Helpfully, Goodall then posted a link to the source of his “deep history”: a page on the Imperial War Museum website featuring a handful of sentences seemingly written for children and a 15-minute YouTube video.
Deep. Very deep. But in Goodall’s rendering, glaringly incomplete. The part that he appeared to overlook was when the Palestinian Arabs, led by the fanatical Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husseini, rejected the offer of a country of their own and instead launched a genocidal war upon the nascent Israel.
That marked the first time the Palestinians turned down the two-state solution in favour of bloodshed, a pattern they have sadly repeated many times since.
Deep history, it seems, is just a version of events that aligns with comfortable liberal prejudices rather than the facts. Shallow history, in other words.
You’ve got to feel for the Left. If only the real world matched their assumptions, they wouldn’t have to resort to slight of hand.
Wouldn’t life be easier if the Palestinians hadn’t sided with the Nazis during the war; if they hadn’t rejected a state of their own in favour of war with Israel in 1948; if they hadn’t blown up the Oslo Accords in the Nineties; if they hadn’t walked away from the Clinton deal at Camp David in 2000; if they hadn’t snubbed the Ehud Olmert plan, which accommodated their demands, in 2008; if they hadn’t turned Gaza into a terror enclave after Israel pulled out in 2005; if they hadn’t embarked upon an orgy of butchery, rape, mutilation and kidnap on October 7?
Well, with deep history, all this can be yours. Just pretend it didn’t happen. But the real tragedy is that deep history now seems to drive British foreign policy.
In this worldview, everything is Israel’s fault. In June, Keir Starmer threatened to recognise a Palestinian state unless the IDF withdrew, leaving Hamas in power and their citizens starving in the tunnels. It was as if Israel had started the war and the hostages didn’t exist. What did he demand of the Palestinian side? Nothing.
Hamas, of course, responded by cancelling the negotiations and doing all it could to continue the fighting. Lo and behold, Starmer then recognised a state of Palestine. Well, thank goodness for that. Just when you thought the conflict was intractable!
You thought that Golda Meir was right when she observed that “if the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence,” but “if the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel”?
Well, think again. According to the principles of Starmer’s deep history, the truth is in fact the opposite: all Israel needs to do is lay down its arms in Gaza and peace will magically descend on the back of a winged horse while cherubim sing hymns to the two-state solution.
The problem with these liberal elites is that when it comes to the Middle East, they have no theory of mind of the main players involved. The Arabs do not reject the State of Israel because of a dispute over borders or “occupation”. They snubbed a state of their own before a single Israel boot trod upon “occupied land”.
As a matter of honour, they cannot accept a state alongside Israel; they can only accept one that replaces it.
The problem Israel faces is not the one that the West thinks it faces. The solution imposed by the West, therefore, is inadequate. After all, Israel has already tried the two-state solution to destruction. Now it is supposed to try it again?
For that matter, Starmer and his Government have not shown any understanding of Israeli psychology, either. How is Jerusalem supposed to respond to British recognition of Palestine? This was the jihadi strategy all along. As Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad reportedly put it, “before October 7, was there a country that dared to recognise the state of Palestine?... The fruits of October 7 are what made the whole world open its eyes to the Palestinian cause.”
Israel remains at war. Its hostages remain in captivity. The current international pressure is just the latest front, with the West now siding with the jihadis. Israel has only one option: to dig in and show that its enemies will never win. Without such deterrence, it is done for.
‘Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself’, by Jake Wallis Simons, is out on October 2