Ben Heald

The question “Does Israel have the right to exist?” is meant as a trap – and one directed at what the media like to call the “hard” or “far” left (very much in scare quotes). It requires that the interviewee concede at the start of the conversation the very ground they are trying to challenge. This is what the BBC’s Nick Robinson was up to in demanding that Zack Polanski affirm “Israel’s right to exist” in an interview with the Green party leader last week. It was a classic of the genre. Note Robinson’s heavy framing of the question: “What we’re talking about is whether a state created by the United Nations, in the aftermath of pogroms and Holocaust, the worst act of racism in the history of the planet, has a right to exist or not. This is a question you have always dodged.” That’s very much in the “How many times a day do you beat your wife?” tradition of interviewing. In a post on X, Robinson again challenged Polanski: “Why is this a difficult question to answer?” Both, let us note in passing, are Jewish. But only one is assumed to accrue moral standing in the exchange from their views about Israel. We could easily turn the question around against Robinson: “Do you think the state of Israel – as a state illegally occupying and oppressing Palestinians for decades and committing the crime of apartheid, as determined by the world's highest court, and one deemed to be committing genocide according to a consensus of legal and human rights authorities as well as genocide scholars – has a right to exist? “Did apartheid South Africa have a right exist?” The answer to Robinson’s question is very simple. States come and go. They don’t have a right to exist, peoples do. And importantly, according to international law, people enjoy the same, universal rights. Which is exactly why Israel as a state committing the crime of apartheid – as ruled by the International Court of Justice in 2024 – has no right to exist as it is currently constituted. Polanski responded with the entirely reasonable assertion: “Israelis and Palestinians should have equal rights in a democracy.” Which was the solution accepted by the international community for black and white South Africans, post-apartheid. And yet Robinson keeps interrupting Polanski, treating his sensible, moral position – one in line with his party’s new official policy that “Zionism is racism”, as determined by its members – as though it is proof of extremism, of antisemitism. As if Polanski is being slippery by refusing to accept what is, in fact, Robinson’s extreme premise. Robinson is arguing that, even after Israel has been judged to be an apartheid state by the world’s highest court and to be committing genocide according to leading authorities on the subject, it should have an inviolable right to carry on exactly as it is. Robinson’s implied position is that Palestinians and their supporters should simply shut up and live with the fact that Israel has been slaughtering and maiming hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s people. Nothing to see here, is Robinson’s message. So who is the real extremist, who the real racist: Zack Polanski or Nick Robinson? This is an extract from my latest article How the BBC sets a trap to make sure leftwing politicians never get a fair hearing. Find a link to the rest in the reply post ⬇️