the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I’m in Herne Bay on holiday at the moment. My housemate and I have rented somewhere directly overlooking the sea; beyond the window there’s just the shingle beach and then the sea. Bliss. I could – and do – stare at the sea for hours from our veranda. At its mesmerising surface, the way in which the sun reflecting off it changes its appearance; words don’t do it justice. Well mine don’t. And thats just fine. My opinion is that in even attempting to do so one reduces the sheer scale of all the wonderful wonderfuls that combine to such magnificent effect. It’s something to be experienced, to look upon with awe, a series of majestically transient moments, made moreso because no two pairs of eyes ever see the same thing.

Which is exactly as it should be when you’re looking at the sea.   Less so when confronted by a proposition which managed the seemingly impossible feat of allowing to people who were calling for genocide to convince themselves they were unimpeachably moral. Because thats what the Green party recently adopted resolution – that ‘Zionism is racism’ – effectively means, if taken to its frighteningly immoral conclusion. As I understand it – and I’m probably wrong – Zionsism – support for the right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland (in what we now call Israel) – is basically racist. But being the Greens, the motion went further and called for Israel to be replaced by a single Palestinian state.

The biggest problem I have with this motion isn’t the glaringly obvious one. I mean, how long does anyone really think a Jew would survive in a state controlled by by the death-cult that is Hamas? What Jew who didn’t want their family tortured and  raped before being murdered would bother staying to find out? A Palestinian state where Jews and Arabs live together in perfect harmony is so childishly naive it could be a Michael Jackson song. 

No, the biggest problem for me is that it legitimises the idea that ‘Zionism is racism’. By the mere fact of having the debate in the first place, regardless of the motions eventual outcome, it made people people take it seriously. The fact that some Jewish Green members are considering mounting a legal challenge to to its adoption only amplifies it. It is no longer a fringe belief, and whilst it is far from a mainstream belief, the more people talk about it, give it credence, some vestige of respectability, only increases the chances of one day it becoming so.

The Greens are a growing political menace, their supporters believing in all manner of nonsenses which are as increasingly unhinged as they are fervently held. Even if the Greens are never anywhere near having actual political power – of the Downing Street kind – they will nonetheless remain a political reality. One that this government seems all too willing to try and placate, appease, and eventually win back, hoping for some electoral advantage. Remember when recycling was something only people who wore tie-dyed clothing and went to WOMAD did? The same kind of absorption could happen, a similar narrow political calculation might be reasoned worthwhile, but a much more terrifying outcome.