In an astonishing re-run of the most controversial moment in British pro-Israel advocacy for many years, Mick Davis, the man at the centre of that storm, has launched a second broadside defending his judgement in warning of the prospect of Israel becoming “an apartheid state”.

Mr. Davis, who is chairman of the United Jewish Israel Appeal and chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, made his original remarks in November last year. Among the formal UK Jewish leadership there was a mixed reaction –see here for comments by supporters and opponents — while the Israeli embassy issued a scathing protest and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its supporters reacted with jubilation.

In this week’s Jewish Chronicle Mr. Davis sought to clarify his remarks as follows:

“… I said clearly that Israel was not an apartheid state. I reject any comparisons between Israel today and apartheid, an analogy which is often used as a stick to beat Israel. I did say that if the world came to believe that a two-state solution was not possible and that a single unitary state (“a one-state solution”) was seen to be the only way forward, then that unitary state may be characterised as an apartheid state as you would have a minority ruling over the majority – or at least a majority of Palestinian non-citizens in the West Bank and Gaza. The international pressure for full civic rights for all, including the right to vote, would be enormous and would mean the end of Israel. This is not a new or controversial point. Prime Minister Olmert said as much in 2007 as did Defence Minister Barak last year”.

Unless forced to do so it is my policy not to get involved directly in the internal affairs of the UK Jewish community over discussion of Israel since Jews and non-Jews face a different calculus of risk. For example, as a non-Jew defending Israel I will never be accused of dual loyalties, (though I am accused of pretty much everything else!). The wider debate about Israel, however, is an entirely different matter. And since, as Mr. Davis acknowledges, the apartheid analogy is such an insidious and dangerous weapon in the arsenal of Israel’s opponents I would like to offer some thoughts from a purely analytical perspective on why it is so wrong to raise it in the Israeli context, and why it always will be under any future scenario:

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As a leading player in the global deligitimisation campaign, it is never a surprise when the BBC lashes out against the Jewish state. Sometimes, though, the presence of an agenda against Israel is more blatant than other times. So it is with a video segment about an exhibition of photos in London by German photographer Kai Wiedenhofer on the aftermath of Israel’s war with Hamas in December 2008 and January 2009.

Wiedenhofer has lived among the Palestinians for years. He is effectively an anti-Zionist campaigner. He has drawn on Nazi imagery, implied parallels between the Star of David and the Swastika, captioned photos with words such as “ghetto” creating a comparison with the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, and promoted the notion of Israeli “apartheid”. Speaking about Wiedenhofer’s photos of the security barrier, Levi Salomon, of the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against anti-Semitism, an initiative of the 12,000-member Berlin Jewish community, told the Jerusalem Post in 2008: “In the motifs he chooses for his photos, Wiedenhofer’s political views become clear. In his work, he presents a completely distorted, one-sided image of the Israeli security installation.”

Basic journalistic ethics would clearly lead any normal media outlet to relate such information to the reader or viewer since informing ones audience about the credibility of the source is a central element of the journalistic enterprise. The BBC, of course, tells you nothing about him leaving the impression he is just an everyday photographer innocently doing his job. The reporter, Anna Macnamee, relates the fact that he has been accused of anti-Semitism only to allow Wiedenhofer casually to dismiss it:

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Here are two sets of statistics that you have never been informed about by the BBC, and have never heard from the mouth of a senior official in the British Foreign Office: According to a major opinion poll survey conducted by Pew in 2006, 97 percent of Egyptians admitted to holding “somewhat unfavourable” or “very unfavourable” opinions about Jews while none (zero percent) said they had favourable opinions about Jews; in Jordan 98 percent said they had unfavourable opinions with one percent holding favourable opinions.

Those figures tell you much about why genuine, liberal democracy is going to be so difficult to achieve in Egypt (ditto Jordan), while also telling you just how harmful to the prospects of genuine MidEast peace have been the appeasement/stability-at-all-costs oriented policies of Western governments and the assumptions which have underpinned them.

This is a complex issue, and the key points are rarely spelled out. So let me think aloud in front of you. My thoughts, as you will see, are not yet fully formed on this. So, I welcome your contributions in the comment section. Here goes for starters, in question and answer form:

Q) Why is mass anti-Semitism incompatible with genuine liberal democracy?

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So, this week the mask has definitively slipped. A few days ago — see last entry but one — the Guardian put out an editorial slamming the Palestinian Authority leadership as surrender monkeys over leaked documents showing they broadly accepted that the so called settlements in east Jerusalem could reasonably become part of Israel under a peace agreement.

Today, the paper has taken the next logical step. It has given a high profile platform (via an op-ed) to a representative of Hamas — an organisation whose revered founding charter incorporates the ideas and language of the Tsarist anti-Semitic forgery the Protocols of Zion, whose senior members have described the Holocaust as a hoax, whose television stations and ideological supporters routinely refer to Jews as the “sons of apes and pigs”, whose thugs murder homosexuals and beat women, and whose terrorists (not infrequently brainwashed child suicide bombers) have slaughtered hundreds of civilians in the most barbaric manner imaginable.

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As a follow up to my posting yesterday, please see this excellent piece by Emanuele Ottolenghi ripping apart the Guardian over the leaks on peace talks: