Have They Learned Nothing?

A hundred and two former diplomats from France and Britain have signed a letter to the leaders of both countries urging, if you please, consequences for the Righteous State over the destruction of Gaza and the ongoing colonial assault. If one didn't know better, one would think that no hands had been wrung, no fingers wagged and no verbal reproaches uttered since the whole beastly business began. Clearly the signatories are on dangerous ground: we all know how slippery the slope can be from well-meaning student politics to full-blown antisemitism. It is a perilously short step from advocating consequences for the wrong kind of war criminal to arguing that the entire deplorable history of the Palestinian problem may have started a little earlier than October 2023; and from there a still shorter and more perilous step to proclaiming that the Righteous State should not have exclusive and unlimited rights of exploitation with regard to the memory of the Holocaust.