ISRAEL’S genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, its state-sponsored provocations against Palestinians in besieged Gaza, the illegally occupied West Bank and its unremitting bombardment of Lebanon have sharpened international condemnation of the zionist state. 

The United States, Britain and most members of the EU, plus Japan, Canada and Australia — which constitute themselves as “international opinion” despite comprising a minority of UN members — provide diplomatic cover and, in various quantities, military and financial aid to Israel’s war effort. But, faced with Israel’s continuing starvation tactics as it ethnically cleanses north Gaza (in preparation for its resettlement?) even the US has been forced to propose a month’s probation for the Israeli state. 

Israeli ruling circles and the military leadership have abandoned any notion of proportionate response and to their targeted bombardment of schools, hospitals and residential areas have added attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon, UN refugee workers in Gaza and, at the UN general assembly in New York, the United Nations itself. 

Benjamin Netanahayu is operating with a de facto US licence to escalate and, despite fine-sounding words from the US and its closest allies, seems intent on provoking a regional war with all elements in the Iranian regime’s “axis of resistance.” 

Interestingly even the BBC now seems to concur with Hezbollah’s official position that a ceasefire in Gaza is the key to de-escalation. In this context Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shia and the Yemeni Houthi forces have material interests that do not necessarily coincide with those of the Iranian theocratic regime, which itself is cautious about unconstrained confrontation with Israel, especially with two US carrier groups’ and the RAF’s running interference.

Where there are elements in the US State Department and in its military and intelligence circles that regard Netanyahu’s escalations as dangerous to the long-term US strategy — keeping the reactionary Arab states subordinate to US strategic interests — they appear too indecisive to limit Joe Biden’s toleration of Netanyahu’s provocations.

The contradictory tendencies at work in the various satraps that comprise Nato’s imperial entity may eventually act as a restraint on Netanyahu’s strategy but for the moment it looks as if Israel has been given a month to do as its wants. 

Where Israel’s leaders, and a substantial if minority part of its population, appear indifferent to the shift in public opinion away from support for Israel, Jewish opinion worldwide is on a different arc. 

In the US, where the biggest concentration of Jewish people outside of Israel is found, a distinction exists between the generations. 

A survey conducted in February by the US Pew polling organisation, prior to Israel’s most egregious behaviour, found that while a narrow majority (52 per cent) thought the way Israel had carried out the war had been acceptable, 42 per cent said it was unacceptable, while 6 per cent were unsure. Jews aged 50 and older were far more likely to think Israel’s conduct of the war has been acceptable (68 per cent). Pew reports that this is consistent with survey results from 2020. 

A survey of opinion among British Jews in the summer this year showed that four in five hold unfavourable views about Netanyahu, with 65 per cent saying they “strongly disapprove” and 15 per cent saying they “somewhat” disapprove of him. 

Latest Israeli polls show two-thirds still want Netanyahu out and they have sustained demonstrations for a year that challenge his approach, especially in relation to the hostages. 

Nevertheless, what is striking is the difference between what Israeli Jews think and what Jews elsewhere think. A more recent survey found that 39 per cent of Israeli Jews think Israel’s military response against Hamas in Gaza has been about right, while 34 per cent say it has not gone far enough and 19 per cent think it has gone too far.

Despite more than 40,000 deaths and the destruction of the physical and human environment in Gaza, Hamas retains some military capacity and such prestige as inevitably attaches to it as an intransigent force still able to cost the IDF casualties.

Nevertheless, Palestinian collective memory can measure the difference in political outcome between Hamas’s military assault on the Israeli state and the First and Second Intifadas. The Israelis let Yahya Sinwar out of jail but not Marwan Barghouti.

The BBC’s take is that Israel’s official war aims remain unmet after a year of attrition. This suggests that the survey conducted in March and early April, where roughly two-thirds of Israelis were confident that Israel would either probably (27 per cent) or definitely (40 per cent) achieve its goals in the war against Hamas, may not reflect the current situation. 

In spring 61 per cent said they were extremely or very concerned about the war expanding into other countries in the region while 68 per cent were extremely or very concerned about the war going on for a long time. These fears have proved well grounded and count against Netanyahu. 

Naturally, in the middle of a war, the proportion of Israelis who think that a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully with each other — the two-state solution enshrined in international agreements — is down from the 2023 figure (about half took that position when the question was first asked in 2013).

However, both Israeli Jewish opinion in its recent majority and the Israeli government are opposed to the formal position enshrined in international treaty that the solution to the conflict lies in the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside an Israel inside the 1967 borders. 

At the reactionary end of Arab and Middle Eastern opinion the intensity of the present conflict gives some cover to those elements who want a single theocratic state on the territory of historic Palestine. In this they mirror an Israeli right and government ministers who want to complete the ethnic cleansing project and rid a Greater Israel of Palestinians.

Inevitably the genocidal behaviour of the Israeli state has deepened hostility and some have challenged the viability of the two-state solution. A distinct tendency — which appears to deny the legitimacy of an Israeli state either within the borders established by UN resolution in 1947 or the 1967 borders — has re-emerged, with some support on the left. How else to understand this tweet by former MP Chris Williamson: “This rogue state [Israel] must be destroyed for the sake of humanity.”

The problem with this tendency — that effectively denies Israel’s right to exist — is that it is a mirror image of the Israeli government position which denies the possibility of a Palestinian state. 

Where official Israeli opinion denies the the right of return of Palestinian refugees, those who deny Israel’s right to exist have no morally acceptable or viable plan to deal with Israel’s Jewish population, which itself substantially descends from refugees from the European Holocaust or a million-plus Jews expelled or fled from the Middle Eastern and north African countries at the time of the 1948 war that accompanied the establishment of the Israeli state and later the 1967 conflict. 

Today eight out of 10 Israelis were born and schooled in Israel. Israel doesn’t maintain accurate records about the national origin of Jewish immigrants but probably between 35 and 40 per cent of Israeli Jews owe their family origins to people who fled Europe before, during and after the second world war. 

Along with a post-Soviet influx of Russians, around 200,000 Americans live in Israel with a highly visible element — about 60,000 — living among settlers in the West Bank and the occupied territories. Despite the protection of the IDF and the state these people are intensely unpopular among substantial sections of Israeli opinion.

The political problem at the centre of controversies about Israel’s right to exist is illustrated by the sharp difference between the politics of the post-war period, when Israel was established within prescribed borders by UN decision, and its present-day role as the extension of US imperial power in the region within borders that vastly exceed those internationally sanctioned. 

Where the Palestinian right to a state of their own is discounted — the two-state solution — the only rational and equitable solution to today’s conflicts disappears and in its place permanent war at the discretion of imperialism and its preponderance of military power remains.