One of these days - months, years - I must write that piece I’ve always wanted to write about why my attitude towards the state of Israel is one of, for all practical purposes, unconditional positive regard.  I support Israel against all comers, for all the usual reasons, and for maybe a few slightly interesting ones.  I not only despise and detest the numerous enemies of Israel; I also disagree strongly with those who sit on the fence about it, who indulge in moral equivalence, who say that they brought it on themselves, make lots of mistakes, are “their own worst enemy”, and so on and so forth.

So devoted a supporter of Israel am I, at any rate in my own mind, that if there were to be a pro-Israel demonstration in London, along the lines of this recent one in Los Angeles, and I heard about it in time, I might actually go.  Usually I hate demonstrations, and hate with savage vehemence the idea of me actually going on one.  But I think this one might make sense, and make me glad to have gone.

I think that’s because the state of Israel is an enterprise already in existence which I want to do my tiny little bit to defend, warts and all, rather than some pie-in-the-sky piece of futurological imagining.  All the other causes I can think of that matter to me are too philosophical and abstract to be demonstratable, as it were.  They don’t lend themselves to people interested in them waving placards, because then the placards would be misunderstood and misrepresented (in the unlikely event of them even being noticed) by the media.  But a pro-Israel demo would be one where my participation would be understood correctly, where the placards would be reported accurately.  Oh, much of the media would call us fascists or whatever, supporters of torture, aggressors against defenselessly heroic Palestinians, blah blah, but at least they’d get which side I was on even if they were on the other one.

It is also a demo that probably would be noticed by the media in the first place, even if it was small, in fact especially if it was small.  And the smaller it was, the more difference, percentage-wise, my presence would make and gladder I would be to have been there.

A spot of googling tells me that there was a recent demo in London allegedly in defence of Israel.  Trouble was it was also in favour of other stuff, in the form of the organisations that organised it, that I don’t necessarily agree with and don’t want to have to spend time checking out.  I’d want one organised by the Israeli embassy and/or by kosher Israel-supporting Jews, or by something like the Anglo-Israel friendship society, if there is one, not by lots of local British types using the pro-Isreal agenda to spread other agendas.  Although these people seem a bit too tame and behind-the-scenes-ish to be organising demos.  Maybe such demos as that one that actually happened are all that are on offer in London.  In which case I will have to stick to blogging.