FATHOM JOURNAL
by Alan Mendoza
Summer 2015

In recent years, a once ambivalent relationship between the world’s oldest political party and one of its younger countries has been comprehensively transformed.  

Once suspicion, mistrust and the occasional dose of establishment Arabism and anti-Semitism were the norm when considering British Conservative Party attitudes to the State of Israel. Today, such attitudes have been replaced by an embrace that is so warm it has caused more than once critic of Israel to write disparagingly about it. In part, this changing state of affairs reflects a more general realignment of political attitudes globally. Parties of the Left which once championed Israel as a kibbutz-dwelling, socialist, fellow traveller have come to consider it in more nuanced terms, particularly when considering Israeli-Palestinian relations and the vexed question of settlements. In its most extreme form, such former friends of Israel can be found giving tacit and active support to the slurs of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement globally. Meanwhile, parties of the Right which used to sneer disparagingly at the Jewish state have, broadly, come to see it as an ally, surviving in a tough neighbourhood that does not have much love for the West, facing shared threats. READ MORE