I must say, I do like the way the Israelis don't fvck about.

[Burney]

See, to me that is incredibly unfair. His crime (if there was one) was being taken in by Hitler's true ambitions. THe policy he followed was dictated not by previous governments but overwhelmingly by popular opinion, which was genuinely terrified of a war and particularly a war that could be avoided.

There is a responsibility that comes with being a major power where the prospect of action, and occasionally the threat of it, carries moral as well as military might. It comes with maturity. It is perhaps slightly unfair to demand this maturity from ISrael at this point in their history, given the fairly recent past and the stormy present. But it needs to develop.

Israelis understand rather better than most 'the tragic sense of life' as Douglas Murray puts it. They know that, if not defended vigorously, everything one takes for granted can be swept away in a very short space of time. Murray also attributes to this the very different attitudes to immigration of western and eastern Europeans. Former Soviet Bloc countries understand that freedom and safety are precious and fragile, while western Europeans three generations removed from WWII have forgotten and think they are forever.

We may one day regret we were so much more 'mature' than Israel.