I’m no expert on present-day Israel/Palestine, although as a British imperial historian I do know something about the origins of the current crisis there. That expertise has persuaded me that some of the charges levelled against the current Israeli state – charges resented by Israel’s defenders, and even characterised by them as ‘anti-Semitic’ – are in fact incontrovertibly true, and certainly not necessarily racist; and so should be accepted as ‘givens’ on both (or all) sides of the argument.

One is that Palestine was essentially stolen from its former occupants by the Zionists, who had no legitimate right to it, therefore, apart from the rights that military conquest gives to an aggressor. Unless, that is, you believe that ‘God’ gave it to them two thousand years before; which of course can carry very little weight for anyone who doesn’t accept the particular God that the Jews have chosen as their own. A second charge is that Zionism was an essentially ‘colonialist’ and even ‘imperialist’ enterprise; so offending against present-day prejudices against both these phenomena, and yet – I would say – undeniably accurate, again. Zionism, as it has worked out in Palestine, bears just about every single characteristic of 19^th century colonialism (enabled as it was by early 20^th-century British imperialists like Arthur Balfour); and is still, under Netanyahu, expansionary in much the same way. The only substantial difference I can see is that it doesn’t seem to embrace the ‘civilizing mission’ aspect of many European imperialisms (including Balfour’s), which were justified (often hypocritically, but still…) by the benefits they were supposed to bring to the indigènes. There’s little sign of that in present-day Israel-Palestine; and least of all in the over-populated Gaza Strip, whose economy and life have been strangled for years by Israel. Zionism is also quite explicitly ‘racist’, or at least ‘culturist’, as historic colonialism generally was too. And its implementation does bear comparison with South African apartheid, that most despised feature of European imperialism (after slavery); although I don’t know enough about life in present-day Israel to know how far that parallel should be taken. But all in all there can be no doubt that Israel is – among other things, to be sure – a ‘colonialist’ state; as of course many other countries – Britain and the US not excepted – have been at one time or another in their histories, if you go back far enough.

Some of this, of course, lies behind Hamas’s latest horrific assault on Israel from Gaza; helping to explain it on some levels, if not to excuse it. In fact nothing can excuse the ferocity of this indiscriminate and murderous onslaught, by all accounts – if, that is, those accounts are reliable, and not just propaganda. (There’s good evidence for a lot of them.) No historical grievances can justify such a massacre in any circumstances.

But then the same must surely apply to Israel’s new counter-assault on Gaza, which appears to be as destructive in terms of the numbers of innocent lives struck down there as was Hamas’s. The Israeli response also seems to be motivated by revenge at least as much as by the strict needs of defence. Could this be a religious thing: based, for example, on the Old Testament morality of ‘an eye for an eye’ (the awful Leviticus, of course, ch. 24 vv. 19-21), and probably Islam’s too? This is why, incidentally, I’ve always preferred the rather more wokeish New Testament morality (Matthew 5:38-39) over theirs. I can fully understand the Israelis’ eagerness for retribution. But’s that’s the primitive, emotional, Old Testament side of me.

Netanyahu is using this event to justify hitting the Palestinians even harder: which, again, was a common response when earlier European imperialists were confronted by rebellions in – say – India or Algeria or Kenya. That’s the purpose of his hoped-for mass expulsion of Arabs from northern Gaza – a type of ‘ethnic cleansing’, surely; and the draconian collective punishment he is meting out for those who stay.

Some critics suspect that Netanyahu actually welcomes the present crisis as furnishing him with an excuse for further Israeli expansion, which may be why he didn’t nip the Hamas invasion earlier in the bud. Wearing another of my academic hats, as a ‘secret service’ historian, it seemed odd to me that Israel was taken so much by surprise by the Hamas attack, when Mossad is supposed to be the most effective spy agency in the world. Is there more in this than meets the eye?

None of this, however, should stop us condemning in the strongest possible terms Hamas’s bestial attack on Israeli men, women and children last weekend. Maybe this is not the best time even to try to understand it, if understanding is taken to be letting the real villains off the hook.

But this will nonetheless be required later, if there is to be any peaceful solution to the seemingly intractable problem of Palestine today. Israelis could make a start by facing up to their past crimes: maybe by paying reparations to the dispossessed. Palestinians should accept the situation that those injustices helped create, as a fait accompli, and learn to live with their colonialist neighbours de novo. History can’t be allowed to rule and stifle them: not even, if this were possible, memories of the Nazi holocaust. As well as the past, religion and race should be taken out of the political equation, too.

All this would probably require a ‘two state’ solution; which incidentally many Jews, especially in the diaspora, still favour – if they don’t renounce Zionism entirely, as some do. (And, they claim, on orthodox Jewish grounds.) Maybe that’s out of the question now, as almost everyone is telling us. In which case we may all be – echoing Private Fraser in Dad’s Army – doomed.

But what do I know? I’m no expert. And my history doesn’t really help.