As I was going down the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish that man would go away!

In another week, in another universe, I hope that I will be in a mental place where I can share with you the origin story of the surreal poem from which that is a stanza. This week, however, my mind is elsewhere.

One of the places my mind is, or was until a few days ago, is the death of Tom Lehrer. My reflections on that will also have to wait for another time, other than to say that, towards the end of last week, I found myself wishing passionately that Lehrer were sixty years younger, and alive, so that he could capture, in his inimitable fashion, the full irony of the surreal geopolitical reality we are living through.

Last week, as you will doubtless be aware, France announced that it plans to recognise the state of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly this autumn. Then Britain made a similar announcement, making its declaration contingent on Israel failing to carry out a number of measures before then. Then Canada and Malta followed suit.

I have a little skin in the UK game, and I wouldn’t have expected anything else from Macron, Malta has no muscle at all, and Canada…is Canada. So my attention is directed at Sir Keir Starmer. A cynic would argue that the timing of his announcement reflects his desperation as he struggles to fend off challenges from within and beyond the Labour Party he leads. I would like to believe that his announcement is driven purely by political expediency and cynicism. The idea that he might actually believe that such recognition of a Palestinian state is a good thing for the world, for Britain, or even for the Palestinians, is too worrying to contemplate.

Anyway, Tom Lehrer I am not, but a verse came into my head as I attempted to digest this news.

As he was going down, Sir Keir
Recognised a state that wasn’t there.
IT WASN’T THERE! He knew full well.
I wish Sir Keir would go to hell.

A couple of other observations. First, let’s look at Starmer’s statement that this recognition will take place unless the Israeli government “take[s] substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza” (no clear statement about what precise situation Starmer is referring to, because that might involve considering at whose feet the responsibility for the “appalling situation” can be laid), “agree[s] to a ceasefire and commit[s] to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution. And this includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid” (which hasn’t stopped) “and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank”.

Here he virtually makes explicit the fact that he is motivated not by any sense that recognising the state of Palestine is the morally correct thing to do at this point in time. He presents it as merely a tactic to persuade Israel to act according to his will. Either he believes Britain has a moral duty to recognise the state of Palestine, in which case he should recognise it, unconditionally, or he does not believe that, and has no justification for recognising the state. To use recognition of Palestine purely as a stick to beat Israel with is indefensible.

At the same time, he has demanded that Hamas “must immediately release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza”. However, he has not made his government’s recognition of the state of Palestine contingent on Hamas meeting those demands. Only the goose gets the sauce, not the gander.

So, with your permission, let us step back for a moment from Starmer’s delusional universe into the real world. Imagine, for a moment, that you are one of the Hamas executive enjoying the hospitality, protection and financial support of that upstanding nation, Qatar. Sitting in your seven-star hotel room, you read Starmer’s demands. “So”, you reflect, “unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire, Britain will recognise Palestine, regardless of how we act. Well, then, all we need to do to guarantee that outcome is withdraw from the ceasefire talks.”

My second observation is this. What, in the name of all that is logical, does “recognising the state of Palestine” mean? A purely hypothetical entity with no borders, no system of government or administration, no diplomatic service, is not a state, and cannot be recognised as a state. (“I met a man who wasn’t there.”) That’s not just my opinion, by the way. Under international law, the Montevideo Convention of 1933 gives the following minimum requirements for a recognised state: a defined territory, a permanent population, an effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. (One out of four apparently doesn’t qualify you.)

The good news is that 40 peers from the House of Lords have written to the UK Attorney General pointing this out, and concluding that, therefore, for Britain to recognise Palestine “would be contrary to the principles governing recognition of states, according to international law”. The bad news is that it is far from certain that the Attorney General will so advise the government, and even further from certain that the government will take his advice.

A tiny part of me, of which I am not excessively proud, would like to see France, UK, Canada, Malta, and everyone else, “recognise” “Palestine”, and then for Israel to “recognise” “Palestine”. When, a couple of hours, or days, or weeks later, a terrorist attack (correction, an enemy invasion) takes place in Israel, or a rocket is launched from Gaza (correction, Palestine commits an act of aggression against Israel), as it inevitably will, Israel can declare this an act of war from a foreign state and conduct a war against that foreign state, thereby sidestepping all of the arguments about supplying humanitarian aid to the enemy and about innocent civilians. Even this very small part of me is, I wearily acknowledge, too big for some of my readers to stomach, and I apologise to them.

There was a brief period when I thought the above was going to be the story of the week. However, another story has loomed into view that towers over it, especially in the week that marks our annual commemoration of the disasters visited upon the Jewish people throughout history. The last couple of days have marked a new low in the moral depravity of the once-civilised world.

Hamas, taking their lead from the Nazi death camps, are systematically starving at least some of the “hostages” (surely we can find a word that better captures their desperate situation). This should, perhaps, surprise nobody. However, Hamas has judged that its cause will be best served by publicly flaunting this starvation. It has published videos in which the victims of that gradual starvation speak about their plight (one of them, Evyatar David, speaks while, barely able to stand, he is digging what he has been told will be his own grave). The benefit to Hamas of releasing these videos should be clear: their effect on the morale of the man in the street in Israel. The last couple of days have seen entirely understandable calls, from hostage family members and many others, for Israel to recognise that it cannot win the war, to lay down its arms, to bring the hostages home through an agreement, and then and only then, if it wishes, to resume the war, unfettered by responsibility for the hostages.

What is chilling about the release of the videos is not the cynical way Hamas seeks to manipulate Israeli public opinion, but its judgement that, at this stage, the decades-in-the-making worldwide propaganda campaign that the jihadi regimes have financed and orchestrated has been so successful that releasing video of its inhuman, obscene, calculated, cold-blooded murder of Israelis by slow starvation, and its (I assume deliberate) inclusion in the video of a muscular, well-toned Hamas bicep handing the emaciated Evyatar a tin, will not lose Hamas any significant amount of sympathy around the world.

At the time of writing, this calculation by Hamas seems chillingly, horrifyingly, accurate. If that does not keep you awake at night, if that did not inform your reading of every kina (every liturgical poem of lament) in shul yesterday, if that does not make you contact the Jewish Agency representatives in your home country to inquire about Aliyah, then I don’t know what will. Our safe Jewish future here is not yet certain, but our unsafe Jewish future anywhere else is increasingly certain.

May we all hear better news this week, and may I feel able to write about happier topics this time next week.