How can a people whose collective memory is so profoundly shaped by genocide participate in, or support, policies that Palestinians and international bodies have accused of producing mass killing, forced displacement, starvation and potentially genocidal conditions?

Because when they say “We must never allow this to happen again,” they mean, “We must never allow this to happen to us again, whatever it takes.”

Generations have been taught that the world is dangerous, Israel cannot depend on others for protection, and their survival requires overwhelming military strength.

Being a victim of atrocity does not give a person or nation a permanent immunity from becoming an agent of injustice. It’s little wonder that the Israel Lobby pushed so hard against the PM’s wishes for a Royal Commission to legitimise their agenda.

In a now-viral speech, a 72-year-old Jewish socialist in Surrey, England, drew on his family’s Holocaust history to warn that authoritarianism develops gradually when ordinary people accept restrictions because authorities describe them as necessary.

Don’t like that book? Have it removed. Don’t like what the newsreader said? Have her sacked. Don’t like a social media post? Have them jailed. Don’t like certain words? Make them illegal.

The Lobby’s ‘Local War’ about which I wrote 3 years ago, now permeates every sector of our societies – the arts, information media, law, education – everything. It’s how you sell a genocide.

Our word for  hatred has morphed into a hundred iterations, as I recently discovered.

The lobby had crunched two years of my social media content looking for keywords (“Baby killer” = “blood libel” etc) where I was accused of committing dehumanisation, incitement, mendacious allegations, blood libel, gratuitous slur, cultural libel, malice, desecration, exclusionary rhetoric, apologist for terrorism, intimidation, minimisation of trauma, IHRA violation, demonisation, racial hostility, antisemitic tropes, proxy slurs, conspiracy.

It really is Monty Python-level absurd, but because there are large jail terms involved, I am forced to take it seriously.

So I took a cue from Mukhtar, the Libyan resistance leader (“They are not our teachers”).

I began with the premise that these people have no legitimacy. They have no purchase on me. They have no standing, authority, jurisdiction, or process.

These new laws are bankrupt, corrupt and invalid. So that was my initial response.

“Please identify the basis on which your organisation considers itself entitled to make this complaint…”

The AHRC agreed and removed 18 of 30 charges. “To resist is already victory,” Omar Mukhtar.