Editor’s Note: On October 21, the Cambridge Union Society held a debate on the motion, “This House Believes that Israel is a rogue state.” Although the Cambridge debate club has a proud history, with, for example, Winston Churchill, the Dalai Lama and Ronald Reagan having debated there, Cambridge today is no different from other elite universities, with Israel a target of mindless venom. Thus the motion should have passed. That it didn’t work out that way was thanks to Gabriel Latner, a 19 year old second year law student at Cambridge’s Peterhouse College. Latner’s speech, ostensibly in favor of the motion, seems to have turned the tide against it, so that the motion failed, albeit by a fairly narrow 53-47%.

On each side of the motion were three speakers. To speak against the motion the Israeli embassy sent Ran Gidor, the embassy’s political adviser and a Cambridge graduate, and Shiraz Mahor, a repentant former radical Islamist. The third opponent was Rob Mindell, a third year law student and president of the Cambridge University Jewish Society. Arguing that Israel is a rogue state (along with Latner) was Mark McDonald, who heads the Labor Party’s Friends of Palestine and Middle East Association and Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair’s half-sister and as such Tony Blair’s sister-in-law. Booth is not only on the payroll of Iranian TV in England and a Free Gaza and Hamas advocate but a recent convert to Islam. A couple of months ago, visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the Iranian city of Qom, in her own words, she “sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy.” On returning to England, she converted immediately, wears a hijab and, she says, prays five times a day.

Following his talk, on Booth’s complaint and his own refusal to apologize, Latner was ejected from the hall and banned for life from the Union. This was for what he had said privately to the odious Booth who was sitting beside him. Before rising to speak, he told her “I am going to nail you to the f– wall.”

This was undoubtedly inappropriate language but Latner had scarcely, as Cambridge Union Society President James Counsell claimed, “disrupted a Union event” or “done enormous levels of harm to the reputation of our Union.” Counsell declared that people like Tony Blair, “personally connected to Lauren Booth will now almost certainly avoid us like the plague.” (Given the embarrassment Booth causes him, one suspects Blair would be more inclined to drink a toast to the Union.) One also suspects Counsell’s over-the-top reaction had less to do with Latner’s vulgarity than with rage that he had been fooled and now had to fend off outraged cries by Arab, Islamic and black student groups even as pro-Israel groups treated the debate as a major public relations victory.

To his credit, the incoming President of the Union Lauren Davidson had a very different take from the out-going Counsell: “In almost all our debates, speakers from each side twist the motion and it’s usually thought very clever and funny. The motion was not asking ‘Is this house pro or anti-Israel?’ It was asking whether Israel is a rogue state, which Gabriel argued exactly according to the motion. So, he was not arguing for the wrong side.” The feisty Latner is challenging Counsell’s action on the ground he did not follow Union procedures for punishing a member.

I am reminded of the Biblical tale of Balaam, son of Beor (Numbers 22). The Moabite king Belak summoned Balaam to curse the people of Israel and he blessed them instead. Belak protested: “Here I brought you to damn my enemies and instead you have blessed them.” And Balaam’s blessing includes some of the most famous lines in the Bible: “How fair are your tents, Oh Jacob, Your dwellings, Oh Israel” and “Blessed are they who bless you, Accursed they who curse you.”

Gabriel Latner:

This is a war of ideals, and the other speakers here tonight are rightfully, idealists. I’m not. I’m a realist. I’m here to win. I have a single goal this evening—to have at least a plurality of you walk out of the ‘Aye’ door.

This issue is too polarizing for the vast majority of you not to already have a set opinion. I’d be willing to bet that half of you strongly support the motion, and half of you strongly oppose it. I want to win, and we’re destined for a tie.

I’m tempted to do what my fellow speakers are going to do—simply rehash every bad thing the Israeli government has ever done in an attempt to satisfy those of you who agree with them. It would be so easy to twist the meaning and significance of international ‘laws’ to make Israel look like a criminal state. But that’s been done to death. It would be easier still to play to your sympathy, with personalised stories of Palestinian suffering. And they can give very eloquent speeches on those issues. But the truth is, that treating people badly, whether they’re your citizens or an occupied nation, does not make a state ’rogue’. If it did, Canada, the U.S., and Australia would all be rogue states based on how they treat their indigenous populations. These arguments, while emotionally satisfying, lack intellectual rigour.

More importantly, I just don’t think we can win with those arguments. It won’t change the numbers. Half of you will agree with them, half of you won’t. So I’m going to try something different, something a little unorthodox. I’m going to try and convince the die-hard Zionists and Israel supporters here tonight, to vote for the proposition. By the end of my speech, I will have presented five pro-Israel arguments that show Israel is, if not a ‘rogue state’ than at least ‘rogueish’.

Let me be clear. I will not be arguing that Israel is ‘bad’. I will not be arguing that it doesn’t deserve to exist. I won’t be arguing that it behaves worse than every other country. I will only be arguing that Israel is ‘rogue’.

The word ‘rogue’ has come to have exceptionally damning connotations. But the word itself is value-neutral. The OED defines rogue as ‘Aberrant, anomalous; misplaced, occurring (esp. in isolation) at an unexpected place or time‘, while a dictionary from a far greater institution gives this definition: ‘behaving in ways that are not expected or not normal, often in a destructive way.‘ These definitions, and others, centre on the idea of anomaly—the unexpected or uncommon. Using this definition, a rogue state is one that acts in an unexpected, uncommon or aberrant manner. A state that behaves exactly like Israel.

The first argument is statistical. The fact that Israel is a Jewish state alone makes it anomalous enough to be dubbed a rogue state: There are 195 countries in the world. Some are Christian, some Muslim, some are secular. Israel is the only country in the world that is Jewish. Or, to speak mathmo for a moment, the chance of any randomly chosen state being Jewish is 0.0051%. In comparison the chance of a UK lotto ticket winning at least £10 is 0.017%—more than twice as likely. Israel’s Jewishness is a statistical aberration.

The second argument concerns Israel’s humanitarianism, in particular, Israel’s response to a refugee crisis. Not the Palestinian refugee crisis—for I am sure that the other speakers will cover that—but the issue of Darfurian refugees. Everyone knows that what happened, and is still happening in Darfur, is genocide, whether or not the UN and the Arab League will call it such. There has been a mass exodus from Darfur as the oppressed seek safety. They have not had much luck. Many have gone north to Egypt, where they are treated despicably. The brave make a run through the desert in a bid to make it to Israel. Not only do they face the natural threats of the Sinai, they are also used for target practice by the Egyptian soldiers patrolling the border. Why would they take the risk? Because in Israel they are treated with compassion—perhaps Israel’s cultural memory of genocide is to blame. The Israeli government has even gone so far as to grant several hundred Darfurian refugees citizenship. This alone sets Israel apart from the rest of the world.

But the real point of distinction is this: The IDF sends out soldiers and medics to patrol the Egyptian border. They are sent looking for refugees attempting to cross into Israel. Not to send them back into Egypt, but to save them from dehydration, heat exhaustion, and Egyptian bullets. The Israeli government is sending out its soldiers to save illegal immigrants. To call that sort of behavior anomalous is an understatement.

My third argument is that the Israeli government engages in an activity which the rest of the world shuns—it negotiates with terrorists. Forget the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, a man who died with blood all over his hands–they’re in the process of negotiating with terrorists as we speak. Yasser Abed Rabbo is one of the lead PLO negotiators that has been sent to the peace talks with Israel. Abed Rabbo also used to be a leader of the PFLP, an organisation of ‘freedom fighters’ that, under Abed Rabbo’s leadership, engaged in such freedom promoting activities as killing 22 Israeli high school students. And the Israeli government is sending delegates to sit at a table with this man, and talk about peace. And the world applauds.

You would never see the Spanish government in peace talks with the leaders of the ETA. The British government would never negotiate with Thomas Murphy. And if President Obama were to sit down and talk about peace with Osama Bin Laden, the world would view this as insanity. But Israel can do the exact same thing—and earn international praise in the process. That is the dictionary definition of rogue—behaving in a way that is unexpected, or not normal.

Another part of the dictionary definition is behaviour or activity ‘occurring at an unexpected place or time’. When you compare Israel to its regional neighbours, it becomes clear just how roguish Israel is. And here is the fourth argument: Israel has a better human rights record than any of its neighbours. At no point in history, has there ever been a liberal democratic state in the Middle East—except for Israel.

Israel’s protection of its citizens’ civil liberties has earned international recognition. Freedom House is an NGO that releases an annual report on democracy and civil liberties in each of the 195 countries in the world. It ranks each country as ‘Free’ ‘Partly Free’ or ‘Not Free’. In the Middle East, Israel is the only country that has earned designation as a ‘free’ country. Not surprising given the level of freedom afforded to citizens in say, Lebanon, a country designated ‘partly free’, where there are laws against reporters criticizing not only the Lebanese government, but the Syrian regime as well. [I’m hoping Ms Booth will speak about this, given her experience working as a ‘journalist’ for Iran.]

Iran is a country given the rating of ‘not free’, putting it alongside China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Myanmar. In Iran, there is a special ‘Press Court’ which prosecutes journalists for such heinous offences as criticizing the ayatollah, reporting on stories damaging the ‘foundations of the Islamic republic’, using ‘suspicious (i.e. western) sources’, or insulting Islam.

Iran is the world leader in terms of jailed journalists, with 39 reporters (that we know of) in prison as of 2009. They also kicked out almost every Western journalist during the 2009 election. I guess we can’t really expect more from a theocracy. Which is what most countries in the Middle East are. Theocracies and autocracies. But Israel is the sole, the only, the rogue, democracy. Out of every country in the Middle East, only in Israel do anti-government protests and reporting go unquashed and uncensored.

I have one final argument— the last nail in the opposition’s coffin— and it’s sitting right across the aisle. Mr. Ran Gidor’s presence here is all the evidence any of us should need to confidently call Israel a rogue state. Mr Gidor is a political counsellor attached to Israel’s embassy in London. He’s the guy the Israeli government sent to represent them to the UN. Consider, for a moment, what his presence here means. The Israeli government has signed off to allow one of their senior diplomatic representatives to participate in a debate on their very legitimacy. That’s remarkable. Do you think for a minute, that any other country would do the same?

If the Yale University Debating Society were to have a debate where the motion was ‘This house believes Britain is a racist, totalitarian state that has done irrevocable harm to the peoples of the world’, that Britain would allow any of its officials to participate? No. Would China participate in a debate about the status of Taiwan? Never. But Israel has sent Mr. Ran Gidor to argue tonight against a 19 year old law student who is entirely unqualified to speak on the issue at hand.

Every government in the world should be laughing at Israel right now—because it forgot rule number one. You never add credence to crackpots by engaging with them. It’s the same reason you won’t see Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins debate David Icke. But Israel is doing precisely that. Once again, behaving in a way that is unexpected, or not normal. Behaving like a rogue state.

That’s five arguments that have been directed at the supporters of Israel. But I have a minute or two left. And here’s an argument for all of you: Israel willfully and forcefully disregards international law. In 1981 Israel destroyed Osirak—Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bomb lab. Every government in the world knew that Hussein was building a bomb. And they did nothing. Except for Israel. Yes, in doing so they broke international law and custom. But they also saved us all from a nuclear Iraq. That rogue action should earn Israel a place of respect in the eyes of all freedom loving peoples. But it hasn’t.

But tonight, while you listen to us prattle on, I want you to remember something; while you’re here, Khomeini’s Iran is working towards the Bomb. And if you’re honest with yourself, you know that Israel is the only country that can, and will, do something about it. Israel will, out of necessity, act in a way that is not the norm, and you’d better hope that they do it in a destructive manner. Any sane person would rather a rogue Israel than a nuclear Iran.

(This is a lightly edited version of Latner’s speech.) •