A new policy? - Crackdown on Jewish extremists

ISRAEL’S government has never been shy about confronting critics. 

Indeed, at times it seemed to take strength from criticism levelled at it over its treatment of Palestinians, its support for land theft described as settlements and, most of all, its attitude towards the million or so people trapped in Gaza.

When this criticism, most of it entirely justified, cut particularly deeply, official spokesmen were not slow to infer that their detractors’ position was based on an unacknowledged but real anti-semitism. That implication was, and is, as offensive as it is disingenuous.

Is it possible though that there has been a sea change in this depressing narrative? Is it possible that Israel has at last realised it can — or at least its extremists can — only go so far before sanity must prevail? Is it too much to hope the crackdown on extremists following Friday’s petrol-bomb attack in a West Bank village in which a Palestinian baby was burnt to death signals a victory for moderation over fanaticism?

If it is, then it represents the most optimistic moment in this conflict for decades. Let us hope it is.