Amnesty International has announced that it will host an art exhibition to campaign against Israel’s security fence. It’s called “Cultural Intifada”.

I sometimes wonder about the people who organise this kind of thing. Do they think that Jews have dreamed for generations of building a fence like this? Did generations go to bed as children praying that one day there would be a massive fence through their country, and everyone – Jews and Arabs alike – would have to cross checkpoints as they drove from one area to another?

The security fence is there because terrorist Palestinian suicide bombers used to get dressed up in garments of mass murder, travel into heavily-populated areas and then detonate themselves. I know we don’t like to think about it but that’s what happened, for years. They specifically targeted areas packed with children and tourists. There are countless reports of bomb-ladened terrorists not getting on a half-empty bus and waiting instead for one packed with school kids. It was a terrorist campaign that systematically killed thousands of innocent people, harmed many thousands more and made an impact on every person living in Israel. Terrorism is a crime against humanity and Israel doesn’t only have the right to protect its citizens, it has a moral duty that it takes seriously.

Remember that these murders happened after the Camp David Summit when the then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak proposed to give up all of the Gaza Strip, 91% of the West Bank and make Eastern Jerusalem the capital of a new Palestinian state, under Palestinian rule. Amazingly, this offer was rejected by Yasser Arafat and he wouldn’t decommission a single weapon. His own people rioted in protest. Pretty much everyone involved at that time realised that Arafat didn’t want peace, because ongoing war was far more profitable for him. “I am a failure”, US president Bill Clinton told Arafat as Arafat refused to negotiate. “And you made me one.”

It’s against this backdrop that the Israeli people asked their government to take action that would protect them.

And the fence works. More than 90% of attacks have been thwarted. Men, women and children are alive today because of that fence.

I know the issue is complicated of course, but it’s less complicated than some people make it out to be. We can always map across from our own experiences. When London was attacked by suicide bombers in 2005, we heightened our security because we felt the threat. London was attacked four times in one day and the impact still resonates. I remember having to wait a long time to get a tube across town on 7th July, and we all agreed it was better to wait safely than be blown to pieces.

Racist violence rose sharply in London after 7th July. The police shot an innocent man in Brixton because they thought he was a threat to many others. We didn’t cope very well, even when the attacks lasted only for one day.

Israel was recognised as a legal, democratic country by the United Nations in 1948. Its hostile neighbours declared war immediately, and now Israel has been under attack every day of its existence. This isn’t a war about land or resources; it’s about power and ideology. Palestinians leaders have consistently rejected all opportunities for statehood because they will not accept any solution that leaves Israel in existence. They don’t actually want to talk to you or look at your art. As Hezbollah’s leader Hasan Nasrallah told the Western protesters who marched through London in support of Palestinian people: “We don’t want anything from you. We want to eliminate you.”

Martin Amis put it best: these demonstrators are “up the arse of the people who want them dead”.

Maybe we should sit with the idea that a security fence that saves hundreds of lives every year is not such a bad thing.

I used to give 10% of my annual income to Amnesty International. It was their dossier on Robert Mugabe that persuaded me to risk my own life in 2003 when, with three friends, I confronted Mugabe in London and called for him to be arrested under the United Nations Convention on Torture – an act that Amnesty supported and later built upon. I also welcomed their campaign this month to free Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, currently imprisoned in Malawi.

But I think Amnesty is recklessly irresponsible in its treatment of Israel. Stirring up anti-Israel feelings with quasi-jingoistic hate talk (“Bring on the Cultural Intifada!”) is not the role of a human rights movement. Perhaps the organisers should hop on a flight to Gaza and see what it’s really like there. Then they could paint a picture that really means something.

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