The creation of Israel, sponsored by British governments starting more than a century ago, depended on the ethnic cleansing of some 80 percent of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and the continuing exclusion of millions of their descendants. Israel still subjects millions more to a belligerent occupation.
Hotovely threatens to disrupt all of these achievements, and expose the pro-Israel lobby - as well as some of the biggest names in Britain's Jewish community - as charlatans.
Passionate about IsraelJewish leaders in the UK were already panicking over Netanyahu's promises to annex parts of the West Bank. That would bring into sharp focus a decades-long Zionist programme of Palestinian dispossession they have quietly supported.
Early last month, before Hotovely's appointment had been announced, around 40 of Britain's most prominent Jews, including historians Simon Schama and Simon Sebag Montefiore, philanthropist Vivien Duffield and former Conservative cabinet minister Malcolm Rifkind, wrote to Regev urging the Israeli government to rethink annexation.
They observed that, as "committed Zionists and passionately outspoken friends of Israel", they had worked hard to "nurture a more sympathetic environment for Israel" in the UK. But annexation, they warned, would tear apart the country's Jewish community and "pose an existential threat to the traditions of Zionism in Britain".
It was notable that key figures in the campaign to oust Corbyn over his support for Palestinian rights signed the letter, including former Labour MP Luciana Berger; Trevor Chinn, a major donor to Starmer's campaign; Daniel Finkelstein, associate editor at the Times newspaper; Julia Neuberger, a prominent rabbi; and Anthony Julius, a celebrated lawyer.
Annexation is not newBut annexation is not a new policy, as these Jewish notables suggest. Israel formally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, in violation of international law, condemning more than 370,000 Palestinian residents to permanent Israeli apartheid rule. Israel did the same to the Syrian Golan Heights a year later.
And is annexation really worse than the mass ethnic cleansing operations Israel carried out not only in 1948, but again in 1967? Ever since, Israel has pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing by stealth in the occupied territories - the flipside of its "creeping annexation" policy - as it has taken over more Palestinian land to settle it with Jews.
Did these war crimes not lead Jewish community leaders in Britain to rethink their "passionate commitment" to Israel?
And why is it only this latest phase of annexation that makes them question "Israel's status as a liberal democracy" - not the legal structures codified in dozens of laws that privilege the citizenship rights of Jews over Israel's 1.8 million-strong Palestinian minority, a fifth of its population?
Formal annexation is simply the logical conclusion of more than a century of Zionist colonisation of Palestine, one that was always premised on the replacement of the native population with Jews. Getting the jitters at this late stage in Israel's settler-colonial mission, as though some imaginary red line has suddenly been crossed, is self-delusion of the highest order.
Sparing allies' blushesBut if annexation poses a severe blow to the image these "passionate Zionists" have of themselves as fair-minded, sensitive liberals, Hotovely's appointment as ambassador may yet sound the death knell.
Earlier Israeli governments were aware of the need to put a rhetorical gloss on their oppression of Palestinians to spare the blushes of supporters in western states. That was one of the tasks of Israel's foreign ministry and its diplomatic corps. It was also the aim of the Israeli hasbara industry - state propaganda masquerading as neutral "information".
Successive Netanyahu governments have found propping up such deceptions increasingly untenable in an era in which Palestinians have phone cameras that can document their abuse. The resulting videos are all over YouTube.
Many British Jews have averted their eyes, claiming instead that strenuous criticism of Israel is demonisation motivated by antisemitism. But the self-deceptions so beloved by many in overseas Jewish communities are increasingly unpalatable to the Israeli right's Jewish supremacist instincts. Hotovely is simply the latest choice of envoy who cares little for indulging the cognitive dissonance of local Jewish allies.
Back in 2015, before the ultra-nationalist Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil's president, Netanyahu tried to foist a settler leader, Dani Dayan, on Brasilia. Notably, Hotovely, who was then Israel's deputy foreign minister, was outspoken in defending Dayan's appointment, even threatening to downgrade relations with Brazil.
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