THOSE of us who have been campaigning for years on Palestinian rights have become used to a lot of mudslinging, blatant lies and personal threats.

But the quantity and tone of the attacks on the left of the party, on Jeremy Corbyn personally and on long-term activists on Palestine have now reached industrial proportions. Even the most battle-hardened have quailed in the face of the onslaught.

The received wisdom is that the Establishment, including the mainstream media and the right wing of the Labour Party, have teamed up with ardent apologists for Israel’s policies in order to silence Israel’s critics and ensure a continuation of “centrist” neoliberal politics.

This is undoubtedly true. It is also encouraging in that to have unleashed such unprecedented fury we must represent a genuine threat to the status quo.

One can almost admire the diligence with which every meeting at which Corbyn has spoken, every tweet, every photograph of him going back decades, has been scrutinised and milked for sneers and slurs.

Even back copies of the rather obscure quarterly magazine Palestine News, mouthpiece of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, of which I was editor, have been unearthed and trawled through for material that could be used against Corbyn.

Any negative story is amplified across the media, especially in newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Sun. Every smear immediately generates reams of venom-spitting comments, often curiously similar in tone and content. The effort involved in orchestrating these displays is truly impressive. Hundreds of volunteers and/or paid workers must be toiling night and day.

But amid this torrent of fabricated non-news one can detect something else, at least within the pro-Israel camp — a very real, visceral emotion. 

Take the much-publicised case of Labour MP Margaret Hodge. Her record shows her to be dedicated to public service, a cool chairperson and writer of cogent, balanced reports. A rational and well-informed person, surely.

This persona was in total contrast with the truly hysterical “fucking anti-semite” outburst in the House of Commons against Corbyn. 

There was nothing synthetic in this, nor in her response to the letter that she then received from the party’s general secretary about her abusive language, which she likened to a summons by the Gestapo — a response much mocked in the social media (see #HodgeComparisons).

Others have been less vocal, but there is still a mismatch between their stance on Israel and on virtually any other issue.

Even people who have been at the forefront of the resurgence of the left, with otherwise impeccable credentials on issues of racism and social justice, cannot bring themselves to apply their normal principles.

It is worth asking what inspires such emotion and such reticence.

For years it was possible to be what is sometimes termed a “soft zionist” — someone supporting a state of Israel which kept more or less to the 1967 borders, whose leaders at least used the language of international diplomacy and professed to be dedicated to seeking a peaceful solution in the region.  

Israel’s march to the right, the waves of aggression unleashed on the people of Gaza and the openly stated ambition to establish a Greater Israel on all of what was once Palestine, which would presumably involve some kind of re-enactment of the ethnic cleansing of 1948, puts a very severe strain on people who view themselves as progressive and liberal.

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has written and spoken eloquently about a deep-rooted “state of denial” in relation both to the history and current policies of Israel and to the mindset essential to maintaining support for Israel. 

The gap between the comforting myths and the increasingly stark reality widens year by year, as Israel pushes towards the endgame, emboldened by unconditional US support and the apathy of the rest of the world. 

Trying to bridge that gap must create an almost unbearable tension for people who are, in relation to other issues, decent and fair-minded. The tension finally surfaces as rage and paranoia directed at those who are voicing intolerable truths. They must at all costs be silenced. Then, maybe, the pain will go away.

It is probably pointless to try to bring such sufferers to a better understanding of reality.

But, having interviewed Israelis who have made that painful journey, from the traditional Israeli narrative to one based on a more accurate view of history (Palestine News, Autumn 2006), I have witnessed a kind of catharsis — an immense relief, mixed with profound anger at the lies they have been fed from childhood.

One interviewee said: “Once you break away, there’s a fantastic sense of release. It’s like escaping from a religious sect or cult. At last you have the freedom to develop, to think for yourself.”

But the vast majority do not make that journey, they remain the shock troops being used to spearhead the attacks on the left of the party.

The vote by Labour's NEC next week on how to define anti-semitism will show where the party’s power base really lies. If at that meeting it is decreed that suggesting Israel may be in some way racist is anti-semitic, we can expect to see a hit list of suspects being rapidly drawn up.

This is the clear wish of the three Jewish newspapers which shared an editorial the other day.

If the full IHRA definition were to be approved, they say, “hundreds if not thousands of Labour and Momentum members would need to be expelled.”

The queue of party members awaiting interrogation and expulsion would indeed stretch from London to Jerusalem. That would be the end of the left’s chances in the next election — and a serious blow to democracy in this country.