When a well-known and, it can fairly be added, distinguished journalist such as Allister Sparks voluntarily walks into the trackless swamps of the Palestine question, it is worth pondering the whys and wherefores of it.

Mr Sparks recently pointed out that an Israeli military investigation has vindicated various findings in Judge Richard Goldstone’s UN Human Rights Council report on the Gaza incursion. Mr Sparks therefore proposed that Chief Rabbi Goldstein make an apology - ‘a public, abject apology’ - for injustices he and others had earlier visited upon Judge Goldstone for putting his (Judge Goldstone’s) name to the report.

There followed a flurry of readers’ responses and a rebuttal from David Saks of the Jewish Board of Deputies. As ever, feelings ran high and everyone agreed or disagreed vigorously. Though Mr Sparks, with evident sincerity, had at least begun and ended on the narrow issue, he was backed or attacked on a wide front. And he was always either dead right or dead wrong: Chief Rabbi Goldstein certainly owed an apology - or Mr Sparks and/or Judge Goldstone did. Take your pick.

Why is it ‘always Israel’ like this?

The seeds of Arab-Jewish conflict, the idea of a modern Jewish national home, were planted long ago in Czarist Russia. Momentous and terrible events in the 20th Century later made Israel a reality. Some like to believe that if you turn back the clock, delve deep enough into history, show who owned the land first, the whole bloody mess is settled.

That seems sensible. The country must have belonged to someone once. More than half a century ago, the naturalized English historian and Zionist, Lewis Namier, wrote that ‘the basic element of territory cannot be eliminated: there is no escape from the interplay between groups of men and tracts of land, which forms the essence of history.’

The trouble is it does not settle anything. Whom the land first ‘belonged’ to, even if it could be agreed, would make no difference to people living on it, or demanding its return, today. Nor does history solve moral dilemmas, despite scholars’ efforts over the centuries to suggest otherwise. History is the impersonal course of events. It leaves judgements to people.

Most people will judge the matter instinctively, from experience. And here perhaps we glimpse the underlying reasons why it is ‘always Israel’.

Besides presenting the repugnant spectacle of an armed and powerful state oppressing the weak and helpless, Israel to many is a colonial, settler state in ‘native’ territory. The situation is too familiar and memories are still too raw in SA for Israel ever to have right on its side, including for some the right to exist.

The SA media can hardly fail to play to these feelings, even if Mr Sparks personally did not. But how does common sense, let alone justice, decide so often to single out the same sinner for moral condemnation? There are two sides to any conflict and many conflicts to match the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is hard to put away the stereotype of the amoral editor happily recycling a story that ‘sells’ - or the suspicion that no one can publish anything anymore unless there is a ready market for it.

Taking sides only provokes challenges for either side. Throughout much of the world, time and tide have discredited nationalism and the wars it gives rise to. With the cruellest irony, Israel was reborn too late in the end. Since the 1940s it has been slowly but surely left stranded, ‘singled out’ today because the warring nation-state itself is passed its time.

The counter charge, in spite of fierce assertions by opponents of Zion that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are different, is that the two things are the same. The Jewish state has simply taken on the role of scapegoat played until now by the Jewish people.

One thought struggles out of this moral morass and asks for an answer. In the Middle East, there is a terrible conflict that would be better ended. When we argue passionately the right side and wrong side in it, are we not doing our own little bit to keep it going?