The new Moderator of the Church of Scotland has had the good grace to admit that the biased report her organisation produced 10 years ago was based on hearsay, without any of those involved in its compilation ever having visited Israel.

At the time, it sparked outrage and its presence has been a festering sore which has continued to cause a nagging pain and suspicion in the Scottish Jewish community’s relations with the Church.

But is this not symptomatic of so many of the pronouncements made about Israel and, most particularly, its conflict with the Palestinian Authority?

Countless ‘experts’ are prepared to condemn Israel and side with the Palestinians, particularly the terrorists of Hamas, without ever having visited the region.

Without physically understanding the geography, it is well nigh impossible to form a realistic appraisal and, more so, without having experienced or seen the aftermath of a terror attack on Israel from Gaza, Ramallah or Lebanon, to realise that the Jewish state has every right to defend itself — and retaliate in the strongest possible way.

Had the Church of Scotland, before it published its report, sent scouts into the Land of Israel, as was the practice in biblical times, it and others might have witnessed Israeli hospitals treating its enemies and their children with compassion and dignity, without charge, and a multitude of faiths co-existing peacefully side-by-side — and far from the oft-painted, erroneous image of an apartheid, racist state.

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