I have heard Zionists panicking over the breeding rate of Arabs, debating their brain size.

Hugh was so right, tragically so. Hugh Blaschko was one of the greatest men that ever lived. He and his wife Mary gave me shelter, became my surrogate family from 1972 to 1978 when I had to cope with the loss of my old homeland, Uganda. Born in Germany, Hugh was from one of those cultured, intellectual Jewish Berlin families crushed by Nazism. He escaped to Britain in the late 1930s to become a world-class scientist. Israel would bring out the worst in his people, he always said, and I argued with him. Survivors of the Holocaust, I believed, were on the side of the angels. "No, my dear," he would respond, "the Jewish state will make us nationalists, and will one day make us racialists." I am glad he is not alive to see his prophetic words turned flesh.

As we witness the bombardment by Israel of Lebanon and Gaza - a grotesque over-reaction - and, as the death toll of Arab civilians mounts, you have to ask how the Israelis can do what they do. My only answer now is to conclude that it is racism. No political or territorial struggles can convincingly explain or excuse the maddened onslaught by the Israeli state.