Decisions by the National Union of Journalists and the University and College Union to boycott Israel have generated media coverage worldwide. Unison will shortly vote on the issue too.

David Cameron is in no doubt who the prime movers are, according to the Jerusalem Post. Speaking at a recent Conservative Friends of Israel meeting, the Tory leader declared himself 'a Zionist' and went on:

"Israel is a democratic country and these Trotskyists are treating Israel as some sort of pariah state," Cameron said. "[They] may be a bunch of lunatics, but what they are doing is profoundly wrong and profoundly damaging," he added.

Not all Trotskyists agree with the SWP-defined far left orthodoxy, of course. The Alliance for Workers' Liberty have long singled themselves out in this respect. And there's an interesting article on the Socialist Party website, arguing that the boycott call is tactically wrong-headed.

Nevertheless, if I had been a delegate to the NUJ conference - which I have been on around half a dozen occasions in 19 years of membership - I'm not sure how I would have voted.

In general, my ethical position is that labour movement organisations, or any vertebrate self-respecting liberal come to that, should put whatever moral pressure they can on repressive regimes. And Israel is certainly that. Justification for backing the motion, then?

But it is scarcely uniquely repressive. It is not qualitatively worse than Saudi Arabia, Burma, Sudan or Zimbabwe, to mention some obvious examples. Certain of these countries are hailed in some quarters of the British left as anti-imperialist. For the sake of consistency alone, support for a boycott of one should entail support for a boycott of all of them.

Just by way of trying to think this one through, I've asked myself a few questions. First, does Zionism really 'equal racism' or even apartheid? No. I have read Theodor Herzl's The Jewish State. None of the content struck me as an apologetic for racial supremacy.

Second, is Israel 'a client state of US imperialism'? Again, there is no doubt that it pursues a policy of alliance with the US as a tactical expedient, precisely because it regards this as the best means of ensuring its survival. But it is not the only US ally in the Middle East. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are favoured by Washington too..

Third, is Israel 'a settler state'? There are arguments that post-1948 Israel can be so described. But the intended parallel with South Africa falls down, not least because there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Palestine for thousands of years.

Finally, what should socialists say? Throughout the long period that I considered myself a Trotskyist, I had a ready-made answer to that one off pat: socialist revolution in the Middle East would be led by the Arab working class, which would liberate Palestine and bring about a socialist republic with full rights for Jews and all national minorities. I even used to get up in meetings and argue that kind of stuff.

But it's not much of a perspective to cling to at a time when the domination of ruling classes best described as theocratic, kleptocratic or both seems unshakeable throughout the Middle East, while Palestine itself descends into de facto civil war, and even Hamas fears losing its grip on the streets to forces even further on the Islamist scale.

Can anybody offer a guide for the perplexed?

In all the long years I have taken an interest in politics, I have never come across any debate remotely as characterised by wilful distortion, obfuscation, over-emotionalism, deliberate bad faith, polarisation, ill-tempered malicious mudslinging and widespread playing of the man rather than the ball than the Israel/Palestine issue.

Sometimes it seems that enough straw men have been erected in this connection to populate a medium-sized city of the damn things, complete with commuter suburbs.

Trade union activists find themselves circulating hyperlinks to articles on the website of a well-known Ku Klux Klan boss, while the leader of one far left group feels constrained to defend every action of Israel’s rapacious and corrupt ruling class, even to the point of offering carte blanche in advance of planned aggression.

If the purpose of argumentation is actually to achieve political clarity – and it is sometimes hard to believe that other motives are not also in play – than it would probably be helpful to establish some basis of agreed facts as basic parameters for further discussion.

In that spirit, let me offer the following hard-headed, call a spade a spade, generally leftist take, which I hope avoids the pitfalls of automatic identification with the nationalism of either the state of Israel or its enemies.

Naturally, I think all of my assessments happen to correct. But unlike some people, I am willing to listen to other viewpoints, and even willing to be persuaded I am wrong if I hear a superior argument. Why else have a comments box?

(1) Yes, Israel does brutally oppress the Palestinians. Some of those sympathetic to Israel remain in denial on this score. Others adduce reasons why this should be the case, including of course Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. But this is the basic issue of right and wrong on which all else rests, and socialists can have no other starting point. Palestinians deserve human and democratic rights.

(2) Yes, other countries oppress national and ethnic minorities too. Turkey seeks mercilessly to crush the Kurds, China occupies Tibet. Insert your own list here. Consistency demands that Israel is not – as the often-repeated phrase has it – uniquely demonised. But it should not be uniquely soft-soaped, either. Socialists should not play favourites among ruling classes. We are against national oppression. End of chat.

(3) Israel exists. It has been there for over 60 years, and had a population of 7,282,000 as of May 2008. Whatever the sins of their forebears, these people have human and democratic rights too. Let’s leave counterfactual stuff as an agreeable parlour game for history buffs, eh?

(4) Yes, Israel does have extensive influence and support in Washington. There. Said it. So does that make me a closet believer in the Zionist Occupation Government theory? Hardly. The matter is well documented, not least by messrs Walt and Mearsheimer, two serious scholars patently not motivated by conspiracy theory. What’s more, other influential groups – neoconservatives and Christian Zionists – use their clout in ways that suit Israeli purposes.

(5) Zionism is no more inherently racist than any other stripe of nationalism. Yes, I have read Herzl’s The Jewish State, and have to say I found it a work of no special profundity. But racist it wasn’t. Now, if you were to engage me in late evening philosophical discussion – over a bottle of decent single malt, to generate maximum loquacity on my part - on the Marxist understanding of the nature of nationalism in general, then I would say that it is a reactionary phenomenon and that hopefully humanity will one day be able to leave such childish nonsense behind. But that is not going to happen in our lifetimes. In the meantime, drop the stickers that place an equal sign between the Star of David and the swastika, please; they are simply gratuitously offensive.

(6) Any solution has to be hacked out round a negotiating table. As I observed above, 7.2m people now live in Israel. They will resist any attempt at conquest, and if push comes to shove, they've got nukes. The only circumstance in which they will agree to be driven to the sea is when they happen to fancy a daytrip to the beach and go by taxi.

(7) That means talking to Fatah. Oh, and Hamas. Just as there could have been no solution to the conflicts in Ireland and South Africa without the IRA and the ANC being brought onside, it will be necessary to sit down with groups currently branded terrorists by the West. It is for the Palestinians to choose who will be their representatives. It is regretable that they should select paid-up believers in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion rather than the Palestinian section of the Fourth International, but that is who they have chosen.

(8) Only a democratic secular state is going to work. Palestine is not a particularly prepossessing piece of real estate. All proposals for a two state solution essentially amount to calls for the establishment of one or more bantustans. There is only room for one viable state, and it is essential that it not be confessionally-based. Obviously, an elaborate system of safeguards, checks and balances will need to be built into the constitutional arrangements. But hey, if we can keep Belgium unified, anything’s possible.

There. Now, am I right or am I right?