Advances in technology mean that distant wars no longer seem remote, says Frederick Forsyth [REUTERS]

Now with modern technology they are presented on our television screens as they happen and in full colour with sound. Wars are no longer remote, they happen in our sitting rooms. Since effective war broke out between the state of Israel and Hamas, with the people of Israel but mostly of Gaza in the middle, passions have run high. But it is clear the British Left-wing is wholly pro-Palestinian and has been for years while only conservatives have a word to say for Israel. But it was not always so - indeed at the founding of Israel it was the reverse. Back in 1948 Israel was seen as a struggling, neo-socialist minnow with widespread European support against the Nazi-supporting Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The kibbutz movement was about collectivisation, a wholly socialist farming concept. The war from May 1948 to December, when the Arabs tried to snuff Israel out before its first anniversary, brought the struggling baby-state our warmest best wishes.

It is clear the British Left-wing is wholly pro-Palestinian and has been for years while only conservatives have a word to say for Israel

The first nation to recognise Israel after May 1948 was not the US but the USSR, followed by Clement Attlee's Britain. Over the next 20 years the Israelis' slow conversion of their new land from semi-desert and scrub to grassland, forests and citrus orchards, and the building of roads and ports, cities and schools, hospitals and airports, brought admiration. There was sympathy that while the Muslims and Christians were allowed into East Jerusalem the Jewish people were stopped at the Mandelbaum Gate. But then the British Left changed and I cannot see why. In 1967 as the tyrant and bully Gamal Nasser of Egypt prepared to invade, with the support of three other Arab armies, I recall quite clearly the presumption that no one in the West would lift a finger and that the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The Jewish state was about to cease to exist. Then came the blistering Six Day War. Before our disbelieving eyes the Israeli air force wiped out three neighbouring air forces in a day. General Israel Tal stormed across the Sinai desert to the bank of the Suez Canal.

A Palestinian woman sits amongst the remains of her destroyed house after returning to Beit Hanoun [REUTERS]