There was a startling piece of research last week highlighting where some of the fundamental differences lie between strong supporters of the LibDems and Tories respectively. It showed not just a difference in emphasis between the two groups about the Gaza flotilla jamboree, but a diametric disagreement about it.

The simple ‘interpretation’ that will be offered about this, no doubt, is that LibDems are by nature more likely to support the underdog (ie,Palestine) whereas those nasty Tory folk will support those equally nasty militaristic Israelis and all their wicked attempts to keep the noble Arab down.

There’s an element of that, but it’s peripheral rather than central to the issue. What we are looking at here is just one example of the unbridgeable gulf that lies between Liberal Democrat and Conservative supporters. As the Germans would put it, the archetypes in each group simply don’t share the same Weltanschauung – or ‘view of the world’.

Let me, if I may, apply that fact to the Israeli/Gaza/Hamas/Islamist mess of which the peace-loving flotillas are just the latest phase – or idea – to emerge from the spin-fakirs.

Here is a Tory talking about it…with the thoughts in Italics:

“Look, say what you like about the Jews (and yes, they are clannish and only look after their own) but crikey they work hard and they’re organised and they’re not going to take any nonsense from a shower of bloody Gippos who couldn’t hit a barn door from three feet away. Would I trust an Arab? No I bloody wouldn’t (I wouldn’t trust a Jewboy either, but at least they’re civilised) and it sticks out a mile that the usual bunch of hairy Lefties are behind all this, but younger people are gullible: they still have starry-eyed ideas about these nutters. They come to Britain to plot and have tons of kids – and twerps like Clegg and Brown were all for that. Because they’re daft too”.

Taking out the innate anti-semitism that often lies just below the surface of most home counties Conservatives, that view isn’t far removed from mine. Basically, I think the centre-left Establishment in Britain are naïve, gullible and lacking in either commercial perspective or commonsense. I think the last thirteen years have been a sort of live documentary designed to prove that hypothesis once and for all.

What makes me quite firmly not a Tory is my desire for an end to the rotten system we have – at the cultural, political and economic levels – and its replacement with a more balanced, communitarian one where people think a bit more about others, a lot more about their kids, and apply infinitely more self-discipline to their behaviour. The Cameroons would say this is Conservatism, but it isn’t. When nobody’s looking, your average Tory is quite happy to get ahead by pulling a fast one. They call this ‘get up and go’. I call it ‘being an arsehole’.

Now let’s hear the archetypal LibDem analysing the new ‘situation’ in the Middle East:

“What we’ve got again here is another classic example of the Israelis taking the law into their own hands – just like Blair and Bush and look at the mess they made. Everything the right comes up with is needless scare-mongering about WMD that don’t exist and Arabs wanting to destroy Israel, but this is the usual stuff the American Jewish lobby puts out when the Palestinians dare to stand up for themselves. Look at how the Israelis brutalised all those volunteers and peace-campaigners on the first flotilla – it’s disgraceful.

And they shot some people thirty-seven times point-blank in the head as well you know: that’s just cold-blooded murder. The Israelis will always throw their weight around if we let them, and that’s why the peace flotillas should keep up the pressure. Israel’s behaviour is barbaric and they’re the cause of all the trouble in the first place….stealing the Palestinian homeland and then hanging on to territory they stole during the Six Day War.”

You will have spotted there aren’t any thought italics in this version of events, and there are two reasons for this. First, your average well-meaning LibDem has no hidden agenda, and certainly isn’t privately anti-Semitic (although the Far Left clearly is). And second, there is no thinking at all behind this viewpoint in the first place.

Fundamentally (and this is why I’m not Left-of-Centre these days) the two bits of thinking missing from the liberal view about the Israeli/Gaza problem are foresight – an appreciation of consequences; and interrogation of the motives in play on both sides.

I will now try to summarise these from the perspective of realpolitik, rather than polemics.

Let’s start with the Jews. They’ve had nearly a hundred years of being messed about by devious Europeans, chucked down wells and/or deported from Russia, gassed by Germans, lied to by Anthony Eden, insulted and then invaded by Arabs, ditched by the Americans at a crucial time, and finally demonised by every do-gooder who once upon a time thought the USSR was harmless.

I’ve known and worked with quite a few Israelis over the years. I find Israelis on the whole aggressive, chest-poking, fun-loving, intolerant, admirable, very industrious and – above all – keepers of the motto never trust a Goy. If I’d had sixty years of blood, sweat and tears, I’d probably be very similar. And like it or not, so would you.

And now the Arabs who encircle Israel – but about whom the Israelis are not allowed to be paranoid, except perhaps at Yom Kippur. They’ve had nearly a hundred years of being messed about by devious Europeans, swindled out of their oil-wells, cheated by the Great Powers in 1919, deported off their own land by Jews, deserted by Russia, gassed by their leaders, and then demonised by Americans following 9/11.

I’ve known and worked with a great many Arabs and Islamics over the years. I find Arabs on the whole falsely submissive, proud, misogynist, brutal, intolerant, rude, not very industrious and – above all – keepers of the motto never trust an infidel. They’ve harboured and nurtured a thousand years of hatred ever since the Crusades (about which they’re still pretty sore). I think if somebody had put my forefathers to the sword in 1046, I’d have gotten over it by now. But if a bunch of lying jerks had given my homeland to the people I hate most of all just sixty years ago, I’d be mad as hell about it.

Those analyses will probably infuriate both Zionists and Arabists, Tories and LibDems, but they happen to be fair and historically accurate.

So the motives to be extrapolated from this are very clear indeed. The Israelis want defensive territory and protection around themselves, because they know that without this, they’ll be slaughtered. The only other place with a lot of rich and influential Jews in it is the USA; and so although they’re not entirely sure, the Israelis are betting that they stand a better chance with the Americans than any other nation State.

The Arabs want their homeland back, and the Jews gone. Most of them would prefer ‘dead and gone’. They realised many years ago that invading Israel didn’t work (they keep losing), bombing Europeans didn’t make many friends either, lobbing missiles into Israeli towns got Gaza invaded, and leaving things up to either the UN or their leaders was hopeless, because neither of them cared that much. So Hamas et al are betting that if enough US and European liberals/anti-Semites get worked up about the Jewish eye for an eye thing, they can isolate the Israelis to a point where nobody gives a damn whether they get nuked or not.

And that’s how peace activists, humanitarian aid flotillas and globally peaceful humanitarian aid anti-war organisations were made. It’s just the latest round in a boxing match neither side can win. Unstoppable force meets immovable object: failsafe defence against angry Arabs meets Islamist-inspired nationalist desire to get the real Palestine back.

So finally, let’s try some foresight.

I do not doubt that the Fluffies found Iran’s intervention yesterday ‘unexpected’, and that even this will wind up being Israel’s fault. But for myself, I think it was only a matter of time. And the time limit could be defined as ‘when Israel is made so much of a pariah that even an arsehole like me, Mahmoud Ahmadinnejhad, can get involved without being seen for the opportunistic Jew-baiting, Nazi-sympathising little psycho I so obviously am’.

Foresight is about little more than discerning motive, and then working out from that what is most likely to be coming down the road. I find this works pretty much across the piece: with bankers, Lord Mandelson, the Unite Union, the Daily Mail, Rupert Murdoch, Piers Morgan, Simon Cowell, the Prudential/AIA deal, the Glazers at Manchester United, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, the Iranian Guard, Lloyd Blankfein, Freddie Goodwin, The Free Gaza Movement, management consultants and every other known form of brainless self-aggrandizement.

And on that basis I can see only one outcome if this knee-jerk kick of Israel condemnation meets the unshakeable will of the excitable Mr Netanyahu: a carte blanche for the headcases on both sides…..and an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran.

There: that stopped you in your tracks didn’t it?

Think on this as you take to your sanctimonious beds tonight.