There are few murkier and more dispiriting stories of late than the kidnap of Alan Johnston and the events which have followed it.

As Caroline Gluck rightly points out in the Jerusalem Post:

POOR JOHNSTON was so biased in favor of the Palestinians that he could have been forgiven for believing he would be safe from Palestinian terror. As the BBC's Middle East Bureau chief Simon Wilson put it, Johnston "is regarded as a Gaza journalist foremost and a foreign journalist second." The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said that Johnston is "famous for his opinions which are supportive of the Palestinians."

Will the fact that the kidnappers seized - and, so it seems, murdered - a journalist so friendly to the Palestinians contribute in any way to a more level-headed assessment of the nature of Palestinian terrorism? Of course not. Anyone who has ever followed the media would know what the next stage of this affair would be: blame the Israelis.

Right on cue, the NUJ voted to boycott Israeli goods.

When this decision came under attack, the NUJ defended it on the grounds that the boycott was a quid pro quo for the Palestinian journalists' union opposing the kidnap of Johnstone.

Do I really need to point out what this means? Reversing the logic: Palestinian journalists think it's fine to kidnap other journalists but in this instance are prepared to oppose a kidnapping if a foreign union votes to boycott Israel.

Not that anyone can really think that that was all there is to it. Any observer of the NUJ would not be in the least bit shocked that the union decided to boycott for no other reason than that Israel exists.

The boycott is, in any case, puzzling. As Caroline Gluck continues:

It will be interesting to see how they manage to implement their boycott and work as reporters at the same time. Since Israeli engineers developed their cell phones, their Pentium chip computers, their voicemail and their instant messenger software, boycotting Israel will involve giving up their ability to quickly amass their anti-Israel propaganda, vomit it out on their computers and send it off to their Israel-bashing editors.

It's important in all this not to lose sight of the fact that a man has been murdered by Palestinian terrorists. It is entirely right that there were demonstrations, protests and attemots to free him. But isn't it about time that the same standard was applied by those who were protesting for Johnston's release to Israeli victims of Palestinian terror?

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Oliver Kamm has a characteristically insightful piece on a point made in David Aaronovitch's documentary:

...[T]he most cogent voice on the programme was one I hadn't heard before, making a point that hadn't occurred to me. Julie Nicholson, whose daughter Jenny was killed in the Edgware Road bombing on 7/7, commented on the video made by her daughter's murderer, Mohammad Sidique Khan. Khan's voice and finger-jabbing gestures, she said, indicated not courage but petulance. If you watch the video, you will see that she's right. Mrs Nicholson's point is more than an observation about personal psychology. It has political significance.

Have a read of Oliver's piece to discover that significance.

Please watch David Aaronovitch's superb documentary, No Excuses For Terror. You can see it here.

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This can't be right, surely? I thought they were heroic freedom fighters.

(8)

You have to love James Taranto sometimes:

Moderate Terrorists
"The first Muslim to be crowned Miss England has warned that stereotyping members of her community is leading some towards extremism," reports London's Daily Mail:

Hammasa Kohistani made history last year when she was chosen to represent England in the Miss World pageant. . . .

She said: "The attitude towards Muslims has got worse over the year. Also the Muslims' attitude to British people has got worse.

"Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway. It will take a long time for communities to start mixing in more. . . ."

So let's see if we follow this argument. According to Kohistani, Muslims are so thin-skinned and so violent that they respond to prejudice with terrorism.

Um, isn't that an invidious stereotype?

Maybe she got the idea from a 1997 Onion piece, datelined Hebron, West Bank:

In an emotionally charged press conference Monday, crazed Palestinian gunman Faisal al Hamad expressed frustration over the stereotyping of his people.

"As a crazed Palestinian gunman, I feel hurt by the negative portrayal of my people in the media," said al Hamad, 31, a Hebron-area terrorist maniac. "None of us should have to live with stereotyping and ignorance."

He then began screaming and firing into a busload of Israeli schoolchildren.

"It hurts that in this supposedly enlightened day and age, people still make assumptions about other people," al Hamad said. "We should not rely on simple generalizations. Each crazed Palestinian gunman is an individual."

For another angle on the stereotyping of Muslims, consider this Reuters dispatch:

Al Qaeda called on non-Muslims especially in the United States to convert to Islam and abandon their "misguided" ways or else suffer, according to a video tape posted on a Web site on Saturday.

Now Reuters for the past five years has refused to call al Qaeda a terrorist group or even acknowledge that 9/11 was a terrorist act. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." So when the word terrorist appears, it's generally in scare quotes.

But no scare quotes around "Islam" in the passage above. In Reuters' view, the men of al Qaeda may or may not be terrorists, but they are true Muslims.

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How Mark Steyn is missed in British newspapers. Here he is on The Axis of Evenhandedness:

There's a hoary old joke from a few years back in which the Secretary-General proposes that, in the interests of global peace and harmony, the world's soccer players should come together and form one United Nations global soccer team.

"Great idea," says his deputy. "Er, but who would we play?"

"Israel, of course."

I was listening to the radio the other day (not the BBC!) and heard some 'they're not terrorists, they're freedom fighters' academic moaning that the UN cease fire resolution was bad because it favoured Israel over Hezbollah. The statement was left hanging as if, self-evidently, such 'bias' would be wrong.

It didn't occur to the host to ask why there would be a problem - if it were true - if the UN favoured a sovereign state defending itself, over a terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of that state.

(1)

Where was Human Rights Watch when they were needed?

(5)

He gets it.

Here's an interesting story about claims by Human Rights Watch of supposed Israeli war crimes. If killing terrorists and disabling their apparatus are war crimes, that is.

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According to this piece in Asharq Al-Awsat:

The Iranian government's pledge of 500 million dollars to Hezbollah has angered many Iranians who say they are still awaiting money to help rebuild their homes that were damaged by wars and natural disasters, informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat.

...“Informed sources” told Asharq Al-Awsat that spontaneous demonstrations were staged in Bam and in Khuzestan on Friday as protesters shouted slogans critical of Hezbollah and the government. They were demanding their homes be rebuilt instead of the government intervening in Lebanese affairs.

And from the same piece, here's Hezbollah's contribution to the cease fire:

Elsewhere, Hezbollah's representative in Iran has ruled out the disarmament of their Lebanese counterparts and said the group will buy new weapons if necessary.

"There will not be disarmament, the UN resolution has not demanded that either," Abdullah Safieddin told Shargh newspaper in an interview published Monday, on the eighth day of a UN-brokered ceasefire to end the month-long Israeli offensive in Lebanon aimed at crippling Hezbollah.

However, UN Resolution 1701 which laid out the ceasefire calls for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon and prohibits any sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government.

So much for Hezbollah being the Lebanese resistance to Israel. Here's what Elias Hasrouni, a Maronite Christian, has to say:

"How can it be a victory when most of [southern Lebanon] has been destroyed? There's no work, many people left, many people died, the houses were damaged. Is this a victory?"

...Hezbollah is dispensing up to $US12,000 ($16,000) to people who have lost property in the war, but Mr Hasrouni says he will not accept it. "We don't want to be indebted to Hezbollah," he said.

Residents who fled the town during the war returned to find bloodstains on their couches, or dirty handtowels where Hezbollah fighters had used their toilets, Mr Hasrouni said, adding that although many locals did not support this war, they could not stop it. Three years ago Hezbollah seized his olive groves for military purposes. He could do nothing.

"I do not like Hezbollah," said Mr Hasrouni, who still is afraid to visit his groves.

"I am disappointed with this war because Israel didn't really do the job … And I really don't believe anyone could disarm Hezbollah."

(3)

Remember those protests from Israel-haters such as Ming Campbell, who would rather Israel wasn't defended against terror, when it was noticed that US planes were taking off with weapons for Israel from Prestwick? And who believes that Britain should not sell arms to Israel?

I'm fascinated to see when they will protest about this:

Hezbollah night-vision gear was from Britain, Israel says
It's believed to be an export to Iran in drug-fighting effort

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sunday, August 20, 2006

(8-20) 04:00 PDT Kiryat Shemona, Israel -- Israeli intelligence officials have complained to Britain and the United States that sensitive night-vision equipment recovered from Hezbollah fighters during the war in Lebanon had been exported by Britain to Iran. British officials said the equipment had been intended for use in a U.N. anti-narcotics campaign.

Israeli officials say they believe the state-of-the-art equipment, found in Hezbollah command-and-control headquarters in southern Lebanon during the just-concluded war, was part of a British government-approved shipment of 250 pieces of night-vision equipment sent to Iran in 2003.

Israeli military intelligence confirmed that one of the pieces of equipment is a Thermo-vision 1000 LR tactical night-vision system, serial No. 155010, part No. 193960, manufactured by Agema, a high-tech equipment company with branches in Bedfordshire, England, and San Diego. A spokesman for Agema in San Diego denied all knowledge of the system.

The equipment, which needed special export-license approval from the British government, was passed to the Iranians through a program run and administered by the U.N. Drug Control Program. The equipment uses infrared imaging to provide nighttime surveillance that allows the user to detect people and vehicles moving in the dark at a range of several miles.

Use of such equipment would have enabled Hezbollah to detect and record the movements of Israeli forces inside Israel, as well as its military advance into Lebanon.

So come on, Sir Ming, let's hear your protest. Or are you an Israel-hating hypocrite?

The silence of the protests is deafening.

(4)

A story is doing the rounds today about Mary Beard, professor of classics at Cambridge, who wrote, as the Telegraph put it, of her "hankering for an age when seminars were enlivened by the sexual frisson between dons and students".

In the main, it's been reported as a jolly little story. Hmmm. But let's ignore the fact that what she hankers after is more accurately described as sexual harrassment.

Rather, one needs to bear in mind that Prof Beard is no sweet, other worldly academic. She is, as her piece in the London Review of Books on October 4, 2001, makes clear, a hard core anti-American possessed of a truly vile view of 9/11:

[W]hen the shock had faded, more hard-headed reaction set in. This wasn't just the feeling that, however tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming. That is, of course, what many people openly or privately think. World bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price.

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Iain Dale has a post pointing out that there are allegations that President Ahmadinejad's new blog has some sort of code in it which infects pcs. I've no idea what it's all about. But I loved this comment left on Iain's blog:

Buster George said...

Checked this out last night and have since scanned my PC, it is ok,
Just don't tell Dubya or he could iterpet this as a WMD.

(3)

00 Labour MPs are demanding the recall of Parliament "to debate the Lebanon crisis" as the Guardian - and everyone else - puts it.

I'd be fascinated to discover which of the 100 MPs plans to argue that Israel is not being, as the buzz-word has it, 'disproportionate'.

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My old friend (and, in distant years, debating partner) Paul Robinson, Assistant Director of the Centre for Security Studies and Deputy Director of the Institute of Applied Ethics at Hull University has a thoughtful and insightful piece in the Spectator on the ethics of modern war, dealing specifically with the IDF's conduct and proportionality:

Let no one say, however, that Israel has failed to give much thought to the situation. The IDF is in many ways far more advanced in ethical training than the UK armed forces. The IDF operates according to a Code of Ethics entitled ‘The Spirit of the IDF’. This comes out very well when compared with similar documents produced by the British military, such as the booklet ‘Values and Standards of the British Army’. As I have pointed out in my latest book, Military Honour and the Conduct of War, the British pamphlet provides a list of military virtues which are meant to guide the honourable soldier but then ruins the effect by counselling actual recourse to a utilitarian ‘Service Test’: ‘Have the actions or behaviour of an individual adversely impacted or are they likely to impact on the efficiency or operational effectiveness of the Army?’ Thus, the message of the British army’s official ethics document is that, ultimately, what is moral is what works. There is no consideration of the rights of others, the value of human life, or in fact anything beyond achieving the mission.

In contrast, ‘The Spirit of the IDF’ specifically lists ‘the sanctity of life’ as an overriding principle. The IDF serviceman, it says, ‘will, above all, preserve human life, in the recognition of its supreme value and will place himself or others at risk solely to the extent required to carry out his mission. The sanctity of life in the eyes of the IDF servicemen will find expression in all of their actions.’ When, in the current campaign, some IDF pilots over Lebanon were reported by the Observer to be deliberately missing their targets or aborting their missions because of fears that innocents would be killed, the pilots specifically cited the terms of the IDF Code of Ethics as their reason.

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I was about to post something on the folly of Israel accepting a cease fire now, when I came across this admirable post from Perry de Havilland at Samizdata which makes almost exactly the case I was going to make:

If Israel really does accept and implement a ceasefire on Monday, it will have accepted the worst of all possible worlds. If it agrees to an end to the fighting which does not disarm Hezbollah, or even push it behind the Litani River, and does not get a third party force capable of fighting Hezbollah into Southern Lebanon, it would be fair to say Israel has achieved none of its war aims whatsoever. In short, Hezbollah will have won and we will soon be seeing celebrations in the streets across the Islamic world to that effect.

The primary Israeli method of attack, a series of destructive operational level1 air strikes against Lebanon's infrastructure, only made sense if it was intended to isolate the enemy and dislocate its logistics as an adjunct to a massive and robust attack on the ground with a significant portion of its formidable army, with the intention at crushing Hezbollah as military force.

Otherwise, what was the point of the non-tactical strikes? As Hezbollah already had large numbers of artillery rockets deployed as organic supply with its front line units (demonstrably so), the air interdiction only made sense if Israel was planning an extended campaign for as long as it took to destroy Hezbollah, which means preventing Hezbollah's resupply. Why else blow power-stations, fuel depots, bridges, roads and runways deep into the country rather than just strike tactical targets where Hezbollah is deployed? Bringing the Lebanese transportation system to a standstill was surely done to stop movement of supply so that as Hezbollah formations expended their munitions (a process that would increase as more units were engaged directly by the Israeli army), they would quickly become much less effective due to logistic dislocation. This is 'Air Interdiction 101', the sort of thing military planners have understood since 'Operation Strangle' in Italy in 1944.

But what Israel has done so far is a robust air offensive in support of little more than a series of limited objective raids with only a small fraction of the army. This has not only failed (unsurprisingly) to destroy Hezbollah, it has failed to even displace them far enough back onto Lebanon to prevent them firing rockets into Haifa on an almost daily basis throughout this campaign.

And now, having killed a great many people but still leaving a large number of Hezbollah fighters very much alive and still in possession of both their Katyushas and the positions from which to fire them, the Israeli government plans to stop? Having weathered what Israel threw at them (but not what the Israelis inexplicably failed to throw at them), Hezbollah can, quite justifiably, claim victory and greatly enhance their stature simply by virtue of Israel failed to gain any of its publicly stated war aim.

Can anyone tell me what the hell the Israeli government is thinking?

To which I can only add: precisely. A cease fire would be a disaster. This is, as Bibi Netanyahu has been pointing out, the most important war in Israel's history. It must finish the job.

UPDATE: A correspondent puts a very different view to me:

I think you are wrong about the ceasefire. Despite the BBC taking it the same way ("massive defeat for Israel") I disagree completely. Hezbollah have agreed (if they agree to the ceasefire) to have their militia removed from the south of Lebanon AND return the two hostages. Precisely Israels initial casus belli, and something Hezbollah refused utterly to do in the first place - remember their initial demand that the two hostages would only be returned in a prisoner swap of some kind.

It's a massive Hezbollah climb down and should be highlighted as such. Israel has 30k troops in south Lebanon and I don't think they'll be pulling out until Hezbollah has demonstrated their commitment to the ceasefire by returning the hostages or transferring them to a third party.

Can't really understand the "bad for Israel" point of view.

That's an entirely valid interpretation. But it hinges on the fact of Hezbollah disappearing from the south of Lebanon. I find it difficult to imagine this happening at all, but even if I am wrong and Hezbollah do, initially, leave, my worry is that, within a short space of time, they will be back. As for the idea that an international/UN force will prevent that: yeah, right.

(2)

Is there are a more preposterous UN figure than Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs? (Probably - Mark Malloch Brown might well edge him.)

Here's his latest 'humanitarian' comment - a moral warping which, if one was not used to the UN's mirror-image world, would take the breath away:

People were enraged collectively in Lebanon, everybody against the Israeli indiscriminate onslaught.

I would love to be charitable and assume he doesn't understand English, but that isn't the case. So the only conclusion one can draw is that he has a warped moral compass.

Here's what 'Indiscriminate' means:

Having no particular pattern, purpose, organization, or structure: chance, desultory, haphazard, hit-or-miss, random, spot, unplanned.

So to whom do you think that applies?

One might think to a terrorist group which targets civilians and fires rockets...what word comes next?...indiscriminately?

No. In Mr Egeland's mind it applies to an arny which takes great pains - at severe cost to its own chances of success - to notify everyone in an area it is about to attack, and to direct its strikes only at areas from which terrorists operate, even if civilians are, unfortunately and inevitably (given Hezbollah using them as human shields), caught up in the attack.

Such is the moral universe of the UN.

UPDATE: A commenter quite rightly takes me to task for referring to a thesaurus' entry, rather than a dictionary, and then goes on to list various dictionary definitions of 'indiscriminate'. He cites a variety of dictionaries' entries, such as Chambers:

Indiscriminate adj 1 making no distinctions; not making or showing careful choice and discrimination; chosen at random. 2 confused; not differentiated.

So yes, I should have used the dictionary definition - if for no other reason than it makes my point even more strongly.

(5)

So it's perfectly proper for us to take action to prevent potential terrorists, but it's quite wrong for Israel to take action against actual terrorists?

(11)

Mohtashami Pur, the secretary general of the Iranian "Intifada conference" has shocked the world with this astonishing revelation:

A senior Iranian official admitted for the first time Friday that Tehran did indeed supply long-range Zelzal-2 missiles to Hezbollah.

Mohtashami Pur, a one-time ambassador to Lebanon who currently holds the title of secretary-general of the "Intifada conference," told an Iranian newspaper that Iran transferred the missiles to the Shi'ite militia, adding that the organization has his country's blessing to use the weapons in defense of Lebanon.

He also added that 2 + 2 = 4.

(2)

The Washington Post has an excellent piece by Moshe Yaalon, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2002 to 2005, on how Israel is - quite properly - shackling its response to Hezbollah's terror in order to observe the rules of war, and getting pilloried, whilst Hezbollah is ignoring all such rules and being treated as the victim.

I've copied almost all of the article because it demands to be read:

The rules of war boil down to one central principle: the need to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. Those who condemned Israel for what happened at Qana, rather than placing the blame for this unfortunate tragedy squarely on Hezbollah and its state sponsors, have rewarded those for whom this moral principle is meaningless and have condemned a state in which this principle has always guided military and political decision making.

Faced with enemies who openly call for its destruction and victimized by unremitting wars and terrorism since well before it was born, Israel has risked the lives of its citizens and its soldiers to abide by this principle in a way that is unprecedented in the history of nations.

Here is but one of countless examples: In 2003, at the height of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, our intelligence services discovered the location of a meeting of the senior leadership of Hamas, an organization pledged to the annihilation of the Jewish state and responsible for some of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out against Israel.

We knew that a one-ton bomb would destroy the three-story building and kill the Hamas leadership. But we also knew that such a bomb would endanger about 40 families who lived in the vicinity. We decided to use a smaller bomb that would destroy only the top floor of the building. As it turned out, the Hamas leaders were meeting on the ground floor. They lived to terrorize another day.

Imagine for a moment that the United States had advance knowledge of the meeting place of al-Qaeda's senior leadership. Does anyone believe that there would be a debate about what size bomb to use, much less that any leader would authorize insufficient force to do the job?

So while it is legitimate to question whether Israel should go to such extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualties, it is preposterous to argue that Israel uses excessive force. Even more absurd was the shameful statement last week that Israel appeared to have deliberately targeted U.N. officials -- a statement fit for a knave or a fool, not for the secretary general of the United Nations. Rather than lead the fight against those who target civilians and use them as human shields, Secretary General Kofi Annan has strengthened them.

It is clear to any objective observer that Hezbollah is using Lebanese civilians as human shields. It builds its headquarters in densely populated areas, embeds its fighters in towns and villages, and deliberately places missiles in private homes, even constructing additions to existing structures specifically to house missile launchers.

The reason terrorist groups such as Hezbollah use human shields is elementary. They try to exploit the respect for innocent human life that is the hallmark of any civilized society to place that society in a no-win situation. If it fails to respond to terror attacks, it endangers its own citizens. If it responds, it runs the risk of killing innocents, earning world opprobrium and inviting diplomatic pressure to stand down.

Hoping to retain its high moral standards in the face of such a cynical enemy, Israel has made every effort to avoid harming civilians. We have dropped fliers, sent telephone messages and broadcast radio announcements so that innocents can get out of harm's way. In doing so, we imperil our own citizens since, by losing the element of surprise, we invariably allow some of the enemy to escape with their missiles.

But at Qana, Hezbollah responded to Israel's compassion with more cynical brutality. After launching missiles at Israel, the terrorists rushed inside a building. When Israel fired a precision-guided missile to strike at the terrorists, scores of civilians, including children, were killed.

The difference between us and the terrorists is clear: We endanger ourselves to protect their civilians. They endanger their own civilians to protect themselves.

(4)

...not, of course, that the Lebanese government has been in any way complicit in what's been going on with Hezbollah. Oh no. Unless, that is, we believe Nasrallah, who said this in an interview yesterday:

I told them [the Lebanese government] on more than one occasion that we are taking the issue of the prisoners seriously, and that abducting Israeli soldiers is the only way to resolve it. Of course, I said this in a low-key tone. I did not declare in the dialogue: 'In July I will abduct Israeli soldiers.' This is impossible."

Interviewer: "Did you inform them that you were about to abduct Israeli soldiers?"

Hassan Nasrallah: "I told them that we must resolve the issue of the prisoners, and that the only way to resolve it is by abducting Israeli soldiers."

Interviewer: "Did you say this clearly?"

Hassan Nasrallah: "Yes, and nobody said to me: 'No, you are not allowed to abduct Israeli soldiers.' Even if they had told me not to... I'm not defending myself here. I said that we would abduct Israeli soldiers, in meetings with some of the main political leaders in the country. I don't want to mention names now, but when the time comes to settle accounts, I will.

It feels rather odd knowing that Canadians are now stronger in their support for a nation's right to stand up to terror than Brits.

Today's Guardian poll shows that

...only 22% of voters believe Israel has reacted proportionately to the kidnapping of soldiers and other attacks from militant groups in southern Lebanon.

A similar poll in Canada, on the other hand, finds that

...64% of Canadians believed Israel's action is either somewhat or completely justified.

(Although who would have predicted that, in the French speaking part of Canada, only 57 per cent of Quebecers would have said that the Israeli response is "not at all justified".)

That 22% finding in Britain is profoundly disturbing. Is it really the case that, were a terror group based in France to be murdering Brits in the UK using weapons supplied by Germany, with the French government refusing to take any action, and the group proudly declaring its intention of wiping Britain off the face of the map, a mere 22% of the country would want the British government to take action in response? Because that is, in effect, what happened in the Second World War.

So what explains the fact that only one in five are in favour today? Could it, perhaps, have something to do with the daily diet of poison fed by the BBC?

UPDATE: Oh dear, I ignored a fundamental rule: irony doesn't work in print. I was joking when I wrote: who would have predicted that, in the French speaking part of Canada, only 57 per cent of Quebecers would have said that the Israeli response is "not at all justified? The word 'French' is the giveaway.

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We know that Osama is a Gooner, so this headline should come as no surprise:

Hezbollah's Arsenal

Who'd ever have thought that Canada - Canada! - would have so sensible a Prime Minister and Foreign Minister?!

Israeli ceasefire no solution to peace in Lebanon, MacKay says

OTTAWA (CP) - It's time to start working diplomatically toward peace in Lebanon - but that doesn't mean a unilateral ceasefire by Israel, says Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay.

Speaking Sunday on television, MacKay refused to join other countries who have called on the Israelis to rein in their military offensive in the region.

Before hostilities can end, he said, both sides will have to agree on a solution that will ensure Israel doesn't come under attack again from Hezbollah guerrillas using Lebanon as their base of operations.

"A ceasefire and a return to the status quo is a victory for Hezbollah," MacKay warned. "Let's not forget that this was an unprovoked attack by a terrorist organization . . . . The discussions have to focus on the long-term end of violence in the region."

MacKay's comments were in keeping with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's insistence, since the start of the crisis, that Hezbollah was to blame for sparking the violence and a unilateral Israeli pull-back would not solve the problem.

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Nick Clegg has been spoken of as a future leader of the LibDems since even before the voters of Sheffield Hallam elected him to the House of Commons last May. Indeed, it seemed that more column inches were spent bemoaning Mr Clegg’s absence from the party’s recent leadership contest than praising the merits of any the men who did stand.

To those of us who are not fascinated by internal LibDem gossip, his suitability for the job remained unexplained.

Until this weekend. In his comments on the award of a CBE to Andy Hayman, the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for Specialist Operations (who is in charge of terrorism investigations), Mr Clegg demonstrated why he would make the perfect leader for the Lib Dems.

Mr Clegg took to the airwaves to criticise the timing of the award. It should have been postponed “given that Forest Gate is still so fresh in everybody's mind". Mr Hayman might be a distinguished public servant but he should not have been given his award now.

Leave aside the fact that either Mr Hayman merits an award or he does not.

Leave aside that in his job – preventing terrorists from murdering us - Mr Hayman will do more to benefit his country in the ten minutes he spends having his morning cuppa than a politician such as Mr Clegg will manage in his entire career.

And leave aside that had Mr Hayman not acted on information that the house in Forest Gate was a bomb factory, and had it indeed been used to murderous effect, Mr Clegg would no doubt be calling for the Assistant Commissioner’s resignation.

In arguing that the Forest Gate raid has undermined Mr Hayman’s right to public gratitude, Mr Clegg must believe that the police should not act on information given in advance, in case it turns out to be wrong. Because the only guarantee that advance information is correct is to wait and see how things turn out.

In which case, since much of Mr Hayman’s work involves acting in advance of an incident, in order to prevent it, Mr Clegg must believe the Assistant Commissioner’s entire modus operandi is illegitimate. In which case the issue of timing is irrelevant; he would not merit an award in the first place.

In making an unprincipled, opportunist and illogical statement over the weekend, Mr Clegg has demonstrated why he really is an ideal leader for the Liberal Democrats.

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If you believe in medical progress, sign this.

(9)

Eve Garrard demolishes the dreadful Yazzmonster in magisterial style:

Leave aside the self-pity which permeates this piece of writing, at a time when the rest of us may also have cause to feel worried on behalf of our innocent children, though right now many of us are less worried about the activities of the police (kill rate: 1) than about those whose murderous activities they are trying to forestall (kill rate: 52). And leave aside the snide and gratuitous sideswipe at Israel, which has the added demerit of falsehood, since Israel almost never kills suicide bombers in the course of arrest; furthermore its need to stop such people getting through is not a matter of 'tricks', as Alibhai-Brown so sneeringly says, but rather a matter of saving innocent children (just as innocent as her son) from being torn apart on the streets of Tel Aviv or Haifa. Of course, every care does need to be taken, by the police and others, to avoid mistaken killings during arrest, and Britain might in fact have something to learn from Israel here, if we can reject demonizing myths about how the Israeli police cope with the thousands of attacks on civilians which they have had to face.

Notting Hill Gate tube staff's advice to passengers.

I'm not sure whether we should be pleased at a very British response to a tragedy - humour - or worried that people are clearly (and perhaps deservedly) losing their respect for the police.

(from Guy Fawkes.)

I couldn't agree more with Tim Hames in The Times. Like him. I am - as any reader of this blog will know - a hardliner on the war on terror. I believe George Bush and Tony Blair will be regarded by history as two of the most prescient leaders the US and Britain have ever had. And I have no problem at all with summary execution of would-be suicide bombers.

But something about the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes doesn't add up. As Tim Hames puts it:

It is now clear that he started his trip from Tulse Hill, where he had stayed at someone else’s home, was watched, was noted wearing bulky clothing, yet was allowed (despite the slaughter at Tavistock Square on July 7 and the attempted blast on a double-decker at Hackney last Thursday) to board a bus for a 15-minute journey and was challenged only when he sought to buy an Underground ticket. Why was someone whom the police continue to insist was a “potential suicide-bomber” no menace on the No 2 bus, but an urgent threat who had to be taken out when moving in the direction of the Northern Line?

...It was hinted that he might have been an illegal immigrant, as if that justifies what occurred. It has been argued that it was “irresponsible” of him to wear a quilted jacket in July, as if that were a crime. There are, furthermore, “no excuses”, it is intoned, for the fact that he ran when armed plainclothed police officers shouted at him.

I know that we are all supposed to say how wonderful the police have been since 7/7, how much we respect the job they are doing and how it is said that any mild criticism is somehow giving succour to the terrorists. But everything about this incident smells of - at best - incompetence of the most grotesque and tragic kind. For me, the point which needs answering as a matter of urgency is why the police thought it perfectly OK to let a suicide bomber wander around the streets and get on a bus, and that he was only a problem when he got on the underground - with, as they claim to have believed, live explosives.

Everything about Sir Ian Blair's record so far as Commissioner is worrying, from the ridiculous PC behaviour of his first few days, to the shooting on the streets of a wholly innocent man in bizarre circumstances.

And this is not being wise after the event, as Tony Blair suggested today. Even if the man had indeed turned out to be a suicide murderer on his way to blow up his bomb, the same question would need to be asked: why did they wait for him to get on the Tube before taking action?

The platitudes of grief and sorrow we have heard so far are not enough.

Equally, I am at a loss to understand why the calls for an inquiry into the intelligence failures which allowed 7/7 to happen have been dismissed ab initio. Holding an inquiry does not mean attaching blame to the intelligence services. It may well be that to have expected them to discover the plot was impossible. But the relevant authorities need to know why they didn't - couldn't, perhaps - know about it. Only then can they learn from it.

An informative - and one hopes not unduly optimistic - piece by Kevin Toolis in today's Times:

The explosive they used, acetone peroxide, is proof that the enemy we face is home-grown. Their warped ideology, the cult of the suicide bomber, might be imported from the Middle East, but the instructions in how to make their bombs came from the internet. Acetone peroxide, whose base materials are easily purchased in most British hardware stores, is a lethally unstable compound with a shelf life of less than a week.

It is difficult to store and as it dries out it becomes even more unstable. It was just as likely to kill the bombmaker as the civilians at whom it was eventually targeted. Unscrew the cap the wrong way or drop the bottle and it will blow you and your bomb factory to smithereens. The only reason to use acetone peroxide for explosives is because you have no alternative.

Acetone peroxide is the base material of plots dreamt up in a two bed-room terrace in Beeston, not the training camps of Afghanistan where stable military explosives, such as C4, can be readily purchased for a few hundred dollars in the local bazaar. No money, and certainly no weapons and explosives, are being clandestinely shipped across the globe to Yorkshire from the wilds of Afghanistan.

Nor is it conceivable that a prolonged terrorist campaign could be sustained from within the Muslim communities of Britain. In order to survive as a terrorist group, such as the IRA, you need a community to swim in. You need a network of supporters and sympathisers prepared to hide and give succour, financial and otherwise for the cause. But the July 7 bombings have been universally condemned. A number of the victims are themselves Muslims. Cold-blooded murder on the Tube does not appear to play well in Beeston. And all of those communities now and in years to come are likely to be scrutinised intensely by Special Branch and MI5. There is no chance that Osama bin Laden’s British followers will be training in the Yorkshire hills in the near future.

Terrorism is normally the weapon of the weak, although as we discovered after July 7, it can also be the weapon of the ideologically deranged.

Counter-terrorism is the weapon of the state. And a state such as Britain is indeed powerful at stopping terrorists in their tracks. Once our defences are up and the intelligence community on high alert it becomes infinitely harder for the terrorists to strike again. The odds are on our side not theirs.

One has to hope that Toolis' argument that the Muslim community will not give sufficient succour to the terrorists to make a lengthy campaign viable is right. I have my doubts...

I'm back from my travels. On Wednesday I ate at the finest restaurant in the world, an experience I will be describing in full detail next week.

It's been a curious election so far. I thought I was alone amongst political junkies in feeling curiously disengaged - so disengaged that it did not bother me that I would be abroad for a week with no access to British newspapers. But I've been discussing it with friends and colleagues and we are all agreed. It's not that it's boring, to use the trite word; it's that it just doesn't seem to have taken off.

Much the most important - and interesting - story while I was away was the conviction of Kamel Bourgass on Wednesday.

It's not merely the intrinsic interest in the story; it's the reaction of the chattering classes. I spoke this evening at a panel session at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. The meeeting was full, and the audience was intelligent, informed and inquisitive. It was, I think it's fair to assume, typical of chattering class Britain.

What interested me most was the reaction when an audience member asked a question of the panel: "Does anyone think anyone has been making ricin in a flat?".

The rest of the audience laughed as one, as if the very idea was simply laughable.

We really are in trouble as a society if - as the anecdotal evidence of others, too, seems to show - the idea that we are facing a terrorist threat of any kind, let alone an existential fight for our survival, engenders mockery, and the verdict of a court of law (whoever may have been acquitted, Bourgass was convicted) is treated as being nothing more than a piece of political subterfuge by a government which wants to panic the country for its nefarious ends.

From today's Observer:

FBI monitored British activists

Agents tapped the phones and read emails of animal rights campaigners

Wouldn't the real news story be if the FBI hadn't monitored these terrorists?

Yesterday's Mail on Sunday had an emblematic story about the fatuousness of some anti-terror measures (there's no web link, I'm afraid).

A diabetic, Cliff Salmons, was ordered off a BA flight from Hong Kong to London as the plane was readying itself for take off. The reason: the captain refused to fly unless Mr Salmons put his pocket size insulin pens into the hold. He would, he told the captain, die if he could not inject himself during the 13 hour flight, and the hold was in any case too cold for insulin.

But the pens could be a weapon, the captain insisted, and Mr Salmons was taken off the flight.

Now if you think this is stupid, just wait. BA has put out a statement:

We apologise to Mr Salmons for his experience. The safety of our passengers is always our first priority and in the current climate any sharp objects can only be taken on board if a passenger has proof they are being carried for medical reasons...In this case, Mr Salmons did not have a letter.

Think about this. I can see the logic of simply refusing to allow any sharp objects to be taken on board. And I can see all sorts of other positions which BA could take on the basis of security.

But BA has simply taken leave of its senses. So much for the security which the airline vaunts. Under its procedures, you can take a syringe on board with you if you have a letter to say you need it.

No terrorist would ever dream of doing such a low down dirty thing as to forge a letter, would they?

It reminds me of this security loophole which Slate exposed last month (and which I have kicked myself for not writing about as, checking in on line whenever I travel, have always realised was a glaring loophole).

Seumas Milne's latest drivel, which has been noted by Norm, also contains this surreal comment:

The US brands Hizbullah, the largest party in the Lebanese parliament and leading force among the Shia, Lebanon's largest religious group, as a terrorist organisation without serious justification.

In what parallel universe does Milne live? The one, presumably, in which Hizbollah is a peace loving agency of change, Al Qaeda is a brave resistance movement, Yasser Arafat was a beacon of the rule of law and America is a brutal dictatorship which enslaves the poor and downtrodden across the world. How can the Grauniad print what, even by its own deplorable standards, print Milne's nonsense? I'm sure the fact that Milne is comment editor of the said Grauniad is not remotely connected.

To say that the terrorists must be laughing their evil heads off doesn't even come close to it.

What kind of death wish do we have in this country? What a calculation: terrorists' liberty is more important than our right to live.

Here's the latest British Tourist Authority ad: If you want to plan mass murder, come to Britain. You'll find it fruitful territory. We don't believe in protecting ourselves.

(I knew that our judiciary was worse than useless. I never it thought it possible that Michael Howard could find a way to be even more of a contemptible opportunist than he demonstrated in his behaviour over the Iraq war. Clearly I was wrong.)

And what's the downside?

I will return to this at greater length, but today's resignation of the Lebanese Syrian quisling government is but the latest demonstration of something which the Bush-hating fanatics (by which I mean the BBC and the rest of bien pensant opinion) will continue to ignore whatever the evidence: that Bush's foreign policy is not merely wise, but grows demonstrably more successful by the day.

One day it's the resignation of the Lebanese government. Another day it's the election of a - so far - sensible president of the PA. Another day it's the London conference on the PA. Another day it's the hand over of Saddam's half-brother. Another day it's Mubarak announcing multi-party elections. Another day it's bringing democracy to Iraq. Another day it's the Afghan elections. And another day it's Libya renouncing terror.

And it ain't over yet. It's barely started.

None of this happened by accident. It happened as a result of one common factor: the exercise of American power in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the consequent fear amongst terror-supporting regimes that they too would go the way of him and it.

Here's a gentle reminder to those who march and scribble against Bush and the US: if you had had your way, none of this would have happened. Nada. Nothing.

So much for your vaunted love of peace and freedom. You must feel terribly depressed that the regimes you were marching to keep in power are falling, or reforming, one by one.

This is the real man of peace.

I've only started now to catch up with the rest of the news, the worst of which is surely the bizarre and horrfying ruling by the Lords that we face no threat from terror. (Melanie Phillips deals with this topic admirably here.)

According to Lord Hoffman:

The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.

Others have dealt already with the sheer nonsense of such a statement. It may indeed be that holding suspected terrorists without trial is odious, and a blot on our society. But two other considerations need to be borne in mind.

First, would it would not be more odious to allow terrorist suspects to roam free, free to murder at will? I ask that as a genuine question. Maybe there are some people who would say no - that the right to trial always, whatever the circumstances, takes precedence. Clearly, Lord Hoffman is one of them. And I would not pretend for a second that this is a clear cut issue. I too am unsettled by such laws. Who, however, should have the power to decide such matters? The judiciary, appointed in secret and accountable to no one. Or elected politicians?

But there is a more profound second consideration. Since when was Lord Hoffman, or indeed any judge, asked to offer as part of his judgements - indeed, as the cornerstone of them - assessments of terrorist threats and policy prescriptions as to how we should deal with them? I can think of nothing - literally, nothing - which qualifies Lord Hoffman to have any more say in these matters than me. And whilst my views are tomorrow's fish and chip paper (or whatever the cyber equivalent may be), Lord Hoffman's have an immediate impact. The thought of him, or any of his colleagues, having the slightest involvement in such decisions is terrifying and profoundly anti-democratic.

As Matthew d'Ancona put it:

Far from being a final humiliation for him, the Law Lords' ruling on Thursday that the indefinite detention of foreign terrorist suspects is unlawful was a reminder of how right he often was about the judiciary. Rarely has there been such a decadent and depressing instance of introspective jurisprudence as Lord Hoffmann's argument that "the real threat to the life of the nation… comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these", and Lord Scott's outrageous comparisons with "Soviet Russia in the Stalinist era". Evidently these lofty jurists are not as troubled as the rest of us by the specific threats to Britain made by Osama bin Laden in his most recent video message, or the disclosure 10 days ago by Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, that at least one terrorist atrocity on the scale of the Madrid bombing had already been foiled, or by Sir John's unshakeable belief that "an attack is still inevitable".

Talk about a Supreme Court and the Human Rights Act is now passe. The issue is no longer whether we might move to a situation in which judges are directly political, and more powerful than an elected government. They are already. The issue now is what we do about it.

(14)

This surely needs no comment. The full text of bin Laden includes a description of Robert Fisk:

It was against the backdrop of these and similar images that 9/11 came in response to these terrible iniquities. Should a man be blamed for protecting his own? And is defending oneself and punishing the wicked an eye for an eye – is that reprehensible terrorism? Even if it is reprehensible terrorism, we have no other choice. This is the message that we have tried to convey to you, in words and in deeds, more than once in the years preceding 9/11. Observe it, if you will, in the interview with Scott in Time Magazine in 1996, [2] and with Peter Arnett on CNN in 1997, then John Wiener [?] in 1998; observe it, if you will, in the deeds of Nairobi and Tanzania and Aden, and observe it in my interview with 'Abd Al-Bari 'Atwan and in interviews with Robert Fisk. The latter is of your own and of your religious affiliation, and I consider him to be unbiased.

Robert Fisk, unbiased in the mind of Osama bin Laden. 'Nuff said...

(4)

Spain has, apparently,

snubbed the United States yesterday by cancelling an annual invitation to US troops to join the celebrations of Spain's national holiday parade and instead invited French soldiers to Madrid.

So there'll be no invited US troops. Prime Minister Zapatero (aka 'the terrorists' friend') might just have made a big mistake. Look out for the uninvited troops, Jose Luis.

(15)

Must read article by Joshua Rozenberg, which corrects some of the wilder assertions made about the House of Lords hearing of an appeal by a group of foreign detainees.

As he writes:

"If the law lords rule in favour of the detainees, the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, will be forced to release all 11 foreign suspects, including two who were arrested later and are not part of the appeal," the Independent reported on its front page.

If the law lords "find in favour of the appellants, the legislation will effectively be annulled and what ministers regard as a major weapon in the country's anti-terrorist armoury will be rendered useless", the newspaper said in its leader column.

"Defeat as a result of this week's House of Lords appeal would deal a fatal blow to [the Home Secretary's] plans, as it would amount to the judiciary striking down Mr Blunkett's most controversial piece of legislation," added The Guardian (though not its legal correspondent).

None of these reports is true. If the appellants win, Mr Blunkett will not have to release them. The internment provisions in the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 will not be annulled. Judges have no power to strike down Mr Blunkett's legislation.

Do read the whole piece, which deals with the reality of the Human Rights Act and its impact on other legislation.

(3)

Norman Geras flags up a piece in the Guardian which I simply could not believe said what I thought it said when I first read it. It does. The Guardian has published some vile things of late, but Jonathan Steele's piece today takes the biscuit.

According to Steele:

Thanks to Zarqawi and various small groups of local Islamists whom he has managed to inspire, all non-Arabs in Iraq have become potential targets. No distinction is made between those who take jobs with the occupation, and journalists, UN employees and aid workers, who are neutral or, in many cases, severe critics of US and British policy.

And what distinction should be drawn, Mr Steele? Are you saying that there is a distinction which kidnappers and murderers should draw between 'those who take jobs with the occupation' and 'journalists, UN employees and aid workers'? Is one OK, the other not? Is the murder of workers employed by the Iraqi government somehow more justified than that of journalists? Try as I might, I can't read that any other way.

And if you think that is a sickening enough example of the warped moral outlook of one of the Guardian's main columnists, there's more:

In Gaza and the West Bank, for all the chaos and confusion of authority caused by 37 years of Israeli occupation, Palestinian leaders and Palestinian society remain far-sighted, civic-minded, and secular enough to keep out these kinds of Islamist soldiers of fortune. Al-Qaida and its followers are unknown in Palestine. Foreign aid workers and western journalists have never been kidnapped. They are more likely to be killed by the Israeli army than by gunmen on the Palestinian side.

In Steele's world view, so long as it's not Al Qaeda doing the murdering, then those Palestinian leaders who plan, finance and order the murders of Israeli men, women and children are 'far-sighted, civic-minded, and secular enough'.

Steele's column is, literally, disgusting. As a Jew, I will be fasting for the next 24 hours. A good thing, too. If I was to eat now, I would probably throw up.

(11)

For years I admired Christopher Hitchens' prose style - how could anyone not appreciate the brilliance of his writing? - whilst disagreeing with many of his arguments. Since 9/11, however, he has combined that brilliance with a crystal clear lucidity on the most important issue of the age.

Johann Hari's interview with him in the Independent contains a quote from Hitchens which goes to the heart of the left's moral bankruptcy:

He explains that he believes the moment the left's bankruptcy became clear was on 9/11. "The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represents all the most reactionary elements on earth. They stand for liquidating everything the left has fought for: women's rights, democracy? And how did much of the left respond? By affecting a kind of neutrality between America and the theocratic fascists." He cites the cover of one of Tariq Ali's books as the perfect example. It shows Bush and Bin Laden morphed into one on its cover. "It's explicitly saying they are equally bad. However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this. It is not the Taliban, and anybody - any movement - that cannot see the difference has lost all moral bearings."

Hitchens - who has just returned from Afghanistan - says, "The world these [al-Quadea and Taliban] fascists want to create is one of constant submission and servility. The individual only has value to them if they enter into a life of constant reaffirmation and prayer. It is pure totalitarianism, and one of the ugliest totalitarianisms we've seen. It's the irrational combined with the idea of a completely closed society. To stand equidistant between that and a war to remove it is?" He shakes his head. I have never seen Hitch grasping for words before.

Some people on the left tried to understand the origins of al-Quadea as really being about inequalities in wealth, or Israel's brutality towards the Palestinians, or other legitimate grievances. "Look: inequalities in wealth had nothing to do with Beslan or Bali or Madrid," Hitchens says. "The case for redistributing wealth is either good or it isn't - I think it is - but it's a different argument. If you care about wealth distribution, please understand, the Taliban and the al Quaeda murderers have less to say on this than even the most cold-hearted person on Wall Street. These jihadists actually prefer people to live in utter, dire poverty because they say it is purifying. Nor is it anti-imperialist: they explictly want to recreate the lost Caliphate, which was an Empire itself."

Read the whole thing.

(7)

The seats at the Olivier Theatre are extremely comfortable. Almost as comfortable an experience as Sir David Hare’s new play, Stuff Happens, is for paid-up members of the Bien-Pensant Opinion Association.

If you fancy an evening sneering at that hick Texan, George Bush, and his jejune response to terrorism, take yourself off to the National Theatre, where you’ll find an audience made up of your fellow members rolling in the aisles at the President’s stupidity.

Remember the “Axis of Evil”? In President Bush’s State of the Union address in 2002, he talked about three states which “constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world”. When the actor playing President Bush mouths those words, the audience guffaws. Oh, the idiocy of it all! One of the axes was Iraq. And as all good members of the Bien-Pensant Opinion Association know, the real evil there has been America’s, in interfering in Saddam’s private affairs.

Axis of evil. What a hoot! But the axis wasn’t just Iraq. It was also Iran and North Korea. As President Bush put it: “Iran aggressively pursues these weapons (of mass destruction) and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom.” And “North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens”.

One of the central tenets of bien-pensant opinion is that if President Bush says something, it must be wrong. So we know where he can put his Axis of Evil.

We should ignore, therefore, the fact that last week the International Atomic Energy Agency learnt that Iran is to begin processing 37 tons of uranium yellowcake, enough to provide weapons-grade material for five nuclear bombs. And who cares that on Sunday Iran rejected a November deadline to suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment.

Don’t worry; be happy. Iran can’t be a problem. President Bush said Iran is a member of the Axis of Evil. By definition, therefore, it can’t be true. The Iranians clearly have only pacific intent.

News has also emerged of an explosion last week, followed by an unusual cloud, in northeast North Korea. It now seems unlikely that this was a nuclear test as it was so close to the Chinese border. But so what if it was? We should let them do what they want; we’ve got nothing to fear from the North Koreans. After all, it was President Bush who said that we had.

(14)

Melanie Phillips is back, and as ever she hits the nail on the head. Responding to another dreary 'it's all our fault' piece by Max Hastings, she writes:

The fact is, as I wrote in my article for the Daily Mail today, the single greatest incentive for acts of terrorist mass murder is the response of those who blame the terrorised rather than the terrorist, respond to every act of mass murder by signalling yet greater weakness, demoralisation and fear, and make it worth the terrorists' while to ratchet up the violence. It is this weakness and moral confusion that comprise the great goal of terrorist strategy; it is this that has characterised the west's response to Islamic terror for many decades; it is this that has brought us to where w