I notice they've excavated a very, very ancient Jewish village in Jerusalem.

Let me explain: this is a carefully crafted Zionist plot to legitimize the theft of Arab land and Muslim holy sites.

I hate to dissent, but:
Again, under international law, the Palestinian war criminals should be warred against. If the US were to invade Israel in order to engage in raids against Islamic neighbourhoods in a way that helps to exterminate Islamism (something that Israel has refused to do) I think we should support it. Israel's illegal policy of not shooting dead Nazislamic and Jihad "activists" needs to be punished. Whoever can kill Palestinian Nazislams should be welcomed.

I have emailed the Spectator about Gerald Kaufman's claim that “during the three years of the Second Intifada the Israelis have killed three times as many Palestinians, some of them terrorists (in illegal targeted assassinations) but MOST OF THEM innocent civilians, including babies and pregnant women.” (my capitals).

I referred to the study by the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya (http://www.ict.org.il/casualties_project/stats_page.cfm) according to which the actual figures are as follows, up to 3/11/03:

Palestinians: killed – 2473; Non combatants – 903 (36%) of which females – 85 (3.4%), aged under 12 – 70 (2.8%), and men aged over 45 – 80 (3.2%).
Israelis: killed – 869; Non combatants – 676 (77.8%), of which females – 268 (30.8%), aged under 12 – 36 (4%), and men aged over 45 – 218 (25%).

Both in percentage and absolute terms, the number of Israeli women killed is far higher than Palestinian women. The number of Palestinian children under 12 killed is higher than the number of Israeli children, but less in percentage terms. Figures for pregnant women are not given. A more detailed breakdown of the findings can be found at http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=440.

Poor Gerald, noone likes him really. Still, I wish he would suggest the UN should run Great Britain...everyone says such good things about the UN, so I think they could run our trains, organise our police, discipline our schools, and bring sweetness and light into all our streets.......so here's to Kofi Annan sending us a UN administration to replace the regime we have at present.

Not Israel again.

The British public DON'T CARE. We don't give a stuff about Israel. It is of no importance to us. There are no votes in Israel. There is no powerful Jewish lobby in the UK. You really need to get over this obsession with the country.

It's an irrelevance. You need to find something else to get steamed-up about. Israel is fast becoming boring.

I think this illustrates why Israel happens to need nuclear weapons. If Europe did try to invade Israel (which seems to be the preferred solution of many Europeans, not just Mr. Kaufman - read the Guardian and it's message boards sometime), they could reduce Europe to a slag of radioactive rubble.

Though I often think European's anti-semitism wouldn't even let that be a deterrant.

ye the U.N is a terrorist organization.take a look who the members are.

kaufman has no allegiance to truth. How do these people get published.

Kaufman, not unlike Tony Judt, is terrified of being tarred and feathered (or worse) as a Jew on a continent where being a Jew has become a major liability. He (like Judt) believes that he is buying an insurance policy against persecution by vociferously and repeatedly criticizing Israel. The kapos in the concentration camps similarly thought they were currying favor with the Nazis. They were merely the last to go to the "showers".

Jeremy: unless Kaufman is prepared to watch (or be vaporized himself) a mushroom cloud over Trafalgar Square, he should shut his ingnorant, anti Semitic pie hole about invading Israel (I am assuming that he wants the U.K. to join in the invasion). Besides, invading Israel has been tried before and has failed.

Good fisking of a ludicorus article.

As far as M. Wilkins thinking that Israel is an irrelevance to the British public, I only wish that that was so. However al-Reuters, al-Guardian, the BBC, The Independent, The Economist, et al love to bash the Jewish State.

There are many myths about Israel's invasion of Lebanon, one of them being that it was unsuccessful. But, if it's clearly desired goal was to abolish the Palestinian "state within a state" there, I don't see why it shouldn't be considered a victory. The PLO were sent to Tunis and there they stayed till the Oslo people brought them back.
On the other hand, it has become kind of fashionable to associate the term "illegal" to absolutely anything one dislikes: this is an illegal cockroach or this is an illegally disgusting dish etc. Nowadays every war seems to attract that (in most circunstances) completely meaningless adjective like a magnet. But according to what criteria was the invasion of Lebanon "illegal"? That was a country that didn't recognize Israel, had no diplomatic relations with it and was, officially, in a state of war with it ever since 1948. How can a country judge as legal or illegal the actions of another the existence of which it does not even recognize?

This all started with Gerald's TV documentary about Israel, the gist of which seemed to be "I liked Israeli when nice, violin-playing Ashkenazi professors ran it, but nasty smelly Sephardim are everywhere now and the Philharmonic Hall in Tel-Aviv needs a new coat of paint". His loathing of Ariel Sharon knows no bounds, but I suspect his real beef is that Israel has evolved into an organic Middle-Eastern society, and not remained a socialist playground. How dare Israel not live up to his expectations! Off with its head!

I wholeheartedly agree with Martin's assessment of poor demented Gerald's psychology. Those "dissapointed" with the way in which Israel has changed since the end of the Mapai hegemony form a distinct sub-category within the antisemitic, per se and/or in effect, left-liberal consensus. The type was quite common in Israel itself during the 1980s until the increasing Islamification of the Palestinian "struggle", and it's attendant horrors, made most of the eejits see sense.

Kenny is dead-on! If I may expand on his point, so many modern antisemites, particularly the flamboyant self-haters, romanticize vanished Jewish communities and subcultures of the past while deriding and denouncing today's vibrant Jewish realities - not just modern Israel, but the observant communities of the US (regularly labeled "fundamentalist," which is to be understood as meaning insular, primitive, and probably violent). Our US National Public Radio is the worst - all the time with the sentimental shows with the klezmer music about the poor but beautiful life in the shtetls of old Eastern Europe; meanwhile in their coverage Israeli culture seems to be limited to tormenting Palestinians, and modern religious Jewish culture to wife-beating. Jews are SO inspiring and picturesque once dead...

Perhaps he should have proposed solving world hunger by eating the Israelis? Then maybe you sanctimonious fools might have spotted that he was satirising western foreign policy, by OVERSTATING the case? But, you probably haven't read much Swift either.

Manon, Manon. You are giving Mr. Kaufman too much credit. He is one of those few people who wrote more than they read.

"Jeremy: unless Kaufman is prepared to watch (or be vaporized himself) a mushroom cloud over Trafalgar Square, he should shut his ingnorant, anti Semitic pie hole about invading Israel ("

How droll ! I doubt Israel would want to try anything so silly, it would so upset the USA to have to liquidate Israel as Fylingdales issued the command.

It is no more silly then the idea of Britain invading Israel. This is not 1948.

"It is no more silly then the idea of Britain invading Israel. This is not 1948."

We did not invade Israel in 1948....it did not exist....we wanted out of the Palestinian Mandate........the only country we invaded was Egypt in 1956 with Israel and France.......no wonder Suez was a disaster !!

Wasn't it Communist Czechoslovakia which first recognised Israel, and which supplied the guns ?

Peter I did not say Britain invaded Isarel. I said that the idea of nuking Britain in retaliation for invading Isreal is jsut as ridiculous. Britain did not invade Israel, yet British officers did participate in the attack by the Arab Legion (Transjordan) on the fledgling Jewish State. Also the IAF shot down 5 British Spitfire airplanes which intervened in the fighting over the Negev desert. Two British airmen were taken prioner.

It was the USSR which first recognized de jure the State of Israel The USA gave it de facto recognition. The Czechs did supply some arms but not as much as Britain supplied to the Arabs. Your point being what?

So Jacques Chirac will make a State Visit to Britain...and it is the centenary of the Entente Cordiale of 1904.........I suppose the streets will be full of protesters........

Entente Cordiale gave us two world wars with France as an ally..........how bad can British diplomacy get ?

SO Kauffman's premise that President Bush wanted regime change in Iraq because Saddam was a ghastly tyrant is wrong is it? And why?

Because he was developing WMD? If that was the case where are they?

Because of his involvement in terrorism?
What involvement exactly? Even before the war Tony Blair was saying categorically that there were no links between Iraq and al Qaeda. If anyone can point to a terrorist attack sponsored by Iraq prior to 2003 I'd love to hear about it.

Because his megalomaniac desire to become the leader of the Arab world -- which would have put him at the head of the Islamic jihad which he could have equipped in due course with WMD

To say that Saddam desired an Islamic Jihad is laughable, considering the secular nature of the Iraqi state and the fact that true Islamic fundamentalists saw Saddam as an infidel. Oh, and what WMD by the way???? The invisible ones?

"Oh, and what WMD by the way???? The invisible ones?"

I am with Dr David Kelly on this one. The 'WMD' is not in a shell-casing, nor is it in a delivery system: it is not a weapon as such; it is a capability.

There are men and some women who walk around with this know-how, they need a lab and the right team and they can replicate this 'weapon'.

Pakistan stole centrifuge technology from the Netherlands; now they supply HEU technology to North KOrea and Iran.. Klaus Fuchs did not steal an atom bomb, he just gave Andre Sakharov and the USSR the know how to start building them.

When Germany was defeated, the USA took the V-2 rockets and scientists like von Braun; and the USSR took the scientists and the plans; and surprisingly both of them built space rockets and ICBMs and submarine launched rockets........but no doubt Robbie G would laugh at them.

To say that all is required to produce WMD systems is a lab and some knowhow is rather facile to say the least.
To produce any meaningful quantities of WMD, in a form that is actually capable of mass destruction not only requires the knowhow, it generally requires vast manufacturing plants. Funnily enough, these appear to be absent in Iraq.
Some may argue that substances like Ricin can be produced without large facilities, and this is true, however Ricin produced in a home lab is extremely unlikely create mass destruction.
Peter gave examples of how weapons technology has spread from country to country. Russia and the US are poor examples as they were two world superpowers with the resources to create such weapons, and no other country was really in a position to stop them. Iraq is a very different kettle of fish.
Pakistan is an interesting example, since it is one of those dictatorships that is on our side and so is presumably now untouchable, whereas North Korea and Iran are both under concerted international pressure from the UN to conform to international wishes regarding proliferation of nuclear weapons. So far this approach has not resulted in holocaust or bloodshed, so perhaps it is a better method than invading countries?
I would, as an aside, also mention another example of weapons proliferation - and that is the aid given by Israel to India to develop their nuclear weapons capability, just so noone suffers from the delusion that it is only the "axis of evil" that is guilty proliferation.

Can I please ask you rabid rightists a few questions that bug me. Doubtless, you conceive of anybody questioning Israel's current strategy as some fascist lunatic strutting in front of his computer screen in full Nazi regalia...but here goes.
(1) Surely Phillip's is entirely legally wrong in claiming that Israel can do "whatever it wants" in the occupied territories. What is 4th Geneva Convention for exactly? The transfer of civillian populations to areas occupied in war is explicitly made illegal under such terms, precicely because it could influence the terms of any future peace agreement. Otherwise, for example, we should placate the Morrocan march of thousands of unarmed men into the Western Sahara for the sole purpose of territorial gain. SETTTLEMENTS ARE ILLEGAL - END OF QUESTION. WRONG AGAIN PHILLIPS. (incidently, that the 4th Geneva convention applies to Israel has be unanimously agreed by all the relevant parties)
2) Israel's claim of "self-defence" is significantly reliant upon the notion of (as Phillip's states reccurently) the idea that Israel does not attack - it merely responds to aggression from the hostile Arab world. If, however, we can (and should, given no reason to the contrary) interpret Israeli settlements as an attempt at expansion of the Israeli state (given that all attempts to "settle" should be seen as an attempt to abrogate the existing defence of Israel's actions).In other words, the defence of Israel rests upon its ability to prove that its actions contribute towards defending the territorial integrity of its land - its theologically grounded expansionism points the other way.
3) If, as Phillip's often claims, Israel is merely pursueing self-defence against a hostile Arab world then why make every attempt to (at least appear to the outside world) as being a nation bent on territorial expansion. As an aside, I feel extremely disturbed by the rise of anti-semitism not only amongst Arabs but also amonsgt those on the left who use Israel as as tool to manifest their own vile prejudices...but I feel equally disturbed by Islamaphopia -especially those rabbis whom describe Arabs as cochroaches whom God should destroy by fire (etc.etc).
4)A second set of issues arises as regards what Phillip's describes as the failure of the Palestinians to take up the "so-called" peace deal which Clinton orchestrated. I think that the misunderstanding of these talks are used to justify a sterotype of Palestinians as un-compromising warmongers and Israelis as well meaning peace-brokers. Let's face it - Palestinians have offered 77.5% (roughly) of (what was) mandetory Palestine to the Israeli's - again WRONG Phillip's. This is THE historic comromise that has been offered. In response what has been offered has failed to reflect such generosity. I refer people to the Israeli accademic, Tanya Reinhert, on this question but will try to summarise some of her claims. (a) There was no formal (i.e rigidly identifiable in terms of territory and sovereignty) offer made in the entire process - indeed it was central to the strategy of the Israeli team that everything be kept as vauge as possible so as to proove the intransigency of the Palestinian position. All we really know are leaks into the Israeli media (which, as many people have pointed out (eg. Chomsky)is infinitely more reliable than that in the US). (b) From what we know, 120,000 Palestinians would have been trapped within the area annexed by Israel (comprising the central settlement blocs) with no official status (neither Palestinians nor Israelis). (c) There was no official plan nor timetable for the DISMANTLING of settlements within the designated "Palestinian state" - by the way these are a major pain in the arse (they do not just have a security function but are entirely unjustified legally - again WRONG Phillip's). Speak to any Palestinian (and surprisingly they do not try to self-detonate) and these checkpoints are the major bain in their lives - the claim to erradicate the infidel is insignificant compared to that of leading a normal life. My point being that they (the settlers) monopolise both road useage and (centrally) !!!!WATER!!!! usage in a manner exessively disproprtionate to the indigenous population. (d) "half of Jerusalem".....I again refer you to to Reinhart's book. The proposed status of Palestinian control over !!!ARAB!!! east Jerusalem was little more than that of a parish council.
Hope you can consider these questions. Would genuinely be interested in a response.
Kind Regards,
Grant

P.S. Appologies for the grammar.

There's nothing to gain and nothing to lose.

Describing is not knowing.

Israel's claim of "self-defence" is significantly reliant upon the notion of (as Phillip's states reccurently) the idea that Israel does not attack - it merely responds to aggression from the hostile Arab world. If, however, we can (and should, given no reason to the contrary) interpret Israeli settlements as an attempt at expansion of the Israeli state (given that all attempts to "settle" should be seen as an attempt to abrogate the existing defence of Israel's actions).In other words, the defence of Israel rests upon its ability to prove that its actions contribute towards defending the territorial integrity of its land - its theologically grounded expansionism points the other way - Good point

To be a human without passion is to be dead.