Great piece by Michael Gove in the Times, skewering the morally repugnant responses to the killing of Sheikh Yassin. Gove likens the killing to the assassination by Britain and Czechoslovakia of Reinhard Heydrich, the brutal Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia, whose killing provoked the terrible reprisal of the liquidation of the Czech village of Lidice. Noting that the inevitablity of reprisals makes such actions a terrible choice, Gove asks:

'What would have been more likely to hearten Heydrich’s comrades in arms at his funeral in June 1942? International condemnation of reckless British action and a global demand that Winston Churchill resume talks to tackle Germany’s longstanding grievances? Or an implacable commitment to fight democracy’s enemies until those bent on genocide laid down their arms?'

Indeed. In today's appeasement climate, the answer is not obvious. But the full power of Gove's principled disgust is directed in particular at the BBC and its army of stooges:

'Yesterday, the BBC correspondent, Zubeida Malik, described Sheikh Yassin on The World At One as “polite, charming and witty, a deeply religious man”. On the same programme the Arab journalist Abdul Bari-Atwan, editor of the influential newspaper Al-Quds, memorialised him as “a moderate man in his way”. Some people in the BBC may consider it witty to call for the elimination of the Jewish people from their homeland. Others might consider it the charming hallmark of a deeply religious man to recruit, incite and inspire young men to kill civilians. And clearly it is no bar to success in Arab journalism to define as “moderate” someone who thought the Jews started both world wars and continue to run the globe through their manipulation of the media and the all-powerful Rotary International. I may therefore risk putting myself out on a limb in the media community saying this, but I’m afraid I find the ambition to wipe Israel off the map repellent, the worship of death indefensible and efforts made to halt Hamas’s uncompromising campaign of terror completely understandable.'

It is the mark of how deeply our society has sunk into a moral morass that Gove's fine polemic is not only necessary but throws into such dismaying relief the corrupted response of so many in the media and political life.