If you naively imagined that the British Medical Journal was a journal for articles about medicine, well think again. Its editor appears to consider it a suitable forum for a hate-filled libel of Israel. The article, by one Derek Summerfield, a lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, might certainly qualify as a medical curiosity, I suppose, in the field of obsessive-libellous derangement syndrome. Here's a sample:

'Israeli military reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza—a system of military checkpoints splitting towns and villages into ghettos, curfews, closures, raids, mass demolition and destruction of houses (more than 60 000), and land expropriations—has made ordinary life impossible for everyone, and is driving Palestinian society and its institutions towards destitution. Moreover, Israel has been constructing a grotesque barrier that, when completed, will total over 400 miles—four times longer than the Berlin Wall. Extending up to 15 miles into Palestinian territory, the real purpose of the wall is permanently to lock more than 50 illegal Israeli settlements into Israel proper. This is expansive, aggressive colonisation...' etc etc.

Every statement he makes is twisted, wrong and totally unbalanced. When he finally makes a point about health, it is to present the Palestinians' situation as parlous with no attempt at objectivity whatever. Yes, the health situation of Palestinians under occupation is often very difficult. Yes, they suffer privations from the checkpoints. But for heaven's sake -- they are only in that situation because they are a community which is perpetrating mass murder attacks on innocent Israelis. That, not the malevolent motive he imputes, is the purpose of the security barrier. Why does this lecturer in psychiatry ignore totally the terrorism murder and misery inflicted by the Palestinians on the Jews of Israel? Why does this doctor not even acknowledge Jewish suffering? Why does he not refer to the abuse of ambulances by Palestinian gunmen who use them to transport terrorists? Why does he ignore the fact that Palestinians -- even terrorists who have killed Jews -- are treated in Israeli hospitals? Why does he not report the telling fact that before the intifada started, the Palestinians enjoyed the lowest infant mortality rate of any Arab country? Why does this educated member of a caring profession hate Israel with such a pathological intensity? And what on earth is this venomous, politically bent diatribe doing in the British Medical Journal? How is science served by such lamentable claptrap?

The comments by BMJ readers are worth reading too. Many are outraged, thank goodness. Too many, though, support him. Once again, a stone has been lifted in Britain to reveal a foul slime beneath.