In the Jerusalem Post, Tom Gross provides a useful, if depressing, tour of the Arafat hagiographies in the western media to illustrate just how triumphant the decades-long Palestinian propaganda offensive has been -- and how total the rout of Israel's effort to convey the truth about the war being waged against it.

Meanwhile, the joint press conference by President Bush and Tony Blair last week was notable for the way both men emphasised something we had not heard before -- the need for the Palestinians to fashion a democratic process as a precondition of peace with Israel. This conveyed two absolutely vital messages: that the onus was on the Palestinians to show they had decisively broken with their tyrannical and murderous past; and that resolving the Israel/Palestinian impasse lay four-square within the overall strategy to destroy Islamist terrorism by encouraging the development of free societies which would no longer pursue ideological war and genocide. Easier said than done, as we all know: but a noble aim, and one which explicitly associates the struggle by Israel to survive with the defence of the free world. In other words, Israel is no more or less than a target of the same murderous forces that threaten the rest of us.

Tony Blair allied himself publicly and earnestly with this position. Yet it does not mesh with his earlier, ill-advised remarks when he said of Arafat:

'He led his people to an historic acceptance of the need for a two-state solution. Peace in the Middle East must be the international community's highest priority: the goal of a viable Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel is one that we must continue to work tirelessly to achieve.'

These assertions reveal a hopeless, and dismaying, failure to understand what the Middle East impasse is actually about. Arafat did not lead his people to accept Israel. On the contrary, despite weasel words to the west he headed an organisation which remained committed to ending the Jewish state. He repeatedly told his people they were within striking distance of doing so, presided over an administration which taught Palestinian children to hate Jews and to kill Israelis, and turned down the offer of a Palestinian state with half of Jerusalem as its capital because he wanted to change the Jewish state into a Palestinian one. So what is the Prime Minister talking about? And as for the international community's highest priority, surely it is to defeat Islamist terror which threatens all free societies, including Israel. It is only when that is achieved that peace will come to the Middle East, not the other way round.

So did Blair's endorsement of the Bush doctrine mean that the President had managed to convince him of the fundamental error in his thinking? Or was Blair merely going along with it while privately still sticking to his ignorant views -- or, more likely yet, without even realising there was any contradiction?