Gerard Baker (above) might well have been writing about Jonathan Steele, who in al Guardian employs that paper’s unique and award-winning formula of condescending and ineffably sanctimonious moral imbecility grounded in a vicious distortion of the facts to sanitise the genocidal killers of Hamas. Discussing the political situation with Salah al-Bardawil, chief columnist for al-Risala, the Hamas weekly, Steele writes:

‘The target of his anger stares him in the face daily. The high concrete walls of the Gush Katif settlement, with its gun towers and mine-strewn death strip, is less than 200 yards from his book-lined study. These are not random commuters at King's Cross but armed occupiers who had no hesitation in supporting their own government's use of violence against civilians, and only rebelled when Sharon chose to close the Gaza settlements. Hamas regularly hit the settlements with mortars and home-made rockets. When the Gaza withdrawal began to seem genuine early this year, Hamas declared a ceasefire, which included a halt to its suicide bombers going into Israel (this week's bombing in Netanya was carried out by another group, Islamic Jihad)...

‘It is not enough to clutch at the hope that, once in power, Hamas will be de-fanged. Hamas is starting a difficult internal debate over the terms on which it might negotiate with Israel. But to expect it to abandon its armed struggle before a peace agreement is foolish. Western governments that go on ostracising Hamas as a terrorist organisation and make vacuous calls on Abbas to "crack down on the militants" only disarm themselves. The "war on terror" rhetoric makes things harder, and the London attacks do not help to bring reason. But the need for even-handedness and cool western heads in the search for peace between Israel and the Palestinians has never been more urgent.’

Even more appallingly, Steele implies that while Londoners are not legitimate targets of terrorism, Israelis are because, far from being the innocent victims of genocidal murder, they are responsible for 'crimes' which deserve to be avenged:

'To respond by declaring a generalised "war on terror" or condemning "this assault on civilised values" obscures the problem and makes the search for solutions harder. Hamas - or the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, to give its full name - denounced the London bombs within the first hours. They give both moral and pragmatic reasons. The victims were not legitimate targets - too remote to bear any responsibility for the crimes the bombers were avenging.'

At around the time readers were digesting Steele’s disgusting ‘even handedness’ over their hand-knitted muesli, his fledgling statesmen were venting their anger on a quite different target:

‘Palestinian Authority police and Hamas group militants clashed in fierce gun battles on Friday morning in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Two men believed to be passers-by were reportedly killed and some 25 were wounded. Earlier that morning PA police wounded six Hamas militants making their way to launch rockets at Israeli targets. Hundreds of civilians took to the streets to watch the fighting. Hamas militants set fire to a PA police station, as well as an armored vehicle and three jeeps of the police force. Mortar shelling and rocket fire continued throughout the morning.’

This gun battle followed a rocket attack by Hamas on a Jewish village inside Israel which killed a woman. Meanwhile, Hamas has reiterated what its armed struggle is intended to accomplish:

‘Hamas will not compromise on one inch of Greater Palestine, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar told an Italian newspaper earlier this week. Speaking to the Corriere Della Sera newspaper, al-Zahar said Hamas would "definitely not" be prepared for coexistence with Israel should the IDF retreat to its 1967 borders. “It can be a temporary solution, for a maximum of 5 to 10 years. But in the end Palestine must return to become Muslim, and in the long term Israel will disappear from the face of the earth.”’

No doubt the Guardian’s cool western heads would take that in their stride.