Linda Chavez eloquently makes the point about the killing of Terri Schiavo, as I did this week in the Daily Mail (see Articles) -- that she is being killed, not 'allowed to die'. As Chavez asks:

'We have been down this road before when we bought and sold Africans and their progeny as mere "property" and when our courts determined that the unborn are not persons unless their mothers choose to carry them to term. Now we seem on the verge of declaring -- de facto -- that the severely mentally deficient are not persons either. Who will be next -- the gay man suffering from AIDS-related dementia, the Alzheimer's patient who cannot feed herself, the infant with cerebral palsy or spina bifida or hydrocephalus? Will we suddenly find it convenient -- even merciful -- to let such people starve?'

In Britain, the answer to that question is yes; and the Mental Capacity Bill which is about to go through its final stages in Parliament is bringing about exactly that.

Having been away last weekend, I missed the double sacking of erstwhile Tory party deputy chairman and MP Howard Flight over his unguarded remarks, which were reported as suggesting that the Tories had a secret agenda to cut public spending. The press coverage today indicates that, far from being damped down, the affair is gathering yet more momentum. Not only is Flight threatening to go to court over his arbitrary de-selection by Michael Howard as a Tory parliamentary candidate, not only are his local party members up in arms at the way Howard brutally sidelined them into utter irrelevance, but a second Tory candidate who was similarly deselected over remarks which didn’t toe the party line is now also threatening to go to law.

From all this gathering uproar, not to mention the lip-smacking way in which the government is milking this for all it’s worth, it’s hard to avoid concluding that Howard has scored a monumental own goal. Far from giving the impression he wants to give, that the Tories are transparently trustworthy because they say the same thing in public as in private, sacking Flight has given precisely the opposite impression — that he blurted out a truth that the party is desperate to hide. And de-selecting him as a Tory candidate merely suggests that the party is extremely desperate to hide something that must be very significant indeed.

But in fairness to Howard, this was surely a situation in which he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Flight’s remarks — or at least, the way they have been ruthlessly spun — have breathed life into the Labour lie that the Tories are planning to ‘cut’ £35 billion in public spending when the truth is that they plan to increase it, although by less than Labour intends. Last week, the media gave the government such a rough ride over this lie that its pre-election propaganda machine came off the rails. Since the Flight furore, however, ministers have been repeating the £35 billion smear with brazen insouciance. Once Flight had handed this huge ammunition to the government, therefore, it is hard to see what Howard could have done to repair the damage.

But the big question begged by all this political name-calling is whether what Flight was reported to have said was actually true. Are the Tories merely pledging to increase public expenditure in order to neutralise Labour’s claim that they would slash public services, while all the time planning to do so? Certainly, there is no shortage of Tory MPs who appear to assume that this is indeed so, and that — as Flight said — the overriding priority is first to get back into power. And there are also those who are spitting tacks that the party has pledged to increase public spending, believing that the Tory mission on earth is to cut spending, slash taxes and shrink the size of the state.

My guess is that Howard, a cautious, prudent lawyer who appears temperamentally averse to the politics of risk or the grand gesture, probably genuinely doesn’t know what he would do once in power — because the public mood is hard to read, wanting both lower taxes and more public services. So he wants to park the whole subject of tax and spend: neutralise it altogether as an election issue. Almost certainly, he personally wants to reform the public services. The death of his own mother-in-law from the hospital superbug provided him with the most telling evidence possible of the systemic failure of the NHS. And one would have to be in a hermetically sealed capsule not to be horrified at the collapse of education standards. But the question he almost certainly feels that he can’t answer — and therefore doesn’t want to address — is whether the public is ready to hear a radical remedy for the dire state of the public services. And because he doesn’t know the answer to this but suspects the public is not ready, and because he’s a man who takes no chances, his strategy is to shut down the issue altogether.

That explains the otherwise astounding statement made by the Tories’ shadow Work and Pensions Secretary David Willetts, in Polly Toynbee’s Guardian column today (in which — hilariously — she is torn between horrified admiration and disbelief at the fact that the Tories would spend even more on childcare than Labour). Willetts, attempting to convince her that this proposed Tory largesse was indeed genuine, told her:

‘Our basic approach is that the government defines the baseline and we accept everything they have done or plan to do, unless we specify to the contrary.’

What a staggering position for the Opposition to take — to accept everything the government has done or plans to do! To which one might well ask — so why vote for the Tory monkey when we can vote for the Labour organ-grinder?

The headway that Howard has made in the past few weeks has occurred solely because he started to carve out a distinctive agenda on subjects such as immigration, abortion or human rights. This not only left the government on the wrong side of the argument, but punctured the conspiracy of silence over issues which alarm people as much as they divide them from a political class which has disenfranchised them by refusing to properly address such issues.

But on the public services, Howard flinches from similar distinctive boldness because the Tories are still stuck in a political time-warp over the welfare state. Believing that the alternative to state control and high taxes is the radical individualism of the market and low taxes, they thus allow themselves to be trapped into a choice between supporting either high state spending and good public services, or low state spending and rotten public services. But this alternative does not stand up to scrutiny for a second. Record state spending has resulted in fact in lousy public services (a route down which they have now committed themselves to travel alongside Labour).

The way out of this particular box is not to take refuge, as the Tories are doing, in the bankrupt and empty formula of ‘cutting waste’. It is to radically reformulate the whole relationship between the individual and the state: to say that politics has to be taken out of the public services and professionals made accountable to the public; that individuals have to be given leverage over public services, to take responsibility for themselves and their families and show social solidarity towards those who genuinely cannot; and that this means social insurance for health and long-term care, independence for the universities and vouchers for education. And so on.

In other words, the Tories’ difficulty this week over Howard Flight derives from a far deeper existential crisis over what Conservatism is. It illustrates the party's chronic absence of vision and courage -- and so at a time when the electorate is desperate for just such a choice, it looks as if it is not going to get it.

I'm taking a break from the diary for a few days. I'll be back next week. Have a happy Easter.

The bad smell that has been emanating from the Labour party for some weeks now has developed into a putrid stink. A Labour MP, Kevin McNamara, has claimed that Tory leader Michael Howard's proposals for action against illegal travellers' camps have 'a whiff of the gas chambers' about them. This hideous slur was echoed by Rodney Bickerstaffe, a trustee of the Labour party movement for travellers' rights, who disgracefully recalled the Nazi' 'solution' for gypsies in 1930s Europe. So what did Howard do to occasion such a smear? He merely argued that the rule of law should apply to everyone equally, and that therefore travellers should not be given carte blanche to bust the planning laws but should be bound by them like everyone else. For this, he is accused of being a Nazi. What on earth is going on here?

The principal explanation lies in the obscene moral inversion of victim culture. Travellers are held to be a beleaguered minority. Like other self-designated 'victim' groups, their behaviour is therefore considered beyond challenge, even when they are behaving antisocially or unlawfully, because 'victims' can do no wrong. Anyone who tries to hold them to account, therefore, is held to be a bigot or racist.

In addition, because gypsies were murdered in the Nazi death camps they are considered especially immune from condemnation (even though many travellers aren't gypsies at all, but simply itinerants). There is, however, one group that was murdered in the Nazi death camps that is not deemed immune from condemnation. This group is the Jews, who happened to be the principal target of the Nazi Holocaust. Despite the fact that the Jews have not behaved antisocially or unlawfully, and in Israel are the principal target of Arab and Islamic fascism which has caused thousands of innocent Israelis to be murdered over the past 50 years, those whose hearts bleed for travellers and other 'victim' groups now portray the Jews as Nazis. This both denies the Holocaust and demonises contemporary Jews -- all under the rubric of 'anti-racism'and other similar progressive sentiments.

So it is that Michael Howard, a Jew whose own grandmother was murdered in Auschwitz, can be accused by Labour apparatchiks of policies with 'a whiff of the gas chambers' about them. Would they have unleashed this astonishing smear against a non-Jewish party leader? I don't think so. Accusations of 'racism', perhaps; but the fact is that, for the left, 'Nazi' has become the smear of choice against the Jews.

And of course, this is but the latest in a whole string of similar recent Labour jibes against the Jews. There was London Mayor Ken Livingstone's attack on a Jewish Evening Standard reporter for being like a 'concentration camp guard'; there was Energy Minister Mike O'Brien's cynical exploitation of Muslim anti-Jewish feeling in a naked bid for Muslim votes; there was Labour's Fagin election poster; and there was Leader of the House Peter Hain -- the erstwhile anti-apartheid campaigner -- referring to Michael Howard as an 'attack mongrel', an astounding piece of venomous bigotry.

And still Tony Blair has said nothing. No apology. No explanation. Just silence. What can he say, after all? For the Labour party, and all points further left, have long since hitched their wagon to the star of anti-Jewish prejudice. On his own website, Stephen Pollard reports a remarkable speech delivered in the House of Lords last month by a Swedish antisemite, Joran Jeremas, at the invitation of Labour peer Lord Ahmed. According to Pollard, these are some highlights of this speech:

'“your newspapers belong to Zionists”

“in Iraq, the US and its British dependency continue the same old fight for ensuring Jewish supremacy in the Middle East…in the Middle East we have just one reason for wars, terror and trouble - and that is Jewish supremacy drive”

“…the Jewish media-lords in the US and elsewhere. Jews indeed own, control and edit a big share of mass media, this mainstay of Imperial thinking; just last month a Rothschild bought the French daily Liberacion…”

“The Jews like an Empire…This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance…Simple minds call it ‘treacherous behaviour’, but it is actually love of Empire per se…”

“Now, there is a large and thriving Muslim community in England…they are now on the side of freedom, against the Empire, and they are not afraid of enforcers of Judaic values, Jewish or Gentile. This community is very important in order to turn the tide.”

“all the [political] parties are Zionist-infiltrated.”

'It is, I suppose, possible that Lord Ahmed made a terrible mistake and had no idea that the man he invited was a rabid anti-semite - despite the fact that his views are freely available on his website. But the absence of an apology for such a mistake, or a condemnation of the views expressed by Jeremas, seems to indicate that Lord Ahmed sees nothing wrong with the views expressed in Jeremas' speech, and might even support the views outlined on his site, since he chose to invite him to speak. In which case, does the Labour Chief Whip in the Lords feel it appropriate that Lord Ahmed should still hold the Labour whip? And if so, why?'

The answer is that the Labour party is riddled with rabid prejudice against the Jews. Sheltering behind the convenient pretence that hatred of Israel is not the same as hatred of the Jews, they have pretended to themselves that they occupy the moral high ground by sanctimoniously railing against 'racism' and 'prejudice'. Well, that pretence is now well and truly over. The line between their Nazification of Israel and their Nazification of British Jews is unbroken. Whether consciously or unconsciously, in incident after incident they have been giving themselves away. They are bigots, mired in the moral squalour of the contemporary left.

Wow -- the New York Times has put an optimistic story about Iraq on its front page! What greater signal can there be that something big really is happening in the Middle East? The estimable John Burns reports that violence in Iraq actually seems to be subsiding:

'In the first 18 months of the fighting, the insurgents mostly outmaneuvered the Americans along Haifa Street, showing they could carry the war to the capital's core with something approaching impunity. But American officers say there have been signs that the tide may be shifting. On Haifa Street, at least, insurgents are attacking in smaller numbers, and with less intensity; mortar attacks into the Green Zone have diminished sharply; major raids have uncovered large weapons caches; and some rebel leaders have been arrested or killed...Last month, an Iraqi brigade with two battalions garrisoned along Haifa Street became the first homegrown unit to take operational responsibility for any combat zone in Iraq. The two battalions can muster more than 2,000 soldiers, twice the size of the American cavalry battalion that has led most fighting along the street. So far, American officers say, the Iraqis have done well, withstanding insurgent attacks and conducting aggressive patrols and raids, without deserting in large numbers or hunkering down in their garrisons. If Haifa Street is brought under control, it will be a major step toward restoring order in this city of five million, and will send a wider message: that the insurgents can be matched, and beaten back.'

Of course, as ever, we must brace ourselves for more violence in Iraq. But the trend is in the right direction, so much so that even the craven NYT, which has done so much to demoralise the coalition, is now being forced to acknowledge this fact.

In the New York Sun, meanwhile, Hedieh Mirahmadi endorses the view that the uprising for freedom in Lebanon, which has brought together Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and others, suggests that the whole of the Arab world is now at a historic turning point:

'Rather than revolution by bloody coup or an external plot for regime change, there is a peaceful, grassroots coalition for independence clamoring for change. And their lineage, their boldness, can be clearly drawn from the democratic transformation of Iraq. The outcome of the recent Iraqi elections proved the integrity of American intentions in the region; this has been evidenced throughout the region by a decline of vocal anti-Americanism. For the first time in many years, policy discussions do not focus around "horrible U.S. foreign policy against Muslims," but have turned instead to hope for the future, and American support for those dreams. Who would imagine one could find posters, in downtown Beirut, with the picture of President Bush in between the American and Lebanese flags?'

Who indeed. Certainly not the New York Times, nor the legions of treacherous western Bush-haters who are now sulking into their cappucinos and praying for bloody catastrophe to rescue their reputations by snuffing out this growing hope of a better world. But as Ms Mirahmadi emphasises, America must not now sit back passively with all its digits crossed. It must actively help support, promote and protect these brave Arabs and Muslims who are beginning to express the unquenchable idealism of the human spirit. Their struggle is ours, too. They must not be abandoned.

The Home Office slipped out an announcement last Friday that it was asking the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to reconsider the decision to place cannabis in the least dangerous category of Class C drugs, in the light of 'fresh evidence' that it could cause psychosis and was being marketed at record strength as 'skunk'.

The rush to interpret this move as a reversal by the government seems to me to be distinctly premature. It is true that the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, takes a far more robust view about the danger of cannabis than his predecessor David Blunkett who reclassified the drug downwards, a decision with which Clarke has reportedly said he does not agree. However, the ACMD will not even meet to discuss this until weeks after the general election in May. And when it does, its conclusion is far from certain since it has form on this matter: it is stuffed with drug policy flakes, and was calling for cannabis to be downgraded even before Blunkett did the deed.

The fact is that evidence about the record strength of 'skunk' and the terrifying increase in cannabis-induced mental illness was well known at the time that the government recklessly downgraded the drug to the same category of dangerousness as steroids and painkillers. The Home Office simply brushed this evidence aside because it was -- and remains to this day -- in thrall to the 'harm reduction' legalisation lobby, which dominates virtually every institution which deals with drug use and has utterly skewed public debate. The extent of this ignorance and confusion are on display today in both a wet leader and idiotic column in the Times, which labour under the delusion that the 'new' evidence really is new.

The downgrading of cannabis has thrown fuel onto an already exploding fire. The mixed messages previously being given by the shameful retreat of the police from policing cannabis --a 'zero intolerance' policy towards the drug, you might say -- plus the rising nhilistic chorus that it was not the drug but the law that was killing people and causing crime, had already helped normalise cannabis use in the eyes of many. Reclassification then further confirmed this trend, encouraging many young people to believe that cannabis use was now legal, or at the very least that the authorities would give a nod and a wink to its use.

The effect has been horrific in terms of rising use of cannabis and other drugs, more drug-related crime and psychiatric wards overflowing with cannabis users. Undoubtedly Charles Clarke is genuinely concerned, as are other members of the government. Nevertheless, last Friday's announcement does not start to address this crisis so much as kick it into the long grass (to coin a particularly apposite phrase) where the Tories cannot exploit it during the election campaign. What happens after that is anyone's guess -- but we can be sure that the legalisation lobby will now be going into overdrive to sow more confusion in pursuit of their lethal objective.

The news that President Bush has nominated Paul Wolfowitz to run the World Bank has sent the appeasement crowd into a frenzy. Hardly had they got over the shock that John Bolton, the abrasive UN critic, had been appointed ambassador to that nest of vipers than the intellectual architect of the Iraq war himself was now being put up to run international development. The idea that, as a result, the tyrants and dictators who have used the UN to foment global terror might be held to account for the first time, and that international aid might no longer be used to line the pockets of said tyrants and dictators thus financing said global terror, is regarded of course by the appeasement crowd as the end of the world as they know it. Cause for a double dose of garlic to wave in the direction of these iconic princelings of darkness. The Guardian's leader contains a particularly priceless observation about Wolfowitz:

'Some worry that his strong emphasis on human rights may complicate relations with China.'

Thus the 'progressive' position on tyranny and oppression.

However, grimly amusing as this spectacle is, the political reality behind these appointments may be less felicitous. For the reason that Messrs Bolton and Wolfowitz are being lined up for these appointments, however prestigious they are, is that their progress has been blocked at home. Wolfowitz was passed over for the post that he wanted of National Security Adviser; Bolton was passed over for the post he wanted of deputy Secretary of State. And who was the person who passed them over? Reportedly, none other than the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

It is customary to assume that Dr Rice is of the same mind as her boss. When she was appointed Secretary of State, therefore, the word among the garlic-wavers was that the State Department was shuddering into its lattes at the arrival of the warmonger-in-chief's aide de camp. My view is that this is seriously to misunderestimate Dr Rice. She is the quintessential loyal servant of the President. What the President wants, she delivers. But she has an agenda of her own, as we saw from her eyebrow-raising comments about the desirability of a single EU foreign minister and now from the blockage of Bolton and Wolfowitz. I suspect she is nearer to the State Department view of the world than people might think, although she is smart enough to conceal it pretty effectively. My guess is that she will take whatever opportunity she can to nudge the President ever so gently in the wrong direction. And with Wolfowitz and Bolton out of the way, it will surely be easier to do so.

After all, although the President has undoubtedly got the big issues right, he seems to have done so through gut instinct and a moral code rooted in his religious faith. But there is a very great deal he simply doesn't know. He therefore depends very greatly on the moral clarity and steadfastness of his advisers; and if that is in short supply, he may well be manoeuvred into initiatives which actually run against the principles he has enunciated.

It's currently a shadow no bigger than Dr Rice's hand. But it may grow into something far more alarming.

In an article on FrontPage.com, Chris Blackburn claims that the British government is forging links with extremist Islamist organisations such as the Jamaat-i-Islami, which has ties to terrorism and rejects western ideologies and institutions. He writes:

'The British government has been the prime candidate for being two-faced in the War on Terror, possibly more so than Saudi Arabia. The British authorities have repeatedly shown a lack of clarity and consistency in dealing with radical Islamists. They have adopted poor strategies for tackling Islamist groups in the UK. The UK government has formed a strategy called Project Contest to steer British Muslims away from Islamist radicals[1], a novel idea which could have disastrous long-term effects. While this strategy of rolling back Islamists is supposedly being implemented, the government itself has been having highly publicized meetings with representatives from the Islamic Foundation UK and other groups tied to the Jamaat-i-Islami. The consequence of this is that the British government and Scotland Yard have recently let representatives from the Muslim Brotherhood take over the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque.

'The British government has thus engaged in a type of appeasement by negotiating with groups with suspected links to terror. The Islamic Foundation is the UK branch of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), a known fundamentalist party which has ties to the Taliban, and many JI members themselves have ties to Al-Qaeda and other Jihadi groups...It has been rumored that the Islamic Foundation will have a major input into the curriculum of Islamic schools in the UK'.

I myself have been told that the British government has decided that the way to tackle the problem of Islamist extremism is to attempt to pacify it. There seems to be a belief in official circles that by embracing extremism and inviting it into the charmed circles of government you draw its venom. But as the discrete and less lethal problem of Sinn Fein/IRA has demonstrated (see post below) the far more likely outcome of such a foolhardy embrace is a fatal bite or slow strangulation.

A chilling article by Lorenzo Vidino in the Middle East Quarterly details the extent to which the Islamic supremacist organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, is steadily extending its influence throughout Europe -- with the radicalisation of Muslim youth a particular objective:

'These organizations represent themselves as mainstream, even as they continue to embrace the Brotherhood's radical views and maintain links to terrorists. With moderate rhetoric and well-spoken German, Dutch, and French, they have gained acceptance among European governments and media alike. Politicians across the political spectrum rush to engage them whenever an issue involving Muslims arises or, more parochially, when they seek the vote of the burgeoning Muslim community. But, speaking Arabic or Turkish before their fellows Muslims, they drop their facade and embrace radicalism. While their representatives speak about interfaith dialogue and integration on television, their mosques preach hate and warn worshippers about the evils of Western society. While they publicly condemn the murder of commuters in Madrid and school children in Russia, they continue to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Europeans, eager to create a dialogue with their increasingly disaffected Muslim minority, overlook this duplicity.'

The refusal by European elites to acknowledge the truth of what is going on is explained by one thing -- fear. Fear of violence, certainly; but also a more politicised, cerebral fear -- the terror of being labelled an 'Islampohobe' or racist, accusations which fly as soon as truths like these are told, in order to silence the truth-tellers. And this intimidation has an absolutely paralysing effect. As Vidino observes:

'Why have Europeans been so naïve? Bassam Tibi, a German professor of Syrian descent and an expert on Islam in Europe, thinks that Europeans—and Germans in particular—fear the accusation of racism. Radicals in sheep's clothing have learned that they can silence almost everybody with the accusation of xenophobia. Any criticism of Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations is followed by outcries of racism and anti-Muslim persecution. Journalists who are not frightened by these appellatives are swamped with baseless and unsuccessful but expensive lawsuits.

'In some cases, politicians simply fail to check the backgrounds of those who claim to be legitimate representatives for the Muslim community. As in the United States, self-described representatives for the Muslim community are far more radical than the populations they represent. In other cases, politicians realize that these organizations are not the ideal counterparts in a constructive dialogue but do not take the time to seek other less visible but more moderate organizations, several of which exist only at the grassroots level, impeded by financial constraints.

'What most European politicians fail to understand is that by meeting with radical organizations, they empower them and grant the Muslim Brotherhood legitimacy. There is an implied endorsement to any meeting, especially when the same politicians ignore moderate voices that do not have access to generous Saudi funding. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle of radicalization because the greater the political legitimacy of the Muslim Brotherhood, the more opportunity it and its proxy groups will have to influence and radicalize various European Muslim communities. The ultimate irony is that Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna dreamed of spreading Islamism throughout Egypt and the Muslim world. He would have never dreamed that his vision might also become a reality in Europe.'

The fact is that Europe is now the principal battleground for the jihad -- but, through a combination of spinelessness and ignorance, our political leaders are refusing to admit it.

Tony Blankley in the Washington Times, reflecting with concern on the hint dropped by the Bush administration that it might start regarding the terrorist army Hezbollah as having some kind of legitimate credentials, makes the salient point that treating with terrorists in the interests of 'long-term stability' -- the rationale given by the British government for dealing with Sinn Fein/IRA -- is always to sup with the Devil:

'"Long-term stability" is the illusive pot of gold. The rainbow is the gorgeous vision of dealing separately with the political and military arms of a terrorist organization — in the expectation that the political arm will grow, while the military arm will wither. Unfortunately, both arms are connected to the same body, which is governed by the same brain. And it is the brain of a killer. But because well-organized terrorists are so difficult to defeat, it is hard to resist chasing down the chimera of a morally divisible terrorist organization. So now, apparently, Mr. Bush is entering the chase for the illusive divisible Hezbollah.'

Just how lethal this chimera is was bitterly laid out today in the Daily Telegraph by Seamus Mallon, the former leader of Northern Ireland's democratic nationalist party, the SDLP. AS he says, the outcome of Tony Blair's grotesque appeasement of the IRA has been to wipe out the middle ground of Northern Ireland politics altogether, ceding the political arena to Sinn Fein/IRA and the militant loyalist party, the DUP. This unhappy outcome, says Mallon, was the direct result of the 'duplicity' of Mr Blair and the Irish Prime minister, Bertie Ahern:

'Mr Mallon accused the governments of acquiescing to republican demands to keep the IRA on ceasefire."They catered for the latest begging bowl," he said. "If you look at all the side deals, the lesson Sinn Fein got from Blair and Bertie Ahern was the more often you ask, the more often you get." Sinn Fein "damn well near lived in Downing Street", giving the electorate the message that "these are the people we should support because they are the people doing the deals". By comparison, on one occasion the SDLP delegation was actually left standing outside the Downing Street door. He believes there was no necessity to appease Sinn Fein because, after its 1994 ceasefire, the IRA was already in from the cold after visiting the White House, Downing Street, Dublin and "everything but the bloody crib".'

As I have observed before, 'peace processes' invariably become ends in themselves, thus giving the illusion of a transition to peace and democracy when in fact, the reality on the ground in Northern Ireland has been the creation of a kind of paramilitary mafia state -- all because the fundamental falsehood of the premise of the 'peace process', that the IRA had renounced the Armalite for the ballot-box, could not be admitted without terminating the process itself. This moral squalour, unmasked as a result of, first, the Irish government worm finally turning in the wake of the Belfast bank heist and then the courageous stand taken by the sisters and fiancee of the butchered Robert McCartney in exposing the Sinn Fein chimera for the lie that it is, occasioned a coruscating piece by Kevin Myers in last weekend's Sunday Telegraph.

As he said, throughout the years of the 'peace process' violence in Northern Ireland has been turned on and off at will, safe in the certainty that both British and Irish governments would ignore it all. The old Royal Ulster Constabulary was dismantled and its Special Branch destroyed, to be replaced by gun law, extortion and drug-running on the streets as the paramilitaries turned to organised crime and amassed a fortune with which to subvert the politics of Ireland. As Myers savagely observed:

'You cannot civilise or tame Sinn Fein-IRA. It is not possible. For bred in their bone and blood is a uniquely barbaric ethos. Of all European political parties, perhaps only the Nazis so successfully wove tribal myth, ancient heroes, victimhood, violence and utter immunity from civil and criminal law into an integral part of their identity. The peace process didn't draw the Sinn Fein movement away from these defining toxins: quite the reverse. In the agreeable culture of appeasement, the political antibodies that should have been combating the spread of the republican virus failed to respond.

'So, far from being banned from the airwaves, republicans inhabited them almost full-time, and the Sinn Fein malignancy spread through nationalist Ireland, north and south of the border. In the past decade, the political map of Ireland has been utterly transformed, and for thousands of young people across the island, Sinn Fein is the future. Thus, reassured by the governments of Dublin and London that separate rules applied to them, IRA men felt free to butcher poor Robert McCartney, confident they could get away with it. And indeed they would have done but for the five McCartney sisters who in their resolution were more than a match for the IRA. Mesmerised by such principled opposition, of a kind it that it had never met before, it made the public announcement that it had offered to shoot the murderers of their brother Robert. Thus spoke the authentic, visceral voice of Irish republicanism, finally and no longer emptily miming the meaningless patois of democracy.'

This murderous mime has now been exposed in Northern Ireland for what it is. But the same British Prime Minister who sank his moral prestige into this most compromised of deals is trying his hardest to repeat precisely the same kind of exercise in the Middle East -- where the tacit encouragement he has thereby given to Palestinian terror has without doubt contributed to the carnage in Israel. President Bush has to be extremely careful not to be sucked into the same unprincipled illusion.

Another tremendous demonstration in Beirut provides a definitive retort to the recent press-ganged show of strength by Hezbollah -- itself staged in response to the burgeoning 'Cedar Revolution'. According to this report in the New York Sun, a million people took to the streets in the biggest pro-democracy demonstration in the history of the Middle East. Inspiringly, it brought together Christians, Sunni Muslims and Druze, all speaking with one voice for democracy, freedom and peace. Oh -- and support for America, who they recognise as the key to their freedom:

'More recently, in keeping with Mr. Bush's post-September 11, 2001, doctrine of promoting democracy rather than simply "stability," so long favored in the Middle East, the White House has been telling Lebanon's democrats that America will keep its faith with them. In Beirut yesterday, it was clear that message has been heard. Unlike the Hezbollah demonstrators with their chants of "Death to America," many in the crowd were friendly to Americans. "Thank's Free World," (sic) said one poster, held high by a woman in a bright red jacket, Rawya Okal, who told me: "We thank Mr. Bush for his position." Overhearing this in the throng, a middle-aged man in a green baseball cap, Louis Nahanna, leaned over to say, "We love the American people" - adding, "Please don't let Bush forget us. Your support is very important."

'Asking more people what they thought of Americans turned up the same refrain. From a young driver, Fadi Mrad, came the message: "We want to change. We need freedom. Please don't let Bush forget us." From a group of young men came not only the message "Our hope is America," and "We believe in democracy in the Middle East," but also praise for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. There was also an invitation from one of them, young Edgard Baradhy, for his heroine, Ms. Rice, to come to Beirut "and I am ready to take her for coffee." '

What a rebuke this is to those in the west for whom President Bush's democracy policy is an anathema. What an illustration of the moral and political bankruptcy of the left, which has had its progressive disguise stripped from it as it has been revealed to be as reactionary as the isolationist right. They are all simply on the wrong side of history.

A significant article in the New York Times yesterday acknowledges a fact that goes some way towards explaining the non-discovery of Saddam's WMD programme -- that the evidence for it was systematically looted after the fall of Baghdad. The claim has been made by Sami al-Araji, the Iraqi deputy minister of industry:

' Dr. Araji said equipment capable of making parts for missiles as well as chemical, biological and nuclear arms was missing from 8 or 10 sites that were the heart of Iraq's dormant program on unconventional weapons. After the invasion, occupation forces found no unconventional arms, and C.I.A. inspectors concluded that the effort had been largely abandoned after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Dr. Araji said he had no evidence regarding where the equipment had gone. But his account raises the possibility that the specialized machinery from the arms establishment that the war was aimed at neutralizing had made its way to the black market or was in the hands of foreign governments...The United Nations, worried that the material could be used in clandestine bomb production, has been hunting for it, largely unsuccessfully, across the Middle East. In one case, investigators searching through scrap yards in Jordan last June found specialized vats for highly corrosive chemicals that had been tagged and monitored as part of the international effort to keep watch on the Iraqi arms program. The vessels could be used for harmless industrial processes or for making chemical weapons.'

The Americans have come up with some lame excuse about not having had enough troops to guard these sites. The fact is, however, that the looting of this material was one of the gravest and most disastrous errors made by the US throughout the whole Iraq episode. Spectacularly failing to anticipate the likely chaos and ferment in the wake of the fall of Saddam -- a lesson which was surely obvious from the conclusion of major conflicts in the past -- the Americans were utterly negligent in failing to guard the likely sites of Saddam's proscribed weapons programme. As a result, by the time the Iraq survey group inspectors got to these places, there was nothing to be found.

As I reported at the time, this was one of the main reasons why Dr David Kay, the head of the ISG, blew a fuse and stormed off the scene -- because his task of finding WMD had been rendered impossible by the incompetence of the administration that had dispatched him on this fool's errand. The outcome of this incompetence has been a political and military disaster. The material has disappeared, fuelling fears that it has fallen into the hands of rogue states and terrorists and thus vastly increasing the risk of an unconventional strike against the west. And politically, of course, it has enabled the appeasenik crowd to proumulgate their logic-lite libel that since no WMD was found it never existed and that therefore Bush and Blair lied.

And of course, Bush and Blair cannot adequately defend themselves against this calumny because to do would mean admitting the very thing that Mr al-Araji is saying -- that the coalition screwed up big-time in a post-war blunder that could well have put the world in the very peril it was trying to prevent.

The Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, Steve Green, has been making waves with his cry of pain at the weekend that he is having to farm out murder investigations. His force is apparently unable to cope with the wave of crime that has rolled across Nottinghamshire because his officers are so tied up with bureaucracy. As the Sunday Telegraph reported:

'Nottingham has been one of the worst affected areas for gun crime, which hit record levels across England and Wales last year. Mr Green said ministers had a "fixation" with keeping officer numbers up - but had, in fact, been responsible for policies that had taken police away from front-line duties to do jobs that should be carried out by civilian staff, such as writing Home Office reports. "We are reeling with the murders," he said. "We are in a long-standing crisis situation with major crime and it won't go away overnight." '

On the Today programme (0715) this morning, the Nottingham Labour MP Graham Allen expressed irritation with Mr Green, claiming that he had not said a word to him about this apparent crisis in his force before unburdening himself to the Telegraph. So what to make of it?

There is no doubt that the police are indeed hamstrung by paperwork and targets and all the apparatus of a heavily bureaucratised, politicised service. But other forces don't appear to have this problem. So does the fault lie with Mr Green? Maybe. But in addition, one has to ask why Nottinghamshire's serious crime rate has exploded in this way. Here's one possible contributory factor.

In the late 1980s -- well before Mr Green's watch -- I happened to spend some time in Nottingham looking in depth at the drug problem. What I found was astonishing. It was not just the explosion of crack cocaine in the city. It was the extraordinarily short-sighted strategy being pursued by the police at that time to contain it. To be more precise, it was a strategy not to contain it. It seemed to consist of police setting up surveillance over crack houses, which they watched for month after month without making any arrests. Instead, they were lying in wait to catch 'Mr Big'. But there was no 'Mr Big'. Instead, the nature of crack cocaine addiction and trade being what it is, there was a relentless procession of Mr (ands Ms) Littles, all buying -- and then turning into dealers, and getting bigger and bigger, and spawning more dealers among the people buying from them; and so on, and appallingly on. Meanwhile, the Notts police did little apart from watch -- so much so that crack cocaine was being dealt openly in cafes in the Radford Road, a few yards down from the police station itself.

It was all too apparent then that this exponential growth of crack cocaine in Nottingham was inevitably, if left unchecked, going to create a lethal gang and crime problem in the town. So, it seems, it has proved. Drug crime is a major cause of Mr Green's headache. It is hard to avoid concluding that his problems stem in part, at least, from a cockeyed policing strategy -- by no means confined to Nottingham -- which has left him a deadly legacy.

Phyllis Chesler tells it as it is at Columbia University (a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling):

'The problem is this: The entire "politically correct" Western Academy--including the Feminist Academy--has been fully and fatally Palestinianized.

'Professors in every discipline are persuaded that the Palestinians, peace be upon those who have truly suffered at the hands of their own corrupt and vicious leaders, including the Islamikaze bombers, represent the world's ultimate and most noble of victims. These same professors, well trained (or might I say brainwashed) by Columbia's own Edward Said and others such as Noam Chomsky, now view both America and Israel as the "real" terrorists. Orwell would weep. Both President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon have been called "Nazis" and "worse than Nazis"--by professors to whom we turn for the truth.

'Today, they deal in lies, not truth, they deal in hate speech, not truth speech. They exaggerate complex and tragic realities--in the service of the most vulgar Jew-hatred, and in the service of death. They do not stand for democracy or freedom or tolerance but stand against it. They condemn and despise the very country that allows them to have their say. Such progressive, liberal, left, feminist, and gay "politically correct" professors have also romanticized totalitarian Islamists.

'Indeed, the "good" people, those who really want human suffering and injustice to end, have made an alliance with fascists and terrorists to bring down western civilization--and why? Because it is not perfect, because it has not yet redeemed the entire world. But, until they can accomplish this anti-colonialist, anti-racist "Armageddon," our "best and our brightest" are willing to settle for-- God forbid!-- the destruction of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. They scapegoat, demonize, and obsessively focus upon the most minor failings of the Jewish state -- even as they look away from the ongoing genocide in Sudan and the "gender cleansing" of Sudanese women, the genocides in Rwanda, in Bosnia; even as they consign millions of Muslims and Christians to suffer in medieval misery under barbaric Islamic regimes.'

If it's bad in the US, it's far worse in Britain and Europe -- mainly because, unlike in the US, the contagion has spread to so many of the general public. And it's hard to see it changing.

A reader, who happens to be of mixed Sikh and Hindu parentage, emails me to say the following:

'In today's Guardian Timothy Garton Ash explains why we should be sympathetic and kind to Muslims who consider Osama to be a hero and make statements like this:

'I ask another Muhammad ("just call me Muhammad"), a voluble 16-year-old, about last year's bombings just down the road, at the Atocha station. Well, he says, he doesn't like to see people dying "even if they are Christians and Jews". But in this case, because of what Aznar did in the Iraq war'.

"Even if they are Christians and Jews" tells you all you need to know about the mindset of many Muslims in Europe, as though CHristians and Jews are lesser people, scum, like dogs or animals. The left in this country is unable and unwilling to face up to the fact that there is a deep poison in the ideology of many of its idealised and romanticised "oppressed" lumpen masses. It is unable to accept that no matter what they do, there will still be people utterly deranged by an ideology of hatred that no amount of wretched and pathetic self flaggelation will defuse.

'I have e-mailed you before and told you about the rancid, casual, rabid anti-semitism that I encounter on a regular basis amongst Muslims I meet in my life. Because I am Asian, have brown skin, they sometimes assume I am Muslim, and even if they don't, they are freer to tell me their inner thoughts than they would to a white person. It is a level of hatred that is Nazi like in its extremity and virtually universal. I have met some brave Muslims who are sickened by it, but they are a minority and would never challenge the status-quo hatred that persists amongst them, for fear of ridicule, contempt, and perhaps even violence.

'It is only now that I am putting two and two together, though, and seeing how this links into the sly and crafty anti-semitism within wider British society, the type of anti-semitism in the salons that Philip Roth diagnosed so well in his writing when he lived in London and moved in the circles of "liberal" London. For them, the religious rapture of Islamist hatred for Jews is thrilling. Coupled with the vilification of Israel out of all proportion to its crimes, we have a heady brew of hatred and bigotry that the useful idiots of the left either choose to ignore, or actively participate in.

'Personally, I think that Jews, and to a lesser extent Hindus and Sikhs, face a future of marginalisation in Britain, caught in a pincer movement between the Islamist political game and the pandering of the left to every whim of the Muslim community. Look at Ken Livingstone and his outrageous remarks all to court the Muslim vote. This is the future of Britain. It is a tragedy.'

The enormous rally staged by Hezbollah in Lebanon obviously led to a rash of headlines of the 'Lebanon about to slide into anarchy' variety, and enabled the appeasement crowd to re-adopt their normal sneering posture towards the previous anti-Syrian demonstrations. But now, Lebanese politicians are saying that the Hezbollah demonstration was not what it seemed. An article in WorldNet Daily claims that most of the particpants wheren't Lebanese at all. According to the former Lebanese Prime Minister Michel Aoun:

'"This was not a Lebanese showing, and many of those who actually were Lebanese were not there because they support Syria. We know that at least three Palestinian camps were present. And there are 700,000 Syrian workers inside Lebanon, many of whom are not even supposed to be there. They were urged by Syria to attend so it looks like many Lebanese are protesting. Plus Syria bused in their own citizens from Syria through the border into Lebanon to join the rally."

The former prime minister also accused Hezbollah and pro-Syrian Lebanese intelligence forces of coercing students and municipal workers to attend. "They shut down the schools and all the government and public buildings and pressured students and workers to get to the rally," he said. Similar charges were made to WND this morning by a spokesperson for Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party. "In all, it was a real multinational rally," joked Aoun. "Even watching protestors being interviewed, you hear they had Palestinian and Syrian accents. This was not the Lebanese people expressing their will." Aoun compared yesterday's rally to the opposition events held almost daily. "Yesterday was not a spontaneous outpouring; it was planned and orchestrated," he said. "You see in the opposition rallies that they happen every day. People are going because they they want to, and they are going regularly." '

Don't hold your breath to see this reported in the British msm.

Activities at SOAS become ever more disgusting. An article in the latest issue of the School's magazine 'Spirit' -- a glossy publication freely available in the Union lounge -- is entitled 'When Only Violence Will Do' by Nasser Amin. It urges the destruction of Israel and violence against Israelis. In summary, it says that all Jewish 'colonies' (not just those after 1967) are wrongful and must be dismantled, violence is justified, Zionists must be exposed, and all Israelis are legitimate targets. Here are some exerpts:

'Those who espouse a negotiated 'settlement' ought to come to terms with the inconsistency of their view: it is contradictory to call for a West Bank-Gaza State and affirm the 'right' of the Israeli state to continue to exist. Rational consistency demands that if some Jewish colonies are wrongful, then all Jewish colonies are wrongful and all ought to be dismantled, not just those established after the arbitrary year, 1967. What consistent ethical principle would decree otherwise? Too many fail to recognise that pre-67 Zionism is just as iniquitous as post-67 Zionism. There are many in our world who are Zionists yet fail to recognise it. They ought to be exposed...

'People who are in a wretched state, being deprived of basic moral justice, because of the ongoing deliberate actions of others, have a right to violence against them, if no other course of action is as likely to meet their objective of improving their predicament. In particular, those peoples who are being denied a right to self-determination in their native soil by foreign colonialist occupations - a right their tormentors take for granted with respect to themselves - and suffer as a result have a right to armed resistance, if no other way is available. By contrast, there is no right to violence if the objective is ultimately to exploit further, conquer even more and steal more land, as is the case with Israeli violence.

'The oft repeated view that Israeli victims of Palestinian violence are mainly 'innocents', as Sheikh Yusuf implies, faces the easy objection that those who benefit from the immoral actions of a colonial state in which they have chosen to reside cannot be considered as innocent. They are personally complicit in national wrongdoing, exacerbated by the fact that all Israeli adults, including the women, serve in what is indubitably an imperialist-terrorist organisation, the IDF. By choosing to raise their children in a colony at war with an indigenous people, the Israelis jeopardise the lives of these genuine innocents, who deserve to be protected from the crimes of their parents. Non-violent resistance is no solution either. We know what the Israelis can do to unarmed peace activists. Violence, rather than feebleness, generates power for the oppressed".

Tony Blair's government is currently convulsed by attempts to get its draconian anti-terror laws onto the statute book on the grounds that it is essential to protect people from terrorist violence. Yet here is an outright example of incitement to violence, murder and terrorism from within a so-called place of learning. We already have laws against incitement to violence. Should they not now be used?

This article should surely be brought to the attention of the police. We are getting to the stage where it is becoming dangerous even to express support for Israel. When is the government going to acknowledge the anti-Jewish poison that has been released into the national bloodstream and start taking measures to counter it? When is the Jewish community going to stop hiding behind its collective armchair and start making a public protest about all this? Are the SOAS and London University administrators going to wait until a Jewish student is beaten or killed before tackling this lethal hatred that makes such a mockery of an academic institution?

The Jew-baiting students at SOAS (see post below) should know they're in great company in lauding their hero Ken Livingstone. For who should also have come out in staunch support of Ken but David Duke, the American white supremacist, former Ku Klux Klansman and rabid Jew-hater. On his website, Duke foams about yours truly as a 'Jewish supremacist' who has 'unwittingly exposed the real reason why Ken Livingstone is under attack', and draws the attention of racists across the world to this website in order to 'spread the truth' about the evil of the Jews. If you can stomach such ravings, here's a taster:

'You see, you can’t liken an individual Jew, no matter how obnoxious, to a concentration camp guard. You have stepped on the toes of the Holy People, the unassailable people, the people you can’t criticize or God help you!...The will of the people be damned, you cannot offend the real rulers. Get it in your head, you Gentile dolts, we do not live in Democracy. We live in a Jewocracy!'

To David Duke, Ken is a hero because he realised that

'Israel was a Jewish supremacist state that is every bit as “racist” as was Nazi Germany'.

And indeed, if you cover up the top of the page, you might think you were reading a far-left or Islamist website -- because huge chunks of this vile filth about Israel are exactly the the kind of stuff that is currently being churned out by both the left and radical Islamists.

Duke's rantings graphically illustrate what has long been apparent -- that there is now an extraordinary axis linking neo-Nazis or white supremacists, the left and radical Islam, who come together in their hatred of Israel and the Jews. That is why the SOAS students have made a hero out of a man who knowingly compared a Jew to a concentration camp guard and then refused to apologise and vilified Israel instead -- a man who is now a pin-up for American racists, a mascot for Duke's agenda to liberate the world from 'the perversion, the hypocrisy, the evil' of the Jews.

It's Ken's new constituency.

A reader thinks I have been too hard on Mahmoud Abbas (see post below) He says that in the Time interview, Abbas also spoke about his birth place in terms which imply he accepts that not all Palestinians will be able to live in Israel:

'TIME: You were born in Safad, in what is now Israel. How did it feel when you went back for a visit in 1995?

ABBAS: Very sad. It's my country. I know every street and store. But now I'm not allowed to be there. That's life. I'm not asking for Safad. I'm not asking to return there.'

But the fact is that Abbas is still intent on pursuing the 'right to return', which he merely maintains will not be taken up by the majority of Palestinians. So I think the Time remark is just another straw at which some may wish to clutch; but in the interests of fairness, I am happy to note it.

A salutary note of caution from Daniel Pipes. Writing about the wind of change blowing through the Middle East, he observes:

'These developments find some neo-conservatives in a state of near-euphoria. Rich Lowry of the National Review calls them “a marvelous thing.” Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post writes that “We are at the dawn of a glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the Middle East.”

I too welcome these developments, but more warily. Having been trained in Middle Eastern history makes me perhaps more aware of what can go wrong:

* Yes, Mahmoud Abbas wishes to end the armed struggle against Israel but his call for a greater jihad against the “Zionist enemy” points to his intending another form of war to destroy Israel.
* The Iraqi elections are bringing Ibrahim Jaafari, a pro-Iranian Islamist, to power.
* Likewise, the Saudi elections proved a boon for the Islamist candidates.
* Mubarak’s promise is purely cosmetic; but should real presidential elections one day come to Egypt, Islamists will probably prevail there too.
* Removing Syrian control in Lebanon could well lead to Hezbollah, a terrorist group, becoming the dominant power there.
* Eliminating the hideous Assad dynasty could well bring in its wake an Islamist government in Damascus.

Note a pattern? Other than the sui generis Palestinian case, one main danger threatens to undo the good news: that a too-quick removal of tyranny unleashes Islamist ideologues and opens their way to power. Sadly, Islamists uniquely have what it takes to win elections: the talent to develop a compelling ideology, the energy to found parties, the devotion to win supporters, the money to spend on electoral campaigns, the honesty to appeal to voters, and the will to intimidate rivals.'

All doubtless very true. Which only serves to confirm the point that quick-fix elections are not the end of the process but only the beginning; that it is free societies based on the rule of law, independent courts, proper opposition parties and a free press that are crucial if the aggression of rogue states is to be neutered; and that the big change the west has to make is to believe that most ordinary people everywhere do not want to be jailed, tortured or murdered whether by a despotic eye-doctor or a religious fanatic, and therefore to be prepared to hold assorted feet to the fire until those free societies are achieved.

Is Mahmoud Abbas simply Arafat in a suit? The consensus is that Abbas is a pragmatist and offers the best chance yet of delivering peace in the Middle East. The jury is still out; and there is still a possibility that he will turn out to be the statesman we have all been waiting for. But the signs are not auspicious.

Leave aside, for the moment, his background in both terror and Holocaust denial. Look at what he is doing — or rather, not doing — right now. Everyone acknowledges that getting the guys in Hamas to down their weapons was never going to be a picnic. But Abbas is doing nothing to attempt to dismantle the infrastructure of terror. Indeed, he has always said he will not take military action to do so because he will not risk a civil war. But gentle persuasion ain’t going to achieve anything. The guy is just sitting on his hands, while mouthing platitudes. He’s talking the talk all right, but so far he has refused to walk the walk. Haven’t we all been here before?

Mortimer Zuckerman voices justifiable exasperation:

‘The Israelis have had no fewer than 50 terror warnings in the past few weeks, during which time the IDF has stopped at least 10 suicide missions… The terrorists understand only the language of force and can be stopped only by means of force, but force is precisely the tool Abu Mazen declines to use. He has not collected a single weapon from any of the terrorist groups. He has not attacked their military and civilian infrastructure or arrested the list of wanted terrorists provided to him… At the London conference, Israel was ritually asked for unspecified actions "to live up to its obligations." But Israel has withdrawn its military forces, released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, announced the withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, and renewed the political dialogue. What more do the Palestinians want?’

More telling still is Abbas’s failure to stop the usual doubletalk, incitement and glorification of the mass murder of Jews. Now that isn’t difficult. It does not mean risking civil war. It doesn’t entail firing a single shot. It can be done instantly and painlessly — if the will is there. But it is not. As Palestinian Media Watch observes about the reaction in the Palestinian Authority-controlled media to the recent Tel Aviv bombing, Arafat’s double-crossing policy of saying one thing in English and quite another in Arabic is continuing:

‘While the foreign media accept at face value the PA's official condemnation of Friday's suicide bombing, the PA-controlled media are glorifying the bomber as a shahid (martyr who died for Allah) - the highest level of human achievement for a Muslim. By granting shahid status to the murderer, the PA media are portraying suicide terror as a positive religious act. The official condemnations of the bombing, therefore, focus not on deploring the act but on lamenting the consequences: damage to the Palestinian cause. Sunday's front-page coverage of the story in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida features a giant color photo of the terrorist at the top of the page, with the caption: "The executor of the Tel Aviv operation, the shahid Abdullah Badran." Another photograph shows his mother holding the terrorist's picture, and is captioned: "The mother of the Shahid. The daily newspaper Al-Ayyam refers to "the family of the Shahid." Al-Quds refers to "the family of the shahid Abdullah," and to the arrest of "the shahid’s two brothers" and to a "mourning tent in memory of the shahid." An earlier story in Al-Ayyam refers to the bomber as "Istish-hadi" - a shahid who actively sought death for Allah and succeeded.’

And official condemnation of the bombing has criticised merely the tactical stupidity of the action:

‘On Monday, Hassan Asfour, a member of the PA parliament, put it this way on PA TV: “This is the first action that no one is happy about. Everyone felt that the timing is not [right] and there is absolutely no need for it... It is not because the resistance against the occupation is a mistake, but because the nature, location and timing of the action are a mistake.” Both Abbas and his adviser Nabil Abu Rudueineh criticize not the morality of the action itself, but the damage to the Palestinians: “President Mahmoud Abbas described the operation... as a condemned sabotage attack, blaming a third party for the execution in order to jeopardize the peace process and to damage the reputation or the Palestinian people.”’

Equally disturbing is Abbas’s personal dislocation from reality, as illustrated in an interview in Time Magazine. Asked who was responsible for the Tel Aviv bombing, Abbas replied:

‘It was individuals. We arrested five. If you ask me who is responsible, the Israelis are responsible. The bombers came from the suburb of Tulkarem to Tel Aviv, crossing the wall. So who is responsible? The wall and the Israelis…
TIME: Israelis and Americans are shocked to think Hamas could be in your parliament.
ABBAS: Why not? They should be in the parliament. They will share responsibility.’

And then there was this by Khalid abu Toameh recently in the Jerusalem Post:

‘About 350 Palestinian gunmen will be incorporated into the Palestinian Authority security forces soon as part of a deal reached between PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and leaders of all the Palestinian factions, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The militiamen, who are on Israel's list of wanted terrorists, belong to various factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This is the first time that members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad would serve in the PA security forces. PA Minister of Agriculture Ibrahim Abu al-Naja revealed that the agreement to recruit the fugitives was achieved with the help of a top Egyptian security delegation that visited the West Bank and Gaza Strip earlier this week. The delegation, led by Gen. Mustafa Buhairi, deputy head of Egyptian Intelligence, held a series of meetings with representatives of all the factions and commanders of the security forces.

'"The fugitives who will join the security forces belong to all the Palestinian groups and factions," Naja said. "The move is designed to protect them against Israeli assassination attempts." According to Naja, who heads the Higher Committee of National and Islamic Forces in the Gaza Strip, the fugitives included members of the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad – Izzaddin Kassam and Al-Kuds Brigades. The two groups are responsible for most of the suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israeli targets over the past four years. "The Palestinian Authority does not distinguish between the wanted men," he said. "They are entitled to join the security forces because of their involvement in the resistance."

‘Abbas recently offered to absorb members of the armed wing of Fatah, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, into the security forces, but not all the gunmen have accepted the proposal. A PA security official confirmed that the PA leadership had agreed to incorporate Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists into the security forces. He said that Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders who met with Abbas last week in Gaza City demanded that their followers be recruited as policemen as a condition for accepting a temporary truce with Israel. "There's no reason why Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen can't join the security forces," the official added. "They are part of the Palestinian people. The Israelis and Americans should be happy about this move, because it means that these men will stop all of their activities."’

Uh-huh. And I have fairies at the bottom of my garden, too.

Israel has been constantly, if quietly, warning that Abbas has to deliver more than words. No-one is listening. Everyone is gripped instead by this latest fantasy of appeasement. Can anyone in the Bush administration see what is happening here? How long are they going to go along with this deadly play-acting? Are they going to allow themselves to be sucked into another Oslo-style farce? What is the point of President Bush’s wonderful words about the precondition of democratic institutions and the rule of law and the absolute necessity to dismantle the infrastructure of terror and all the rest of it, if he makes an exception for the latest Palestinian strongman with an entirely different agenda -- and a length of the very finest wool for the pulling over of eyes?

The emergency student union general meeting held at London's School of Oriental and African Studies on Friday to elect Ken Livingstone as its honorary president (see posts below) seems to have been, as might have been expected, a vicious affair in which hatred for Israel and Jews was on rampant display. This is the account written by Gavin Gross, an official of the Jewish Society (which, incidentally, along with the Israel Society, is excluded altogether from the School’s list of student union societies) :

‘An "emergency" motion was brought to create the post of Honorary President of the SOAS Union and to elect Ken Livingstone to the post. I believe the reason given for the emergency meeting was ludicrous - that the Mayor was due to appear soon at SOAS and the Union wanted to know whether he would be introduced as merely the Mayor or also as Honorary Union President. For such an important symbolic role, a canvas of the students should have taken place beforehand to nominate various candidates, and then a proper period of time for reflection and publicity should have been given before any vote. The Union instead proceeded to quickly force through this meeting to select Ken Livingstone, the only choice listed.

'I then tabled an amendment at the meeting to select Nelson Mandela instead. I limited all my remarks to discussing the merits of Mandela as a unifying candidate, reading excerpts from his speech on release from prison in 1990 (which I remember watching live on TV). I explained why I felt an African and world leader was a better choice for the School of Oriental and African Studies than Ken Livingstone, a divisive candidate. The proposers of the motion and its supporters (including many from the SOAS Islamic and Palestine Societies) spent little time discussing the merits of Ken Livingstone, but instead launched numerous attacks (while pointing towards me) on "apartheid Israel", the "war criminal" Ariel Sharon, the "Jewish lobby", the "Zionist press", the SOAS Jewish Society, and the "Zionist and Mossad conspiracy" to disparage the Mayor.

'This was not a debate on the Middle East. Quite what an assault on the state of Israel, Jews and the Jewish Society had to do with selecting an Honorary President of the Union I don't know, but it demonstrated the bigotry and pathological obsession that some SOAS students have with Israel and Jews. Many Jewish students in the room felt intimidated by being there. It confirmed my initial fears that the meeting, held on an emergency basis to rush through the selection of Ken Livingstone, had little to do with the sudden desire to have an Honorary President. Instead it had everything to do with insulting Jewish students by rewarding the Mayor for attacking a Jewish reporter and Israel, and providing a platform for extremist students to publicly vent their hostility towards Israel and the Jewish Society in the Union. It also shows what real-world impact is being felt by Jewish students in London following the Mayor's series of disgraceful remarks. Near the end of the meeting, I was also personally attacked by the Environment officer of the SOAS Union, who called me a f***ing w***er from the microphone.

'I am told by University of London Union (ULU) officer Rob Park that the meeting and election itself was illegal and unconstitutional on two grounds. First, a Union meeting cannot by itself create a totally new post of Honorary President - it must be ratified by the School's Board of Governors. Second, an election to such a post must take place via a College-wide secret ballot and not by a show of hands at a Union meeting. As an aside, this ULU officer was originally selected to Chair the Union meeting but was removed at the last minute in favour of the shopkeeper at SOAS, the UNISON union delegate. The Union officials who called the meeting should have known the Union had no power to create and hold an election for Honorary President, but they agreed to hold the meeting and proceeded with it anyway. Perhaps it is time for the Union itself to be dismantled.

'I remind you this is the same Union that in February 2005 voted to ban Roey Gilad, political attache of the Israeli Embassy, from speaking on campus, simply because he is an Israeli official. The SOAS administration in that instance intervened to overturn the ban, but on the night of the event a false fire alarm was set off as the talk was due to begin and a glass front door at SOAS was smashed.

'The SOAS administration must intervene again to end once and for all the racial hostility directed at Jewish students at SOAS. If they fail to do this, then the University of London governors must act.

'The day after the meeting, I also received an extremely abusive email from the Academic Affairs officer at the SOAS Union, which I have forwarded to the proper authorities.’

We wait to see whether SOAS will now take action against this venomous prejudice and hatred which make such a mockery of an academic institution, quite apart from being a gross affront to decency.

BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour is serialising George du Maurier’s 19th century novel Trilby. To which one has to ask — why? For Trilby is an overtly anti-Jewish novel. Its central character, Svengali, is a diabolically sinister Jewish musician who hypnotises and manipulates a tone-deaf orphan into becoming a famous singer. The character thus encapsulates a key motif of Judeophobia — that the Jews covertly bend people to their will. In As I Please, George Orwell wrote in 1946:

‘The thing that now hits one in the eye in reading Trilby is its antisemitism… There is no question that the book is antisemitic. Apart from the fact that Svengali’s vanity, treacherousness, selfishness, personal uncleanliness and so forth are constantly connected with the fact that he is a Jew, there are the illustrations.’

Indeed. To see one of these illustrations, click here .

Before people start responding in Pavlovian fashion with cries of ‘censorship’ and ‘double standards’, let me make it clear: I am not suggesting that this book be suppressed, any more than I would suggest this for the myriad works of English literature which incorporate anti-Jewish prejudice. But one has to question why the BBC, which so regularly broadcasts lies, libels and prejudices against the Jews of Israel (Dr Bell’s recent 'Thought for the Day' and TV news coverage of the Tel Aviv bomb, for which it has now been forced to apologise, are but two of the latest examples of its persistently distorted coverage) has chosen this moment to serialise this fourth-rate example of Victorian fiction, whose one attribute is that it will undoubtedly confirm and deepen the prejudice that is now so dismayingly on open display in Britain, that the Jews are a sinister conspiracy that controls the world.

Quite apart from its endemic political bias, the BBC now seems to be incapable of understanding the concept of public service broadcasting across the board. The decision to pay £4,500 to Brendon Fearon, the serial burglar who broke into the house of farmer Tony Martin, for Fearon's part in a TV documentary about the incident has provoked the Culture Secretary to express 'disquiet and unease'. And shortly before this egregious error of editorial judgment, there was public shock and disbelief at the screening of explicit footage about the sex industry at 9.15 am, a time when young children are generally watching TV. As Andrew Bowman writes on the Biased BBC website:

'While the programmes were interesting, Magnusson's annoying wheedling- whining style notwithstanding, it's appalling to show such strong adult topics, language and imagery at 9.15 in the morning. We learned first hand from a prostitute and her 'maid' how good the money is - the prostitute had earned over £500 from 'serving' upwards of twenty-five 'clients' (some of whom we saw) that day. We visited 'Smack Alley', a named street for buying drugs in Derby. We saw a man injecting heroin into his groin. We met Matty, "one of Britain's top gay porn stars". We saw gay porn stars playing Twister. We met the 'oversized' 59-year old Dominatrix Francesca, Momma Fran, who "has recently embarked on a new career as a porn idol". We met the staff and were given a guided tour of the facilities of a Hull brothel. We heard a woman moaning "give it to me". And on and on.

This was on BBC1 - the first channel that appears on most British television sets - at 9.15am in the morning, over four days, when many pre-schoolers and children missing school due to illness are at home and watching ("Mummy, what does group sex mean?"). Worse, with the bad weather last week, schools across the country were closed, with their children at 'home when these programmes were shown.'

Now that the issue of the BBC's governance appears to be settled, can BBC Charirman Michael Grade please get down urgently to the business of cleaning out his Augean stables?

So now we know. Those seeking protection from religious fascism can rely on the British judiciary to deliver them up to it on a plate. When the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that Denbigh High School had acted unlawfully in forbidding Shabina Begum from wearing a full length jilbab that covered her entire body apart from her face and hands, the 16 year-old schoolgirl promptly showed just what was at stake here by reading a highly political statement. In this she called the court’s decision “a victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values despite prejudice and bigotry”. Reading from a statement, with her brother at her side, she blamed the school’s decision on hostility to Muslims after the September 11 terrorist attacks. “As a young woman growing up in a post-9/11 Britain, I have witnessed a great deal of bigotry from the media, politicians and legal officials,” she said. “This bigotry resulted from my choice to wear a piece of cloth, not out of coercion, but out of my faith and belief in Islam. It is amazing that in the so-called free world I have to fight to wear this attire.”’

It was immediately obvious that this girl was being used by extremists. Sure enough, it was reported today that she has been backed by Hizb ut Tahrir, a group that wants to see Sharia law in Britain and the restoration of the global Islamic caliphate, and has been banned in Germany and the Middle East. Indeed, although some Muslims welcomed the judgment – including the Muslim Council of Britain, whose claim to be ‘moderate’ becomes more unsustainable with every passing day – others were dismayed, and rightly so. The Telegraph reported:

'But Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, the leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, said: "This may be a victory for human rights but it is also a victory for fundamentalism."'

Quite so. For the very wearing of this garment is a political statement, declaring in effect the supremacy of Sharia law. It is therefore an act of aggression against the British state. It is also an act of aggression against other Muslims who do not subscribe to this extremism. The school was well aware of this; indeed, it was one of the main reasons why it forbade the jilbab. This is, after all, a school with a Muslim head teacher, many Muslim pupils and where the school uniform already permits shalwar kameez to be worn. And as the court judgment makes clear, the head understood what the judges patently did not – that permitting this garment to be worn would expose other pupils to intimidation:

‘She said that she had been given the firm impression that a number of girls relied on the school to help them resist the pressures from the more extreme groups. She was afraid that if the school uniform were to be adapted to include the jilbab these girls would be deprived of proper protection and would feel abandoned by those upon whom they were relying to preserve their freedom to follow their own part of the Islamic tradition. She also referred to the picketing that had taken place "by groups of mainly young men who would appear to be from the more extreme Muslim traditions".’

The assistant head elaborated:

'"Several staff have been approached by non-Muslim pupils saying that they are afraid of people wearing the jilbab, as they perceive this form of dress to be associated with extreme views. This makes them feel vulnerable. Whilst I would not consider it right to pander to the prejudices or fears of some pupils, I think it would be most unfortunate if some pupils were to be held in fear by others, or regarded as in some way separate, because of the clothes they wear. Similarly this view has also been reflected by some Muslim girls who have indicated to staff that they do not wish to wear the jilbab, as this would identify them as belonging to extreme Muslim sects. They do not wish to be identified with such people...

At the Appeal hearing the Claimant indicated that although she does not regard Muslims who wear the shalwar kameeze as bad people, she does think better Muslims wear the jilbab. I would not wish to see the introduction of two classes of Muslim, the inferior class that wears the shalwar kameeze and the better Muslim who wears the jilbab. In my view that would lead to real risk of pressure being brought upon Muslim girls to wear the jilbab or be regarded as religious inferiors. I would fear that this could lead to some girls feeling pressured into wearing the jilbab when they would prefer to wear the shalwar kameeze and might wish to avoid being classified with the kinds of people they believe wear the jilbab."’

But now Denbigh High School has been prevented from protecting its pupils from such intimidation, pressure and religious fanaticism by three bone-headed judges from the British kamikaze human rights tendency. Not, of course, that they could ever admit to such a thing. Indeed, Lord Justice Mummery observed:

‘In some quarters this decision may be seen as an instance of the court and/or the claimant overruling the Headteacher and the Governors of the School, undermining their authority on an internal school matter and interfering in the running of the School. That would be a misconception. The role of the court is confined to deciding whether the claimant was unlawfully excluded from the School and unlawfully denied her right to manifest her religion. The court has found that the relevant issues were, from a legal aspect, approached from the wrong direction. The result is that there was unlawful treatment of the claimant. As already explained, this does not mean that would be impossible for the School, if the matter were approached from the right direction, to justify the school uniform policy with regard to another pupil adopting the same position as the claimant.’

Uh-huh. And so just what, pray, is the right direction? Lord Justice Brooke spelled it out:

‘The decision-making structure should therefore go along the following lines: 1) Has the claimant established that she has a relevant Convention right which qualifies for protection under Article 9(1)? 2) Subject to any justification that is established under Article 9(2), has that Convention right been violated? 3) Was the interference with her Convention right prescribed by law in the Convention sense of that expression? 4) Did the interference have a legitimate arm? 5) What are the considerations that need to be balanced against each other when determining whether the interference was necessary in a democratic society for the purpose of achieving that aim? 6) Was the interference justified under Article 9(2)? The School did not approach the matter in this way at all. Nobody who considered the issues on its behalf started from the premise that the claimant had a right which is recognised by English law, and that the onus lay on the School to justify its interference with that right. Instead, it started from the premise that its uniform policy was there to be obeyed: if the claimant did not like it, she could go to a different school.’

In other words, a school must not consider first and foremost its duty to safeguard its pupils from intimidation and fanaticism. No no; this is the wrong direction from which to approach an issue. It must instead start from the hallowed sanctity of an individual extremist’s human rights – in the judgment, delicately referred to as a ‘minority’ viewpoint – regardless of the way this undermines a head teacher's judgment, regardless of a school’s right to set its own uniform policy, and above all regardless of the dangers this poses to others.

Our senior judiciary has now become a positive menace to the liberties for which we are fighting. Naïve to the point of idiocy, they are so blinded by their politically correct obsession with minority rights and the need to follow slavishly the socially destructive and implacable logic of human rights law that they cannot even grasp that what they are being asked to do will actually imperil members of a minority at the hands of their own extremists.

In the great row over Home Secretary Charles Clarke’s draconian control orders, the argument is that the judiciary should take control of anti-terror procedures in order to protect our fundamental liberties from untrustworthy politicians. But the terrible truth is that the English judiciary can no longer be trusted to safeguard us. Dangerous people threaten us; and the English judges have become their useful idiots, with human rights law the weapon with which British society can be used to destroy itself.

Another hopeful straw in the wind from the Washington Post:

'Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, said yesterday that the strength of the Iraqi insurgency is waning as a result of momentum from elections, and he predicted Iraqi security forces would be leading the fight against insurgents in most of Iraq by the end of 2005.While acknowledging that Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency gained intensity from November through January compared with the previous year, Abizaid told a Senate panel that the insurgents' failure to disrupt Jan. 30 elections marked a turning point and indicated declining popular support.Insurgents fielded only "around 3,500" fighters on election day, he said, citing U.S. intelligence estimates. Earlier U.S. intelligence had put the number of core Iraqi and foreign fighters at as many as 20,000. "Why didn't they put more people in the field? Where were they?" Abizaid asked in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "They threw their whole force at us, and yet they were unable to disturb the elections. I think that the voting in Iraq, the political process that's going on . . . have driven those numbers [of insurgents] down." '

One cannot repeat too often that Iraq's problems are not over, and more bloodshed must tragically be expected. But as was obvious all along -- not least to the terror masterminds themselves -- if the Iraqi election happened in reasonable order, the 'insurgency' would lose purpose and credibility. We are witnessing abroad an inspirational and hopeful fightback against tyranny ; the tragedy is that so many here in Britain seem so determined only to hate and to destroy.

In the wake of the brief interlude of decency at the School of Oriental and African Studies (see post below), the School now seems to be returning to vicious type. At an extraordinary general meeting called for this Friday, the student union is due to debate a motion proposing to elect Ken Livingstone as honorary president.

This move is effectively an obscene gesture towards all those who have protested at the London Mayor's despicable behaviour towards the Evening Standard's Jewish reporter and, more importantly, his embrace of the extremist Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi. If passed, it will mean that the SOAS student union has elected as its honorary president a public official who has lent his support -- although he denies this as vehemently as do the proposers of this motion -- to a man whose published views have revealed him to be a menace to the lives of Jews, gays, women and others, a supporter of terrorism and of the philosophy of the Muslim Brotherhood which lies at the rotten core of the religious fascism which now menaces the free world.

If the SOAS student union wanted to hoist a flag for mass murder and pre-Enlightenment bigotry, they could hardly do better than this.

A thoughtful and timely article in Commentary by Gabriel Schoenfeld -- which the Wall Street Journal has thought important enough to reproduce -- asks how the CIA could have degenerated to such a point as to have ever employed Michael Sheuer as head of operations against al Qaeda between 1996-99 and then as a high-level counter-terrorism manager.

Sheuer, the once-anonymous author of a sensational book lambasting the Bush administration's war against terror, is here eviscerated by Schoenfeld. Sheuer ludicrously sanitises al Qaeda, which he says is simply engaged in a '

defensive jihad

'; eulogises Osama bin Laden as a '

gentle, generous, talented, and personally courageous'

leader; vilifies

'Israel’s crafty use of “diplomats, politicians, intelligence services, [and] U.S. citizen spies,” along with “wealthy Jewish-American organizations,” in order to “lac[e] tight the ropes binding the American Gulliver to the Jewish state” '

; and yet, while reserving special fury not only for America’s alliance with Israel but for its

'hallucinatory crusade for democracy'

, also lambasts Washington for being insufficiently hawkish in waging the war on terror. As Shoenfeld comments:

'Sentiments like these mark the author of Imperial Hubris as something of a political hybrid—a cross, not to put too fine a point on it, between an overwrought Buchananite and a raving Chomskyite...How did a person of such demonstrable mediocrity of mind and unhinged views achieve the rank he did in the CIA, and how could so manifestly wayward and damaging a work have been published by someone in the agency’s employ?'

A question, indeed, of key concern to all of us. Schoenfeld attempts to answer it by reference to a book produced by another ex-CIA operative, who he acknowledges left the Agency's employment in unhappy circumstances after a self-confessed mistake. As a result, her observations need to be treated with some circumspection -- maybe rather more than Schoenfeld allows. But one particular revelation rings bells, not least because it so closely corresponds to what has happened to our own civil service here in Britain -- and probably to our own intelligence services, too. It is the scourge of politically correct employment 'inclusiveness'. This resulted in an Agency obsession with hiring quotas of black, Asian and Hispanic people along with 'gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gendered employees'. As Schoenfeld comments:

'These, then, have been the fruits of an effort going back well over a decade and consuming a large quotient of the agency’s senior-level attention—the same period in which al Qaeda was gathering force and training thousands of Islamists, and when the CIA’s overriding need, conspicuously unmet all those years, was the hiring of more officers capable of speaking and reading Arabic'.

Astonishing -- and yet all too likely. For a wide variety of cultural and political reasons, only some of which are covered in this interesting article, the intelligence services of the west slept on their watch, with terrible consequences. Have they now put their houses in order? How will we ever know?

The Israeli minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, Natan Sharansky, has been in London promoting his book, The Case for Democracy, which has been wowing a number of people in Britain as much as it appears to have bowled over President Bush. Sharansky, such a physically small, unassuming man, is surely one of the titanic moral figures of the age. Having faced down Soviet totalitarianism from the inside of a labour camp cell, and having seen the regime that tyrannised and murdered so many collapse like a pack of cards, he has been afforded an insight given to few others – a deeply personal understanding of the universal yearning for freedom, and the innate weakness of even the most brutal and repressive of tyrannies in the face of that yearning.

This is surely what gives Sharansky his rock-solid confidence that, given the kind of support from the rest of the world than gives courage to the persecuted, the tyrannies in the Middle East can be toppled if the people will it, and all ‘fear societies’ can be transformed into ‘free societies’. When people say Arab countries can never become free, he remembers people saying the same thing about the Soviet Union. Okay, he says, these societies may not become democracies as we know them, but they can become places where people can live free of doublethink, free of the fear of the knock on the door from the secret police.

And again drawing on his personal experience, he observes that we do not – but should – call those brave Muslims who fight their own tyrannies by their proper name: ‘dissidents’. For dissidents is indeed what they are. And as he says, Soviet dissidents like himself or Andrei Sakharov attracted huge demonstrations or petitions in the west protesting at their plight. We should surely do the same for Arab dissidents, to give them the same kind of crucial encouragement and support and help them blow down their own packs of cards.

Because apart from the need for all peoples to be free, as Sharansky says – and President Bush has understood – it is only free societies, answerable to their populations, which have no desire to wage war or oppress other peoples. And so it is not enough for Arab leaders to promise to ‘crack down’ on terrorists, or hand them over for trial by other countries. To prove their good faith in ending the violence with which they are associated, they have to build the institutions of a free society. Only then will this terrible scourge under which so many live, and which threatens the freedom of others, be ended.

Sharansky has been saying this for years. Suddenly, to his amazement, there’s a President in the White House who agrees. But the really amazing thing is that so many others in the free world not only do not agree but loathe and detest this message and its messengers. As he says, the common response to tyranny by free peoples is to appease it. It is only when the price of that appeasement becomes so high that the self-delusion can no longer be sustained that tyranny is fought – and by then, the difficulties are enormous, and the price is even greater human tragedy.

I was one of the speakers at a colloquium this week on the subject of human rights and religion, and whether there is an inevitable clash between the two. Readers of this website will not be surprised to learn that I took the view that there was, and that this was not altogether to the advantage of society. Indeed, I said that modern human rights were acting as a solvent upon the moral values on which our society depended -- principally our sense of duty and responsibility – and that this was destroying real human rights, the ones that derived from those overarching obligations of duty which were now going down the pan (as was set out in a seminal book a few years ago, The Principle of Duty, by David Selbourne).

Perhaps not surprisingly, this didn’t go down too well with some of the participants. Indeed, there were open mouths and gasps of horror as if I was swearing in church – confirming my view that human rights are now our secular religion, complete with Inquisition. The extent of the moral bankruptcy brought about by this human rights culture was amply demonstrated by some of the questions I was asked by shocked participants. One took issue with my criticisms of the court ruling that gypsies were entitled to break the planning laws because these were trumped by their right to family life, and of the ruling that trans-sexuals were entitled to lie on their birth certificates about the sex in which they had been born. Life was much more complex than I had allowed, I was sternly told. Gypsies could not be expected to understand planning laws because they couldn’t read or write. And trans-sexuals were entitled to say on their birth certificates whatever sex they wanted to have been born in.

In other words, human rights culture means that anyone who can’t read or write can break the law, and truth is anything you want it to mean. As a demonstration of my contention that the rights culture was destroying morality, justice and truth this hardly have been clearer. Happily, a number of people who had kept silent during the meeting approached me afterwards to confide that they thought I was right. So don’t despair – there’s hope for civilisation yet.

Horrific as Monday’s bomb in Iraq was, some extraordinary developments have been happening in the Middle East which suggest that President Bush’s much-reviled doctrine that democracy in Iraq might nudge surrounding rogue states towards free societies is actually having an effect. A wind of freedom seems to be blowing through the region. The amazing scenes in Lebanon, where a popular revolt against the Syrian occupation has forced out the pro-Syrian Lebanese government; Egypt’s President Mubarak announcing that there are to be contested elections; the Saudi foreign minister announcing that women are to vote in Saudi elections; and the anger among ordinary Palestinians at last weekend’s Tel Aviv bombing, in contrast to their normal jubilation at the deaths of Israelis. A striking account in the Guardian about the local reaction to the bomber’s family captures this new mood there:

‘For seven days after a burial a Palestinian family receives mourners, normally a big social event involving colourful banners and patriotic music. But yesterday seven members of the family occupied the otherwise empty chairs and when asked if Abdullah's death had achieved anything they all shook their heads, and one said no in English… Sami Qadan said the whole town was shocked and angered by the bombing and in protest no one was paying respects to the family. “Things were getting better and then no sooner do we have money coming in again then it is stopped by this suicide bombing. This intifada has killed us and the wall has destroyed us. We cannot even leave our homes and we want it to stop,” he said… Ibrahim said that the family was extremely angry with the people who had chosen and prepared Abdullah for his suicide mission. “I don't know who they are but we want them to stop this and reach out their hands for peace. That is the only way the situation will improve.” ’

However, this has to be balanced against a rally that was eventually held in Hebron to celebrate the murder of the Israelis – and as HonestReporting.Com observes, to almost complete media silence. Nevertheless, even a partial shift in Palestinian opinion is noteworthy.

So what has caused this sudden little rash of pointers towards freedom and sanity? As ever, Mark Steyn in the Telegraph cut to the chase:

‘Why is all this happening? Answer: January 30. Don't take my word for it, listen to Walid Jumblatt, big-time Lebanese Druze leader and a man of impeccable anti-American credentials: “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen.”… In the space of a month, the Iraq election has become the prism through which all other events in the region are seen.’

This is a long and rocky road. No-one pretends freedom will come to the Arab world and peace and order will be established overnight. Indeed, it is almost certain that such moves in this direction will merely redouble the efforts of those impelled in the first place by fear of freedom to wreak further carnage in the attempt to halt its progress. For my money, prospects of peace for Israel remain ambiguous. And the menace of Iran, hurtling towards nuclear weapons, remains undimmed. But who would have predicted, before Saddam’s fall, that Arab rogue states would have made any tentative moves in the right direction? And who can deny that these things are only happening because America has drawn its line in the sand -- and because those brave Iraqis have shown their Arab brothers and sisters that, if they only will it, they too can live free from tyranny?

Terrible things will, alas, continue to happen. But for the first time, there is hope.

Apologies for the problems in getting onto this site yesterday, but apparently a major power failure in London's Docklands knocked out not just my site but a number of others too.