Maximum Phillips More tripe from Melanie Phillips, who, after putting in a miserable wide-eyed display on Question Time last week*, returns to her old tricks, claiming that it is "The Palestinians" the who are attacking Israel [Hamas and IJ are shooting rockets at us so lets get some revenge and punish any old Palestinian] and by having us believe that attacking power stations is not collective punishment but self defence. These two disgraceful viewpoints can be twisted together to justify the war crimes currently being perpetarted by the Israeli government in its incursion into Gaza. She is not alone. The funniest excuse I have heard so far came last week from some cabinet minister on Channel 4 News whose name and role regrettably escape me. He told host John Snow that the power for the whole population of Gaza needed to be cut to stop kidnappers operating at night - if they can't see they can't kidnap people, right? When John Snow politely pointed out that total darkness actually would be quite useful for any would be kidnapper or smuggler the minister reverted to the worthless roundabout arguments that Melanie Phillips will one day have patented.

One thing Melanie Phillips doesn't seem to appreciate about Israel is its wonderfully free press. So when Gideon Levy of Haaretz daringly claims that:

"It is not legitimate to cut off 750,000 people from electricity. It is not legitimate to call on 20,000 people to run from their homes and turn their towns into ghost towns."

His opinion is trashed as being "self-loathing" and "despicable". He is also accused of aiding those who seek to destroy Israel, a rather Stalinist statement and a bizarre one at that coming from Phillips. She would have us believe that reports of what Britain and the US carry out in Iraq does not encourage the increase in radical muslims, who in her view would perpetrate their evil acts with or without witnessing them. Meanwhile similar reports on Israeli acts encourage people to attack Israel. Which one is it? In truth, the honest reporting of these crimes in Gaza, along with past atrocious behaviour by the government, IDF and the other security forces, has done something which keeps her up at night far more. It has made people well-informed, including Jewish people, who, in her world of sides and teams and us vs them, should be on her side of the fence. When they don't, like the hundreds of British Jews who contributed to a full-page ad in The Times yesterday condemning the "collective punishment of the people of Gaza" she slimes them as "despicable". What are we going to do with her?

*Interestingly, Melanie Phillips thought it would a good idea to mount a scathing attack on the "puerile" interview that Jonathan Ross conducted with David Cameron two weeks ago. Her disgust was welcome but a little strange given her crusade for freedom of expression earlier this year. Does she now hold the view that, while people are thankfully free to say and print what they want, they would also do well to listen to their conscience first? Or is this the latest in a now expansive line of double-standards?

  ¶ posted by the leech at 7/07/2006