Without Embarrassment

This is a scandal, or even a story, how, exactly? Because a journalist is in the pocket of politicians? Just fancy that! Or because anyone has dared to be even mildly critical of Israel in general and of the rancid Netanyahu in particular?

The party of his Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister wants to denaturalise the Arabs and the "ultra-Orthodox" Jews. Another party in his Coalition believes that every ethnic group except its own has been created as beasts of burden. Why is this government not a pariah, as Austria's rightly was when it included the Haiderites?

There is no military alliance whatever between America and Israel, as well as little or no economic relationship and, very tellingly, hardly any migration between the two. Israel, financially dependent on America, uses that money to maintain an enormous spy network on American soil. By contrast, Turkey is an active member of NATO, and Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states are very close indeed to the Americans.

France is pro-Arab because she has longstanding ties to the beleaguered custodians of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. All of those were actually in the British Mandate. But we pretend that they and their people do not exist. Not so, the French.