No Free Pass

Off goes Andrew Gilligan, who used to be good, about Ken Livingstone and Press TV. Was it owned by someone else when it employed Andrew Gilligan? And off go all and sundry about Tunisia and how "Arab regimes get a free pass from the media, which are too busy demonising Israel". Or it could be "Muslim regimes", since those peddling this guff think that "Arab" and "Muslim" are synonyms. But the newly former regime in Tunisia was a friend of Israel, as are the regimes in Turkey, Egypt and the Gulf.

Our media do, of course, demonise the enemies of Israel: Iran, with more women than men at university, and with reserved parliamentary representation for Jews and Christians; Syria, with Christian-majority provinces, Christian festivals as public holidays, and a significant government programme of renovating synagogues and Jewish cemeteries; that side in Lebanon which is not favoured by Israel and bankrolled by Saudi Arabia, but which is a Christian-Muslim alliance busily engaged in restoring Beirut's historic synagogue; the old Iraq, in which women and Christians were a lot better off than they are now, as was almost everyone else, even if not necessarily to the same extent; and so on, and on, and on.