Bob, I am baffled at your persistence in doing Israel down and your support for all others in the region.

Surely you know that Israel is fighting for its very existence and the build up of pressure form the Palestinian side is deliberate on the other powers in the region.

Western Democracies will never surrender their support of Israel in this lifetime I suspect.

I don't like hypocrisy and double standards, Gary. If we invade Iraq and threaten Iran over nuclear weapons, why shouldn't Israel be treated the same. I'm sure Ahmadinejad could make the same argument to his people as you say about Israel, but if he is to face US /UK/EU hostility, then why not Israel where the evidence of nuclear weapons is far more compelling?

I don't support 'all others in the region' not even in Palestine.

Your final point may well be correct... because they are hypocrites.

It's a strange thing Bob.

When I have said the war in Iraq is wrong, I'm accused of supporting terrorism.

When I said that it's difficult for the US to be the brokers of peace in the middle east and supply Israel with the very weapons that help break that peace, I'm accused of supporting terrorism in Palestine or anti-sematic.

I just don't get that step of logic. Nope, I don't get it at all.

Gazza

erm... how about when Israel becomes a risk to regional stability, starts threatening to annhilate their neigbours and hanging people from cranes for adultery... next question?

Gary has a point Bob. You've been in politics long enough to know that it always has been and always will be riddled with double standards and hypocrisy, on the left and right - it's called grown up politics, realpolitik if you like.

Monboit is one of those idiots both political traditions throw up (he's no more credible or honest than a Melanie Phillips or a Simon Heffer) who disregards any context or facts that contradict or challenge their view but wax lyrical about everything else. You'd have justified contempt for the right-wing blogs that just rehash Phillips / Heffer / Hitchens etc. - please don't do the same thing with the idiotic columnists from the left... you're better than that.

Spot on, Gaz. (Actually, I'm always hesitant to call people Gaz having been at University with a Gary Chambers at one time).

Cassilis - a threat to the region???? What, like invading the Lebanon, the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, the daily occupation and brutalising of the Palestinians, the air strikes which took out a French built nuclear powers station in Iraq? Oh, that sort of stability you mean? What you really mean are the Israeli government are nasty bastards, but they are your nasty bastards so that makes it OK. Well not in my book it doesn't, whatever you call realpolitk. Cassilis, I don't agree with a lot of what Monbiot writes, but that doesn't make him always wrong and in this instance he is on the button. I thought you were better than this.

Israel were attacked from the Lebanon and responded, they didn't invade. And Hizbollah used civilian locations to launch rockets from hence the bombing. Both pretty undisputed points of record I think. And as for Osirak - are you seriously lamenting that action by Israel? Even although Iraqi exiles have provided proof the intention was nuclear arms you think Israel was wrong to bomb that plant? Do you really believe Israel is a threat to regional stability on the same scale as Iran Bob?

And yes, it's pretty much as straightforward as 'our bas***ds' and I don't like it either - it's ugly and depressing. But until I can articlate a credible, thought through sequence of alternatives for the international community to adopt I have to accept it. Monboit offers no such alternative he just takes pops at the west - the left's very own heffer and just as contemptible.

We are not going to change each others' minds over this Liam, but let us at least agree on the facts. Israel did invade Lebanon. Under Sharon they trained the Phalangists, lit up the night sky for the Christian militia to butcher thousands of innocent and defenceless old men, women and children and stood back while it happened. Israel invaded the Lebanon again in July 2006. You can go back to the politics of the last atrocity if you wish, but the Hezbelloah glorified fireworks hadn't killed anyone for 18 months prior to the Israeli invasion.

Also, I simply cannot understand for the life of me how you can justify the bombing of an Iraqi power station - even if so-called Iraqi exiles, paid and pampered by the US say it was destined to produce nuclear weapons - by another country which has itself consistently breached UN resolutions to produce its own nuclear arsenal.

So yes, I very much think Israel is a threat to the stability of the region, in fact, far more so than Iran. More than that, I believe the international response to the disgusting way they have treated the Palestinian people means they represent a threat way beyond the region.

Liam, a little light reading:
http://www.jerusalemites.org/crimes/massacres/1.htm

We'll agree to disagree Bob. We could trade links and I'm sure you'd acknowledge there are attrocities on both sides. I actually accept the idea of Israel as belligerent, provocative and it's own worst enemy at times, certainly not always a force for stability in the region. I just think when you consider they still have neighbours formally committed to its destruction who daily describe them as dogs & vermin etc. you have to put their behaviour in context.

Anyway, it's 21/11 today - isn't there some anniversary that should put you in a good mood...

Bob, I think the bombing of the Osiraq nuclear power station is a justifiable act.
Saddam was a torturer and an interbal/external terrorist sponsored by the state. His state.

I remain baffled why the left of the party wish to associate themselves with someone who was hanged for giving the order to gas his enemies.

Hitler did a few things that were considered good. He built roads and cars that gave everyone a job. He built holiday homes for his people. He gave people hope in a Germany that was hopeless.

He was a mass murderer of children.

Saddam was the same. He had to be stopped by whichever and whatever means. The argument of WMD and nuclear reactors is pretty much division 2 politics.

The premier league demands responsibility. I'm personally quite at ease with myself at actions that led to Saddam and his power being removed.
The left appear to be using that rule to justify their argument.I think the life support machine for that argument is best switched off.

Gary

I remain baffled by these right-wing hawks who wanted to execute Saddam Hussein but who clearly think the mass murderer Arial Sharon should have been propped up by Western regimes.

Actually, I'm not baffled at all. Israel is a US aircraft carrier in the desert which allows them to threaten the oil rich arabs if they get uppity and express the wish to control their own resources. Why wouldn't the British poodles wag their tails and trot along behind their US masters?

Bob, where are you going with this???

Saddam can be likened to some other mass murderer, but Ariel Sharon?!

Sharon is considered a National hero of the Jewish people both in the Military and in politics.

He is not a mass murderer at all and it was a futile attempt by some to link him to the attrocity in the palestinian camps.

He was responsible for security but not for commiting a crime. We can point the finger of hindsight and demands answers but the rest is clearly wrong.

Israel is home for Jews in a Jewish state. We invented it, not the US, they just have a more powerful voice in their pocket.
The West will never let it down and it is yet to be driven into the sea.

You are backing the wrong pony here, Bob.

Gary

Gary, you are a gem, mate... but on this one you are a hypocrite and talking complete crap.
He is not a mass murderer at all and it was a futile attempt by some to link him to the attrocity in the palestinian camps.

The massacres at Sabra and Shatila were investigated by the Kahan Commission, chaired by the President of the Supreme Court, Yitzhak Kahan and its two members who were Supreme Court Judge Aharon Barak, and Major-General Yona Efrat. They concluded that the Israeli forces were deemed indirectly responsible and Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon, was found to be personally responsible and as a consequence Sgharon was dismissed as Defence Minister. In spite of these conclusions the left, even within Israel still claimed the enquiry was a whitewash. In any reasonable country in the World he would have been tried as a war criminal in the same way as Hussein, and your defence of this despicable man just shows how low some people will stoop to bend their moral values.

Apart from a general abhorrence of the death penalty I couldn't give a fig for the life of Saddam Hussein, but for me Sharon's last few years in a persistent vegetative state was over 20 years too late.

What was Sharon's crime, Bob?

No need to be brief with this answer.

Gary

His crime, Gary, was to be the Defense Minister who oversaw the training of the Phalangist Christian Militia who, under a night sky lit up with flares from the Israeli Army entered two Lebanese Palestinian refugee camps and massacred thousands of innocent women, children and old men. Literally shot them down where they stood. It was an atrocity of horrible proportions and made incidents like My Lai look like a stroll in the park.

Sharon was deemed to be personally responsible by the Israeli inquiry and should have been tried for war crimes. In fact there was an attempt by the Belgian Supreme Court to get him tried in Belgium but the United States intervened to prevent it happening.

The Christian Phalangists were in their own Country,the Israeli's were in someone else's Country and Sharon wasn't there and you condemn him?

Doesn't sound reasonable at all.

Gary

Sharon wasn't there....

Ah well, that excuses Hitler for Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, France Belgium, etc, etc.

Gary, sometimes you do talk bloody rubbish. He was held personally responsible by the Kahan Commission, now I realise they weren't meeting in Stoke, but give them some credit will you?

You are just an apologist for everything this nasty Zionist thug stands for.