But just like the majority of American Jews, getting on for 80 per cent of whom voted for Obama, he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President. For most American Jews, the horror of even entertaining the hypothetical possibility that they might ever in a million years have to vote for a Republican is so great they simply cannot see what is staring them in the face -- that this Democratic President is lethal for both Israel and the free world. And in this article Dershowitz shows that he too is just as blind.

Acknowledging the anxiety among some American Jews about Obama’s attitude to Israel, Dershowitz concludes uneasily that there isn’t really a problem here because all Obama is]]> 2009-07-02T23:55:43+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3735966/pull-the-other-one-its-got-bells-on-it.thtml
The Washington Post reports that newly released (redacted) transcripts of the FBI interrogation of Saddam Hussein in prison reveal that he said he had allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran.

Hussein’s fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. ...‘The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors,’ Piro wrote. ‘Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.’

Ah huh. So let’s get this clear. Saddam was so terrified by Iran, so worried by the threat it posed to Iraq and so convinced that no other country in the region could stand up to it, that he destroyed his own weapons programmes.

Logical!

As has become traditional with this Government - and contrary to the Commons Conventions and Courtesies - neither Brown nor Balls notified me of their visit. I found out from the Local Education Authority. When I arrived at the school 10 minutes early, waiting for me was a Ms Izzet from Ed Balls's office, who loudly announced, in front of an ITN camera crew, that I was ‘not invited’. This was a new first - not only

Well as far as I can see it has not stopped. Yes, there’s been a crackdown and the enormous demonstrations have stopped. But it]]> 2009-06-30T10:00:42+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3723006/quis-custodiet-ipsum-custodem.thtml
Peter Preston, sometime editor of the Guardian (and my own editor there for some 16 years) now writes about the media for the Observer (owned by the Guardian). Unfortunately, he no longer appears to grasp what he himself has written, let alone the journalists he writes about. In today’s column he writes that I (amongst others) wrongly predicted that Ann Widdecombe would be elected Speaker of the Commons:

If political correspondents (and editorial writers) want to play tipster, maybe you should judge them by Ascot’s standards. So who got the young stallion that the Mail now calls ‘Mr Squeaker Bercow’ right? Not Melanie Phillips in the Mail itself. She napped Widdecombe Fair, who was also the Times’s ‘temporary solution’. The Guardian wanted, but didn’t quite get, Sir George Young. Wherever odds were set and quoted - pretty well everywhere - Margaret Beckett was clear favourite. You know what they’d say at Ascot as they ripped up their tickets in fury. How could so many experts get it so wrong? But this is politics, and, strangely, we don't even pause to wonder why they missed the winner.

But]]> 2009-06-28T19:17:32+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3720586/the-third-stage-for-iranian-totalitarianism.thtml
Various people have been pointing out, as if they have only just realised it, that the leader of the Iranian revolt, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is one of the architects of the 1979 revolution that brought Khomeini to power and is thus a Khomeinist and not much of a reformer at all. They therefore conclude – just like Obama – that there’s nothing to choose between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad and so no-one should support the people on the streets. Some also say that it’s better that Ahmadinejad remains in power so that the full impact of the deranged and menacing nature of the regime is not obscured by a ‘reformer’ who would present a more emollient face to the world but would continue to prosecute the jihad with equal vigour.

There would indeed be a lot in that last argument – if the presence of the deranged Ahmadinejad was making world leaders get tough with Iran. But au contraire – as we can all see, the only effect of this patently extreme extremist has been to make world leaders grovel gibberingly before him; and the more extreme and terrifying he becomes,]]> 2009-06-26T19:37:32+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3718026/on-the-wrong-side-of-history.thtml
The official death toll is still being generally given as 17, but it would seem that dozens may have been killed in the awful crackdown in Iran. CNN has received unconfirmed reports of 150 deaths. It has also been reported that 70 professors have disappeared. Yesterday, it appears the demonstrators were clubbed down in Tehran’s Baharestan Square by security thugs carrying knives and batons. Opposition activists and international journalists are being rounded up. See this CNN article, and  this, and this graphic account with footage on Revolutionary Road. See also this story in today’s Guardian about the appalling treatment meted out to the grieving family of Neda Agha Soltan, whose bloodied face after she was killed earlier this week has become an iconic image of these protests; her family have been forced out of their house, the police did not hand her body back to them, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques.

This is the regime before which Obama has been grovelling. We have learned from the Washington Times (whose]]> 2009-06-25T15:25:56+01:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3717271/so-wheres-the-boycott-call.thtml
Another essential piece by the indispensable Khaled abu Toameh reveals how the Palestinians are committing ‘massive’ abuses of human rights and intimidation of journalists seeking to investigate those abuses – behaviour which is being totally ignored by western media who hang the Israelis out to dry on any pretext. He reports how a Palestinian TV crew was stopped recently at a Palestinian checkpoint in the West Bank – yes, you read that right – where Palestinian soldiers confiscated and erased their tape. The crew had been preparing a report on the death of a detainee at the Palestinian Authority detention center in Hebron that might have been the result of torture. He writes:

One can only imagine the international media's reaction had the TV crew been detained by Israeli security forces. Anti-Israel groups and individuals would have cited the incident as further proof of the ‘occupation’s brutal measures’ against the freedom of the media. Moreover, it is highly likely that Israeli human rights organizations like Betselem would have dispatched researchers to the field to investigate the incident had IDF soldiers been involved.

 Yet foreign journalists and human rights

The Iran expert Michael Ledeen says he has no idea what’s going to happen. But there are signs that the regime is preparing for an all-out assault; and that they are panicking and the ayatollahs are at odds amongst themselves; and that, most interestingly of all, this:

...that there are cracks in the regime’s edifice, ranging from declarations of small groups of Revolutionary Guards calling on their brothers to defect to “the people,” to a phenomenon that is just beginning to be discussed here and there, mostly on the Net but originally in an Arab newspaper.  Steve Schippert posted on it and did a first-class analysis.  Steve starts with a report from al Arabiya that says senior ayatollahs have been meeting secretly in Qom to discuss significant changes in the structure of the Iranian state.  In addition to the Iranian clerics, there was a foreigner:  Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq.

If this is true, it is,

There is a good reason why the ayatollah bashed Britain with such singular ferocity, and it is to do with the Iranians’ changing view of America. We have been co-opted to play the role of Great Satan, because America is now led by Barack Obama, or Barack Hussein Obama, as Fox News always calls him, and it is obvious that the mullahs don’t know quite how to handle him.

Obama’s intelligent speech in Cairo has had a big impact in the Muslim world, and it is obvious that it is his presence in the White House -- far more than any BBC broadcast -- that is giving hope to the demonstrators in Tehran... Barack Obama has shown the Iranian bourgeoisie that America is willing to engage, to treat their country with respect, and it is that sudden hope - of a new]]> 2009-06-22T10:36:02+01:00