The Guardian's loose grip on reality

I missed it, but Comment is free watch picked up on the editorial in The Guardian of 4 September (actually, The Observer: The Guardian on Sunday plus sanity in the shape of Nick Cohen), which can be found here.Among the gems it offered is the following:

In offering regret and compensation but refusing to apologise, Binyamin Netanyahu's government made a conscious decision: once again Israel chose a tactical victory over a strategic relationship.

In saying this this, The Guardian demonstrates that its biases are greater than its understanding of international politics (oh, how are the mighty fallen). Actually, Netanyahu, who is far from my favourite Israeli politician, showed that he he understands perfectly that Israel is a sovereign state and actually has interests that might just be more important to it than satisfying The Guardian's prejudices. The leader writer also showed that s/he has no understanding of what the terms strategy and tactics actually mean: I would argue that the Israeli government took a strategic decision - not grovelling to a foreign state, especially one making ludicrous demands) would make it stronger, not weaker.

Then we have this:

The Palmer panel's finding went against every statement the UN secretary general has made about Gaza, the Goldstone report and a report by the UN human rights council in September. If, as Palmer found, the siege is legal in international law, the occupation is too. This must be challenged in court.

Given the composition of the UN Human Rights Council, for The Guardian to take its pronouncements seriously is a sick joke. And the leader writer has clearly either not read, not understood or prefers to ignore Judge Goldstone's second thoughts on certain aspects of his report. We can only guess which of these it is. As for the end of that quote, from "...the occupation..." to "...challenged in court", well, I'll leave the last word on that to CiF Watch.

I wonder who wrote the editorial. Seamus Milne, perhaps. It would be consistent of him.

Contributed by Brian Goldfarb.