Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

It is only months since the Guardian’s front page was turned into a conduit for Pentagon propaganda, leading to widespread condemnation. Here it is now inflicting another load of tosh on its unsuspecting readers: a piece celebrating the latest Israeli aggression against Syria. Bylined once again by pipsqueak scrivener Simon “Officials Say” Tisdall, it tells us Israel’s ‘real-time targets are, potentially, Iran’s nuclear, military and command facilities. And Israel, no longer content with trial runs up and down the Mediterranean, just demonstrated how easily it could hit them.’

So here we have a senior journalist for a liberal UK daily taking a whole article to speculate why Syria may or may not have been bombed by Israel without at any point addressing the more relevant question: does Israel have a right to take unilateral decisions to bomb other countries at will? Imagine for a second how the same news story would read, if lets say Iran were to make a similar demonstration of ‘how easily it could hit them’. Would Tisdall write an article speculating whether its Israel’s treatment of Palestinians that made Iran do it, or was it the belligerent rhetoric of its leaders? Was it its known arsenal of nuclear weapons, or was it its supply of weapons to the extremist settlers in the West Bank?

Update: ‘Officials Say’ Tisdall is back on the Comments pages of the Guardian, this time lamenting why US-Israeli threats against Iran have not been acknowledged with display of appropriate terror in Iran. He offers gems such as, ‘Britain’s sober view that Mr Kouchner had merely stated the obvious appears to have been dismissed, too.’ For one who feels there could be multiple justifications for Israel bombing another country, it must certainly be ‘obvious’ that there should be a war against Iran, as its leaders seem to have failed to show due deference to rattling US-Israeli sabers.