Guardian urges Jewish state to make amends for Muslim-Christian cartoon furore

It was Saddam Hussein who initially, and very successfully, used the strategy of linkage to counter universal hostility to his invasion of Kuwait by gratuitously insisting that any question of withdrawal on Iraq's part had to be linked to Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.

Today we have a leader in The Guardian calling for Israel to take responsibility for settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in order to defuse what it calls "high tension between the western and Muslim worlds over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed".

It is an awful irony that Israel complained for years that it had no "partner" for negotiations, when, if it had built less settlements (these grew by 9% in the year to mid-2005), it might - just - have done a deal with Yasser Arafat. At a time of high tension between the western and Muslim worlds over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad - one inflammatory response has been a call for jihad against Israel - cool heads and an attempt to de-escalate would be helpful. Of the many issues where these worlds come into conflict, the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians would be a good place - though not the easiest - to make a start.

Whilst helpfully pointing out that "one inflammatory response has been a call for jihad against Israel", the Guardian doesn't feel the need to present this as not just inflammatory, but completely gratuitous and irrational. It doesn't feel the need to point out that the "high tension" is actually a highly organized series of increasingly threatening, vandalistic and even lethal demonstrations and state actions by what are arguably unrepresentative groups of Muslims. They are responding to the publication of cartoons by a Christian cartoonist in a newspaper in a Christian country which does not control the contents of its newspapers. There is no shortage of Muslim bloggers who, while finding the cartoons offensive, have exposed and condemned what they see as opportunist and manufactured rage by unrepresentative groups of extremist Islamists and allied states with agendas.

So if they don't see any need to link this to any issue about Israel, and only Iran and the most extremist Islamist groups do, why does the Guardian feel it needs to do so?

What has all this to do with the state of Israel?

HAT TIP: IT

Comments

[Martin Morgan]

Sadly, The Guardian is too busy publishing Chris McGreal's latest comparisons of Israel to South Africa and, Heaven help us, Nazi Germany to think this one through.

[Jk]

Do they think things through? It's the first I've ever heard of it.