From the country that gave you opposition to the Egypt-Israel peace agreement of 1979 in deference to the prejudices of the Arab League, the BBC is reporting today that France has called for the removal of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. According to the BBC, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at their meeting in Paris recently that, “You need to get rid of this man… You need to remove him from this position.”

The BBC report noted that Arab leaders call Lieberman a “racist” and that, “He has also been a staunch defender of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, where he has a private residence.”

The latter point is a typical BBC half-truth. Lieberman has indeed defended settlements in the West Bank and he does indeed live in one himself. However, he has also said that, in the interests of peace, settlements could be dismantled including the one in which he lives. Those little details alter the picture painted by the BBC quite considerably, don’t they?

But the more important point concerns the broader thrust of the report. Who precisely does Nicolas Sarkozy think he is telling the leader of a democratic state who he can and cannot have in his cabinet?

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Today’s Guardian editorial on the Israel-Palestine conflict provides yet more evidence of the failure of Britain’s political-cultural establishment to understand the real root causes of the conflict in the Middle East. Indeed, in specifically rejecting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for Palestinians and Arab states to recognise Israel as a Jewish state it merely endorses the root cause at the heart of that conflict and shows up its real anti-Zionist agenda. Everything, in the worldview of the Guardian, comes down to the settlements and whether the Israelis can be made to yield to the Obama administration’s call for a permanent freeze followed (The Guardian would add) by dismantlement.

Now, everyone recognises that the settlements are an important issue. Israel’s own Supreme Court has ruled against dozens of outposts in the West Bank which it says are illegal. The point is, however, that wherever one stands on settlements a rounded appreciation of the history and current realities of the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot but see this as a second order rather than a first order problem. There were no settlements anywhere before 1967. Following Israeli withdrawals, there are no settlements now in Gaza or the Sinai.

Israel’s legitimacy was not accepted prior to 1967. Dismantlement of settlements in Gaza in 2005 did nothing to enhance Israel’s legitimacy among Palestinians, Arabs and the wider Muslim world. True, withdrawal from the Sinai in 1982 did form part of a peace agreement with Egypt but that peace agreement did nothing to improve Israel’s legitimacy among the Egyptian population as opinion polls show and the anti-Semitic Egyptian media demonstrates on a daily basis.

It is only when Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims renounce anti-Semitism and accept Israel as the world’s only Jewish state — just as the world accepts dozens of Muslim and Christian states — that a solidly grounded peace in the region can be achieved. The Guardian, however, validates the Arab, Muslim and Palestinian bigotry which has always made peace impossible:

“…asking the Arabs for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state moves the bar up from simple recognition of Israel in the full knowledge that this would be a rhetorical step too far for Palestinians and represent a demotion of the status of Israeli Arabs.”

The pseudo defence that such a move would represent a “demotion of the status of Israeli Arabs” needs to be exposed for what it is.

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The future of  European democracy is not a subject that attracts much discussion these days. Like most of the other big issues of the day confronting Europe — the rise of Islam, the looming demographic catastrophe, the return of anti-Semitism, the general descent into political, cultural and moral relativism — it has been rendered all but undiscussable by a political-cultural class mired in denial about the continent’s real problems.

What is also interesting is the manner in which the denial expresses itself. Certain techniques are regularly employed to smother discussion and prevent clear thought. It is important to be able to recognise them.

Peter Preston — former editor of the Guardian — on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website unwittingly offers up a one stop shop illustrating the mindset we are dealing with. With the obligatory passing reference to the EU as “an affront to direct democracy in too many ways” he then launches into the familiar cliches and insults to stop serious discussion in its tracks. Eurosceptics in Britian are portrayed as “foaming on about federal plots”. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which beat the Labour Party into third place at the European elections, is “a panto out of season”.

Thus it is that the issue of European democracy is turned into a non-issue: something for the crazy poeple to rant about while right thinking members of society get on with the business of… well not thinking about anything at all.  But that is not the worst of it. Preston then gets nasty:

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Robert Kagan — rightly described by the Economist last November as one of America’s cleverest foreign policy analysts — writes a superbly thought provoking piece about the dilemmas faced by Barack Obama over Iran. Many of us have been surprised, not to say shocked, about how muted Obama has been in recent days: no clear statements of support for the democratic opposition; little more than low key diplomatic calls for calm and an avoidance of violence.

Of course, supporters of the administration have argued that vocal support for the demonstrators could backfire by giving the regime precisely the excuse it needs to portray its opponents as agents of “imperialism”. Since they are doing that anyway, however, the argument seems specious. America should be galvanising international condemnation of a regime which has shown itself contemptuous of basic democratic principles. In more than 30 electoral districts turnout was greater than 100 percent of eligible voters!

Kagan provides an analysis of Obama’s real motivations here, placing his strategy inside the broader picture of a grand debate between realism and idealism in US foreign policy making. Obama, he says, is unlikely to be happy about the demonstrations in Iran. He may not wish the demonstrators well.

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The unfolding events in Iran are dramatic. The decision by the ruling “Guardian Council” to allow a recount in some disputed areas will not be enough to satisfy oppositionists who want a full revote. Nonetheless, it is a tacit admission that serious fraud did in fact take place in the elections and, much more significantly, that the regime has been shaken by the massive and unprecedented wave of protests.

But, and it is a big “but”, we need to keep our eye on the ball. The mullahs who rule Iran retain their hostility to the West in general and to Israel in particular (see entries below). They are extreme anti-Semites and they despise liberal-democratic values. They remain determined to acquire nuclear weapons and to support terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Unless, therefore, there is complete regime change — an end to the Islamic Republic and its replacement with a genuine liberal-democracy — the West must not be naive. Mirhossein Mousavi was prime minister of Iran during the war with Iraq. He is certainly a less firey figure than Ahmadinejad, but he is no Western liberal.

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