Perhaps it has something to do with its craving for an ever wider readership. As it has doubled its audience in little more than a decade (to more than 1.6 million weekly sales), the temptation to fall into line with the default assumptions that that audience could reasonably be expected to hold may have been too great to resist. Or perhaps it is simply that, like so many other institutions associated with the British political intelligentsia, it has surrendered to the politically correct orthodoxies that now run riot through the country’s foreign policy establishment.

Either way, the Economist isn’t what it used to be. Flat, dull, lazy and predictable, a once great institution is now little better than a receptacle for every received wisdom in the book.

There was a sense of dreary inevitability, therefore, about this week’s leader column (the most commented article on the Economist website) urging President Obama to impose a peace agreement from above lest the hapless Israelis manoeuvre the region into yet another war with their (largely guiltless) neighbours. The key points in the article are as follows:

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It will be interesting to observe the international response following last night’s slaughter of at least 21 Christians by Islamists outside a Church in Alexandria, Egypt. If it had been the other way around (heaven forfend that it had been carried out by Jews) there would have been mass protests around the world, condemnations from leading politicians and, given that this comes on the heels of other such massacres, could well have ended up with a resolution at the United Nations.

But don’t hold your breath. The politically correct multi-culturalism that holds sway across Europe and increasing sections of the United States (I hardly need mention the UN) dictates that we must always beware of enflaming Muslim sensitivities. The great diversionary spectre of “Islamophobia” silences all that go before it.

But last night’s bomb attack in Egypt is no isolated event. During a Christmas Day mass in the Philippines 11 were injured in a bombing in a Christian chapel. Also in December 38 Christians were slaughtered by Muslim extremists in Nigeria, a country where church burnings are starting to become commonplace. In Iraq last Autumn 68 Christians were massacred in the Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad by a group threatening that Christians will be “exterminated”. Across the Middle East, Christians increasingly live in fear of their Muslim neighbours, and the region’s Christian population is diminishing fast. So at what point does a series of “isolated events” start to form a pattern?

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Earlier this week, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel, announced that it had identified four million of the six million victims of the Holocaust. The project to discover the names of all of those who were murdered is a profound and moving testament to the Jewish people’s commitment that the victims of the greatest single crime in history should never be forgotten. When Yad Vashem makes announcements of this kind, all decent men and women pause, reflect and bow their heads.

But the world we live in is not solely comprised of decent men and women. Here is a selection of comments representative of a disturbingly large proportion of the 443 entries posted by readers following the publication of a news report on the Yad Vashem announcement by Yahoo, the world’s second most popular search engine and internet portal after Google:

“What about the 50,000 + Palestinians that have been murdered since 1948 by the Nazi A.K.A Zionists?” (By AK)

“What about the Armenians? I saw worst pictures of them being slaughtered than I did of the Jews.” (By Flour)

“What about those who were not Jews? Do they deserve to be counted? Do the even count?” (By Native)

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In a remarkable story in the Jerusalem Post today, a top German computer expert says that a hyper-advanced computer virus, widely assumed to have been developed by Israel, has set back Iran’s nuclear programme by two years. Speaking in reference to the Stuxnet virus, German cyber security expert Ralf Langer said: “This was nearly as effective as a military strike, but even better since there are no fatalities and no full-blown war. From a military perspective, this was a huge success.”

The Stuxnet virus is said to be the first of its kind in that it can get inside computer systems, reprogramme them and then remain undetected before irreparable damage to both the computer and equipment connected to it has been done. According to the Post, Langer said Iran would simply have to throw away any computer system affected by what he was quoted as describing as the most “advanced and aggressive malware in history.”

When news broke last month that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it believed Iran had had to suspend its nuclear programme due to computer problems there were fears that this may be nothing more than UN-led complacency about the Islamic republic’s intentions to go nuclear. Since then, however, numerous experts have suggested that cyber warfare techniques employed by Israel, possibly in conjunction with the United States, may well have done serious and lasting harm.

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Hard on the heels of a comprehensive opinion surveyshowing that most Palestinians support a two-state solution only as a stepping stone to a one state solution after Israel has been destroyed, and of a Palestinian Authority report denying any Jewish connection to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, we now have the third emphatic statement of Palestinian rejection of peace and its pre-requisites in under two weeks, this time from the Fatah Revolutionary Council.

Yesterday, the Council stated its implacable opposition to recognising Israel as a Jewish state, as well as to a peace agreement involving land swaps. The first issue is critical; the second important. If Palestinians will not recognise Israel as a Jewish state the conflict cannot come to an end since, as the afore mentioned opinion polls show, Palestinian society will only view any agreement as a temporary measure until the conflict can be resumed on more fabourable terms at a later date. If they reject a priori the possibility of land swaps they are effectively saying there is nothing to talk about on border questions, in which case what is the point of negotiations in the first place?

The Jerusalem Post quoted an Israeli government official as saying the following in response to the Fatah announcement: “I would ask the Palestinians the following question: If the Jewish state is fundamentally illegitimate in your eyes, what sort of peace are you offering us? “It is clear that their refusal to recognize the Jewish state’s legitimacy is the true obstacle to peace and reconciliation.” Indeed so. It is crystal clear. But only to those people who are aware of the facts. So let’s have a look at how these vitally important pieces of information have been reported on by the BBC.

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