Mailman

From what I understand (Radio 4’s PM news - hardly the best source), Western intelligence agencies had had strong suspicions about this plant for some time. The only reason the affair now has come to light is because Ahmadinejad discovered that Iran had been rumbled and decided to get in his shots first. If that is so then Obama has betrayed Israel in the worst possible way. Perhaps he really is The Manchurian Candidate, or maybe he is just unspeakably vile.

Given that he was already in the know, I suppose these revelations, or at least the knowledge that the suspicions had been supplanted by actual facts, explain the enormous confidence displayed by Netanyahu at the UN as well as his bravura and Churchillian rhetoric. “You see, we the despised Jews have been right all along,” he told the world,”an anti-Semitic madman is about to obtain nuclear weapons which he will use to kill us and then you.” I suppose he must have been feeling the same kind of satisfaction Churchill and his small band of friends, those Tory MPs who had supported him through thick and through thin, must have felt when his long days in the wilderness had come to an end and he entered the House of Commons as Prime Minister in May 1940 to give his “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech. Is it not ironic that Benjamin Netanyahu too also heads a small nation that has been largely abandoned by a pusillanimous world and must face the threat of destruction by an evil regime alone? Is it Israel’s destiny, like Britain’s, to save not only herself but that very same cowardly world?

Incidentally, Churchill when he entered the chamber on that day in May 1940 was greeted by almost total silence from the Tory benches for they still saw him as a traitor to their cause. However, when Churchill left the chamber after the speech it was to great cheers from all sides of the House. On hearing this, Churchill turned to a colleague (either Richard Law or Leo Amery, I forget) and told him “That got the b******s, didn’t it?” Even if he didn’t actually articulate the sentiments, I hope that Netanyahu had similar feelings yesterday despite the absence of actual cheers on this occasion.