Free Republic

Dear Prime Minister, I was interested to read that, when you met Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, you said: ‘Britain is a good friend of Israel and our support for Israel and Israel's security is something I have described in the past, and will do so again, as unshakeable.’ I wonder, therefore, if you make a habit of threatening your friends? For you also said that unless Israel ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ with the Palestinian Authority, the more likely it is that Britain will endorse the ‘State of Palestine’ for which the PA is expected...

Suddenly, a far-away country about which most of us know little has shot to the very forefront of our minds and consciences. In a new century already steeped in horror, what happened at the Russian school in Beslan plumbs new depths of barbarity. The carefully planned slaughter of hundreds of children, a massacre of innocents mown down inside their school by zealots who bayoneted one when he asked for water and who blew others up or shot them in cold blood, is a monstrosity which has had a profound effect upon those who watched in horror as the tragedy unfolded....