The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

A Widespread Recognition By Pretty Well Everybody

The Secretary for the Rest of the World (our affairs in Europe having been relegated to exceeding the capacities of Geoff Hoon) has suffered a mild attack of back-bench vertebratism over what the Guardian calls "Israeli military action in the Middle East". The words "attack on Lebanon" have got thorns, apparently.

Margaret Beckett (for it was she) had earlier suffered "the discomfort of standing next to the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit", who was inconsiderate enough to call for an immediate cease-fire on both sides and to state that any release of hostages by Hizbullah would have to take place in the context of such a cease-fire. Beckett then trotted off to the Commons and accused Hizbullah of a "calculated attempt" to destabilise the whole darned milk-and-honey region, despite having said beforehand that there was common ground between Britain and Egypt. Perhaps she was referring to our mutual memories of the Suez crisis.

Anyway, Beckett informed the newly-backboned ones that Britain had urged the Righteous State to exercise "restraint" and had cautioned it to "take every care" to avoid civilian casualties. Doubtless, were it not for Britain's cautionary urgings, civilian casualties would be even higher than they are now; otherwise I am sure we would be hearing more about the consequences for Israel of failing to bow to the will of the international community.

The international community in this instance consists, according to Beckett, of "everybody", or on second thoughts "pretty well everybody", or those who have succumbed to the "widespread recognition" that the Middle East is being destabilised because of "a wanton act of destruction on the part of Hizbullah". Presumably, we can take such phrases to be working definitions of the "international community" as generally understood these days; namely the governments of Britain, the United States, Israel and a few other legal luminaries like the Dominican Republic.

Beckett further demonstrated the Government's fervent membership of said community by condemning Iran and Syria for their "interference" in backing Hizbullah. Luckily, nobody was boorish enough to drag Iraq into the discussion, or she might have ended up looking a bit of a fool.

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