One would have expected The Guardian, which indeed reported on the nonbinding resolution passed in early March by the U.S. House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee recognizing and condemning the Armenian genocide, to be all over this story.  It certainly was incensed at Downing Street's sheepish reaction to theft of UK passports in the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, widely assumed to have been carried out by Mossad, and now the cause of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband's expulsion of Israel's Mossad representative at the Israeli embassy in London. Britain may not have a large Armenian diaspora but it has got a large and vocal Kurdish one, and the Kurds, too, have had their difficulties as an ethnic minority in Turkey. Also, is Turkey not a Nato ally and a perennial candidate for admittance to the European Union?

Although The Guardian did address Erodgan's provocation in one online article, its print edition was conspicuously silent in both the news and editorial sections. (Comment was absent at Comment is Free.) The Independent didn't even bother with a digital write-up. Contrast this blackout to the conservative London Times' lead coverage in its International section, on March 18, along with a lead editorial rightly reprimanding Erdogan. The centre-right Daily Telegraph's also give his remarks prominent news coverage. Even the BBC, which broke the story on March 17 by simply recording what the Turkish premier said, neglected to make mention of it on the Six or Ten O'Clock News broadcasts the same day.

If Erdogan wanted to attract more English attention, he might have threatened to build apartments in Armenian neighborhoods in Turkey instead of threatening to repatriate their inhabitants.  In stark contrast to their indifference his actual remarks received, The Guardian and The Independent newspapers have exhaustively reported the latest diplomatic row between the United States and Israel.  To recap: Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to the holy land two weeks ago coincided with Israel's announced construction plan for 1,600 new apartment units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood of east Jerusalem.  He was embarrassed, "condemned" the announcement, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was given a 45-minute telephonic harangue by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had previously described his partial 10-month settlement "freeze" in the West Bank-which the Ramat Shlomo building permits did not violate-as  "unprecedented."

The Jewish housing initiative heard round the world was concocted by Shas, a right-wing religious nationalist party in charge of Israel's Interior Ministry, and apparently caught Netanyahu by surprise.  The Independent dispatched their correspondent Donald Macinytre to Ramat Shlomo to interview settlers who claimed the land was given to them by God and the Obama is an anti-Semite. The Guardian reporter Ewan MacAskill, termed the U.S.-Israeli fracas the "worst crisis between the two countries for more than three decades." 

Chris McGeal, the Guardian's former Middle East correspondent, went further in an opinion piece in Comment is Free, arguing that the dispute effectively scuttled the U.S.-Israeli relationship and "repositioned" the Netanyahu government "from valuable US ally in the war on terror to where it really belongs - as the primary obstacle to peace." The Independent's guest columnist Avi Shlaim believes that Israel is on its way to becoming a "pariah state" and that all of the $2 billion a year in U.S. military aid to the country should be abrogated until further notice: "Israelis are not renowned for their good manners," Shlaim opened in his March 21 essay, "but their treatment of Vice-President Joe Biden during his recent visit to their country went beyond chutzpah."  Unmentioned here is that the top recipient of annual U.S. military largess, Afghanistan, has a government partly controlled by a messianic fringe group even more reactionary than Shas. It's called the Taliban.