All very well, but when all arabs have the democratic freedom to vote in islamic theocracies, and a muslim caliphate is established throughout the Middle East, and the nuclear missiles are pointed at the infidels by people only too happy to die for the jihad, what then?

"Only last month, Anna Wintour, a fashion magazine editor who could be a tenured LSE professor...". Nick Cohen this is a slightly easy and insulting joke -if indeed you intended to laugh about it. Speaking as a postgraduate student at the LSE, being taught by extraordinary and -I can assure you- perfectly honourable professors who were never involved with neither Saif Gaddafi nor the Lybian regime, I find this remark irrelevant and perfectly useless. Anna Wintour. Really Nick.

Please permit me to offer a brief reply to Mr. Townson's email as it relates to the Goldstone Report. The report's capstone conclusion was its finding that Israel had, as a matter of policy, deliberately targeted civilians and infrastructure. That is how the report was portrayed to the world and more importantly used by certain groups, even though Justice Goldstone himself later cautioned that the report was not a judicial inquiry nor was anything in it to be taken as proven. Taking the findings of the Davis Commission into account, Justice Goldstone has now concluded that there was no such Israeli policy. With that capstone removed, the balance of report crumbles into a series of allegations of misconduct by individual soldiers at least 400 of which are being investigated by the IDF (compared with 0 by Hamas). Justice Goldstone has also confirmed several other things: that Hamas' rocket firing in the general direction of civilian targets is, in all instances, a war crime and has spoken about the UNHRC's anti-Israel bias. Mr. Townson for some reason, sees fit to repeat casualty figures that not even Hamas supports. In fact, Justice Goldstone picked up on Hamas' admission a couple of months ago that its combat casualties were almost identical to those long-reported (but ignored) by the IDF. As a personal note, I find it a cheap rhetorical stunt to use casualty figures as if they were some sporting result (1,400 v. a dozen, though both Hamas and Israel seem to agree that the total was around 1,100 Gazans) to "prove" that somehow the party with the fewer casualties was the aggressor. Flogging the words "women and children" as if neither could ever be a combatant, is also not an argument where, sadly, Hamas has shown little compunction in where it gets its cannon fodder. Of course, the ratio of combatant to civilian killed in what is described as one of the most densely inhabited sections of the planet is, to the contrary, a remarkable statistic - better than NATO in Afghanistan or Iraq. And it is that population density which puts the lie to any claim that Israel has a genocidal policy against the Palestinians. If it wanted to kill as many as possible, the numbers from Cast Lead would establish extreme incompetence when all it needed to do was follow the Russian precedent in Grozhny and flatten the cities and camps. The take-away, politics aside, is that Israel's conduct is in compliance with expected norms of behavior in war and Hamas' are not. This is not news to any fair minded individual.

Yes but the most telling words of the line are "in Tripoli". Could never say that about Nick.

@Barry Larking, Jeff Bracey, Mark Noonan, Rob Crawford. Thanks for responding to the points I made regarding Operation Cast Lead. For clarity here are a few more points to consider. Please see the attached article below by MJ Rosenberg regarding the Goldstone report and OCL. GOLDSTONE REPORT Goldstone revised only one of his original findings, saying that Israel did not intentionally kill hundreds of civilians [EPA] Defenders of Israel's Gaza onslaught of 2008-9 can barely contain their joy. In a Washington Post op-ed on Friday, Judge Richard Goldstone offered some second thoughts about it that softened his earlier criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza as "war crimes". In fact, Goldstone altered only one of his original findings. He now says that he has concluded that the Israeli Defense Forces did not intentionally target civilians during attacks in which 1,400 Palestinians died, of whom half were civilians and 400 were children. Rather they were collateral damage, not the intended targets but people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And this "exoneration" of Israel's behaviour has Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their defenders in Israel and the United States crazily dancing in the end zone. You see, they shout, Goldstone lied all along. We didn't kill all these people on purpose. Hooray for us. These celebrations tell us infinitely more about the Israeli government and its cutouts here than Goldstone's column does about what happened in Gaza. Imagine if the United States government was forced to admit that it killed hundreds of innocent people in a few days and that hundreds of that number were kids. Does anyone imagine that our government would pat itself on the back because the killings were deemed unintentional? No doubt, many many innocent people have been killed at American hands just as at Israel's in Gaza. But it is hard to recall American officials saying that the discovery that the deaths were unintentional exonerated us. As for victory laps such as those being taken by Netanyahu and Barak, they wouldn't happen here. The only way Goldstone could really exonerate Israel would be to prove that the hundreds of non-combatant dead, including all those kids, were, in fact, not civilians at all. He would have to prove that they were fighters who were killed while engaged in battle with Israel. But not even the Israelis claim that. No, the civilian dead were indeed civilians and they are still dead. They are dead because the Israeli government made the decision that taking care not to kill innocents would put more Israeli soldiers in harms way. Elections were coming and the Israeli government felt that the Israeli public would not tolerate a war that took more than few soldiers' lives. So the army would bombard targets from afar; if civilians were killed, so what. The strategy worked. While 1,432 Palestinians were killed, only a dozen Israelis were. That was a ratio that did not hurt any politician's political standing, being almost unprecedented in the history of warfare. (Actually, it suggests that the Gaza was not a war at all, but rather an attack by a powerful army against powerless militants.) The jubilation over Goldstone's minor edit is also misplaced because the strong opposition felt in most quarters to the Gaza onslaught had nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not the killings of civilians were intentional but that they took place at all. Even if it could be proven that the United Nations school was destroyed by accident, what difference would it make? It was destroyed. Would Israel exonerate Hamas if it, by accident, hit an Israeli hospital when its target was a nearby army base. It is a distinction without a difference and only the morally bankrupt would point to it with pride. Furthermore, opponents of the Gaza war were outraged by Israel's actions in Gaza right from the start not following publication of the Goldstone report. The outrage was produced when it became clear that Israel was not exercising its legitimate right to defend itself against rocket fire from Gaza by targeting the people launching the missiles but by targeting the whole Gazan population. Additionally the whole war was unnecessary. A cease-fire between Hamas and Israel had been in effect for the six months leading up to Israel's decision to invade. Why did it end? This comes from US News, a newsweekly owned by Mortimer Zuckerman, one of the Israeli government's leading defenders in the United States. (He is the former president of the Conference of Presidents Of Major Jewish Organizations.) "Why now? Two reasons: the expiration of the Israeli-Gazan cease-fire on December 19 and the Israeli national election coming up on February 10. The six-month cease-fire started coming apart at the beginning of November after Israeli commandos killed a team of Hamas fighters during a raid on a tunnel they suspected was being dug for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. That raid set off more Palestinian rocketing which prompted further Israeli attacks. All this prompted Hamas to declare that it wouldn't extend the cease-fire unless Israel lifted it's punishing siege of the Gaza Strip, which was imposed after the militant group Hamas was elected to power nearly three years ago." US News has it exactly right. The ceasefire ended because Israel decided to end it. And then when the rockets started falling, Israel had the pretext it wanted to attack. None of this is surprising, Israeli leaders have never been shy about saying that their goal is not merely ending mortar attacks from Gaza but eliminating the Hamas government (elected, incidentally, in a democratic election forced on the Palestinians by the United States). The bottom line is that Goldstone's edit doesn't matter except to those who defended and still defend this indefensible war. The damage done to Israel's reputation is indelible. But that is insignificant when compared to the life-long damage inflicted on all those who lost loved ones in the monstrous Gaza war. MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network. BLOOD LIBEL I also must say something about the accusations of a 'blood libel' from me against the actions of the IDF. In its original form the blood libel was a deliberate lie designed to foment violence against and the persectution of Jews who were accused of murdering Christian children and using their blood in sacrificial religous rituals and ceremonies. As a persecuted minority group the Jews of medieval Europe were subjected to periodic pogroms including torture and burning at the stake. In contrast to this, Israel is a modern nation state with a massive army and an independent citizenry with full democratic rights. Israelis are not a persecuted minority group and are fully able to defend themsleves against adversity. By contrast the Palestininad have no state, no army and no status as citizens. I am sorry this comment is long but I also have to say something about the Iraq War which you have also taken me to task for. THE IRAQ WAR George Dubya and the Messianic Saint Blair did not get rid of Sadam Hussain for altruistic reasons (to free the people of Iraq). Their reasons were ones of anger, geopolitics, economic theft and ideology as follows: 1. Revenge for the mass murder of 9/11 by Islamist fanatics. 2. To further promote the 21st century as the 'American Century'. 3. To establish 'full spectrum dominance' globally through the building of American military bases. 4. To export the virtues of liberal democracy, free trade and neo-liberal economics. 5. To demonstrate the moral superiority of the West over the rest. To bring all this about George Bush appointed Paul Bremer as colonial administrator with dictatorial powers. He forbade Sunni muslims from sharing power which promoted sectarian violence and the possibility of civli war. He awarded contracts to rebuild the infrastructure that the coalition of the willing had destroyed to American companies along with secutriy etc. When you add to this two wars and ten year of sanctions Iraq was in a pretty destroyed state. After 8 years of occupation there is mass unemployment, very little electricity or clean water, the displacement of millions of refugees both internally and externally, a million dead? There are now mass uprisings in several Iraqi cities demanding better living conditions and an end to corrupt government. Ther have been many deaths and injuries. If only...the spririt of the Egyptian/Tunisian revolutions has been there 8 years ago instead of a foreign invasion. Libya next for a mission creep screw up??

Excellent article as ever by Nick Cohen. His line on Jeremy Bowen is the truest and funniest thing I've read for some while.

Head of the UN probe into the Gaza war Richard Goldstone has rejected claims by the Israeli interior minister that he intends to reconsider his final report on the 2008-2009 Gaza war. Goldstone, who held Israel accountable for war crimes against Palestinian civilians, says he has not been planning to retract the report. The report alleged that the Israeli operations "were carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population."

"No news organisation in the West could base their main Middle Eastern bureau anywhere other than Israel, for the simple reason that it was the only free country with a free press, an independent judiciary and a constitution. Researchers and diplomats, as well as reporters, could phone or visit Palestinians in the occupied territories, as indeed could anyone else." Nice logic but Reuters has a bureau in Gaza http://t.co/piM629P CNN opened a Dubai bureau http://www.ameinfo.com/2499.html CNBC's Middle East bureau is in Bahrain http://www.ameinfo.com/248808.html And let's not forget Al Jazeera http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera which is based in Dubai. I take it a correction will appear in due course. "Sorry our correspondent used logic where he could have checked facts."

Ian and A.Berman, Please see the response from the Samouni Family to the Goldstone retraction. These are the alleged victims of "the most moral army in warfare" . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXxL0lg4mxs&feature=player_embedded#at=72...

Ian, how can you call Israel a democracy when white westerners who settle there have more rights than the natives? You were right about the 1400 though. Whatever their bitch Colonel says.