Barak the Brave

It was good to hear Ehud Barak on the Andrew Marr programme this morning defending Israeli house building. I had forgotten in how many 'battles' Barak had participated during his time as a soldier. It was a pity though that he was given insufficient time to develop his argument. Was this BBC bias, an incompetent interviewer or an incompetent producer? I would have liked Barak to be asked to confirm, as we never seem to be allowed to be told this, that the house building is all on land owned by the Israelis which was bought fair and square from the Palestinians. If the Palestinians want to stop the building of Jewish settlements why don't they refuse to sell their land? They cannot have their cake and eat it. They do of course expect this, encouraged as they are by anti Israelis including Obama, the BBC and other useful idiots including it has to be said the British government. Apart from a brief discourse on house building the other subject Barak was asked about was Iran and its nuclear programme. Again the time allotted for this subject was risibly short made worse by the interviewer making an asinine statement about hoping Barak would tell the British government beforehand if Israel were going to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities this week. It can only be hoped that the danger we face from Iran will be fully aired once the IAEA report is published this week. What has been given a good airing in one Newspaper at least is the situation in Syria. Andrew Gilligan wrote in the Telegraph last Sunday about his interview with Assad and today writes an article here about Syria reaching a tipping point. It seems the Telegraph is currently the first Western newspaper to be allowed access to Syria.