Siân Berry has a new website. This pleases me.

Israel has banned the United Arab List and Balad from the Knesset. Banned, that is, two Arab parties which call for a two state solution and so recognise Israel’s existence - on the grounds that they don’t recognise Israel.

They have thus exiled Israeli Arabs from mainstream democratic politics. The exiled and disenfranchised tend to move to extremes, as they’re the only place to go.

You know what the available extreme is for the Palestinians. Hamas must be grateful.

(Hat-tip: Jim)

I can’t speak for other contributors to the site, but I’m back off to Cambridge tomorrow. Posting on my part may thus slow or cease for the next two months or so, if last term was anything to judge by.

Hopefully not, though…

The following proposal is vile:

THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws.

The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room.

Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someone’s UK computer and pass over any material gleaned.

That’s the equivalent of allowing a policeman into every living room to listen to every conversation, without a warrant. The vagueness of the legislation simply invites abuse. Police may indulge in this espionage if they “believe” it’s “proportionate”; that is, whenever they feel like it. There is no check on this power, and so no check on its abuse.

And the idea comes from the EU Council of Ministers - which means, if previous experience is anything to go by, it’ll be quite hard to shift. Are they really trying to put the entire internet off the entire institution?

Briefly; this won’t work. Deploying a mechanised block designed solely for slaughter in a neighbourhood alienates everyone in the neighbourhood. Even if you have a specific target, it looks as though you threaten everyone, because it’s so loud and intimidating.

Most Gazans will thus perceive themselves as under threat. They will turn to those who offer to protect them; here, Hamas.

Hamas will then have yet more fleshy fodder to throw into a vicious ground war with the IDF. This will be particularly bloody, given the degree to which Gaza resembles a warren designed for guerilla fighting. A long and ugly struggle will follow.

This could end in a very few ways. The ground war could go on and on and on and be reduced to a a stagnant quagmire. The IDF could slaughter so many Gazans that any will to resist is sapped and the strip is annexed; violence inevitably follows from the West Bank. Or the IDF could suffer a setback, withdraw, and the old stand-off could resume.

None of these will help anyone involved.

We haven’t linked glowingly to Johann Hari in a while now. Today seems worth resuming that habit temporarily:

The world isn’t just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning until this punishment-beating ends, the young people of the Gaza Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight back, with stones or suicide-vests or rockets. Israel’s leaders have convinced themselves the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside of history, untended and unmade.

Too true…

David Axelrod, Senior Adviser to Obama:

“He’s going to work closely with the Israelis. They’re a great ally of ours, the most important ally in the region.”

Just when change would have gone down well…

Why does anyone think that bombing someone will make their neighbours better disposed to them?

Israel ought to understand this. Its civilians in Sderot have their lives made a misery by rocket fire from Hamas. They’re scared and can’t live secure lives - so demand action. Understandably.

And yet the Israeli government doesn’t seem to expect Gazans to behave in the same way. But, of course, they do; they too are scared and threatened by the bombs, and have very likely seen someone killed or injured by them. They see that Israeli planes dropped the bombs, and so blame Israel - in the same way that citizens of Sderot blame Hamas for the rockets. Someone who’s forced to cower from the bomb that fell down the road must find it very hard not to take that as an attack on them, whoever the target was.

These Gazans become understandably angry at Israel. They demand action to stop the bombs, and move towards actively resisting Israel. Some, inevitably, will be drawn to the group whose rhetoric most aggressively assaults Israel; Hamas.

So every bomb that falls acts as a recruiting beacon for Hamas. It doesn’t matter that the Israeli military hopes to decapitate Hamas. For every bomb that kills a member of Hamas, yet more join because of that bomb.

People on both sides of the border suffer the same emotions when an angry man in a uniform hurls several tons of high explosive with the intent to kill them. They don’t like it, and want it to stop. Why does doing the same back seem like a good idea, then? Those caught up in the retaliation will feel exactly the same way - because they don’t want to die, and they don’t want their families and friends to die either.

I genuinely don’t understand how that could be missed. The premise that “I am human, they are human, therefore they’re as unlikely to enjoy watching their aunt bleeding to death by a roadside as I” is simple. Either that those firing the explosives either don’t think of the others as fully human, haven’t thought at all, or actively want the slaughter on both sides to continue.

Unfortunately, I suspect all three are true to varying degrees for various groups…

A key argument of apologists for the slaughter in Gaza is that Hamas are a collection of armed thugs (they are) who force themselves on the Gazan people.

They acknowledge that the Gazans have little or no control over Hamas. How can unarmed civilians and children overthrow men with machine guns and rockets?

They then defend dropping high-explosive on those unarmed civilians on the grounds that Hamas hides itself amongst them. The civilians can’t control Hamas, yet suffer in their hundreds from the retaliation.

Large explosions kill indiscriminately. The Israeli military know this, and so know civilians will be killed. Because the Hamas gunmen live amongst the civilians.

They do not know how many, if any, members of Hamas will be killed by each bomb. They do know civilians will die.

How can that be justified without resort to the denial of an oppressed Palestinian’s basic humanity? They did not choose for a Hamas gunman to live across the gutter from them, yet they die because of it.

How can you justify that?

Does it really surprise anyone that the young ignore the government when it moralises against alcohol? The campaigns tend to be so patronising that they’re enough to inspire consumption as it is.

I drink, regularly. As a byproduct, I know how much alcohol it takes to render myself insensible; when it happens several time, you do tend to notice the pattern.

Anyone who drinks regularly should be the same. They have been drunk, several times, and so know how it happens to them. They don’t need to be told this by a stern poster spouting arbitrary figures at them; and no doubt do feel patronised by that poster telling them what they already know.

Likewise, they’re unlikely to be entirely unaware of the impact of drinking upon health. Anyone who drinks will at least know someone who’s hurled all that they’ve drunk and more into the loo, and will likely have heard graphic stories of at least one stomach pump. To throw up is to be ill, and most people know that’s bad. So we can assume most heavy drinkers are aware of some of the risks.

If a young person gets drunk, and does so frequently, it’s thus likely (logically) to be a more or less conscious decision. They know what they’re doing, yet do it anyway. And yet the government persists in pushing out campaigns that assume the young are ignorant of both the cause (hence stark photographs of bottles ominously marked “10″) and the consequences (hence “hard-hitting” portrayals of vomit stained youth drowing in their own filth) of drunkeness.

They know what they’re doing, and so presumably want to do it (and know this), for whatever reason. The government then shoves out propaganda that effectively claims they’re only doing it because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Who would listen to that?