Attacks by Syrian troops led by President Bashar al-Assad has resulted in up to 6000 dead
David Hearst, one of the Guardian’s “foreign leader writers” according to his bio, has never met an Israel-hater or delegitimizer he didn’t love.
In his article yesterday at “Comment is Free, in which he addressed the Russian and Chinese veto of a UN Security Council vote against Syrian President Bashar Assad, he correctly described the unpopularity of Putin’s decision to use his veto power and the strategic error in such a move.
But Hearst being Hearst, how could he leave Israel out of this issue? Even though Israel is not connected in any way to the uprising in Syria, the revolutions in the Arab world and the violence committed in these countries, Hearst managed to work Israel into his first sentence.
If anyone thinks the international opprobrium heaped on Russia and China for vetoing the UN resolution condemning Syria’s violent repression of its people is unusual, they should cast their minds back to 13 July 2006. George Bush and Tony Blair spent the best part of the following 33 days dismissing calls for an end to Israel’s bombardment of southern Lebanon in response to a cross-border raid by Hezbollah.
Note how Hearst compares Israel’s defensive war against Hezbollah’s terrorist bombardment of Israel’s northern cities with a dictator slaughtering his own civilians.
Hearst continues:
On 3 August Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow, wrote that Blair’s premiership had descended into “scandal and incoherence”. Nor were serving Foreign Office officials quick to leap to Blair’s defence. The government’s policy of resisting calls for a ceasefire [in Lebanon, in 2006] was “driven by the prime minister alone”, they said.
Such a position is today occupied by Vladimir Putin
Now he compares Putin’s cynical decision to play the role of Assad’s Guardian with Blair’s stand against calls to save the Iranian backed Islamist terror group in Lebanon.  Blair preferred to back a democratic ally acting in self-defense, and withstood enormous political pressure rather than cave in to the predictable chorus of “right-thinking” (or should we call it “left-thinking”) calls to condemn Israel whenever it has the temerity to defend its citizens.
One of the commenters on Hearst’s article, who calls him/herself “external”, remarked so acutely:
Wow ! You managed to mention Israel in the first paragraph. Good work, even by Guardian standards !
As I have said before, the man is execrable, but oh so suitable for the Guardian’s World View™.

http://cifwatch.com/2012/02/06/guardians-david-hearst-equates-israeli-war-against-hezbollah-to-syrias-ongoing-civilian-massacre/#comments