The most formidable spokesman for the Jewish lobby is Roger Cohen. His strength is not in making a persuasive case for Israel. Just the opposite. Cohen understands the Palestinian plight and he is conscious of Ariel Sharon's unpardonable unfairness. But don't mention Arafat, at which the most moderate of Jewish lobbyists go ballistic. On 17 July 2004, Cohen lost his cool on the Palestinian issue because the French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, had been overnight in Arafat's Ramallah compound. Cohen's usually moderate tone became apocalyptic. Any possibility for a peace process in Israel/Palestine was doomed.

Arafat was accused of never having "embarked on the course of preparing Palestinian youth for the fact of Israel's existence". Even what he meant was unclear. If it was that Arafat is not resigned to the existence of Israel, it was a lie. If he was implying that Arafat has the power to command the minds of Palestinians, who react more to Israeli oppression and aggression than to Arafat's exhortations, had he lost his power to reason clearly? And if so was this personal lying or just letting the Jewish lobby speak through him?

His astounding conclusion on the Israel/Palestine problem was that it would only be solved when Arafat died. There was an alternative to this extreme position: to wait for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza "next year in the hope that this will put pressure on the Palestinians to organize themselves with Egyptian help". What Israeli withdrawal? Like the Israeli commitment to the Oslo accords? And what has always stood in the way of Palestinian self-government if not Israeli intransigence? Finally, what kind of Palestine state was he thinking of by suggesting that Gaza become an Egyptian protectorate?

In contrast to so much nonsense, the meaning of Barnier's gesture was crystal-clear: France, which has never been an enemy of Israel, considers the Israeli-American super-alliance against Arafat as the principal obstacle to a solution in Israel/Palestine. And in addition he was reminding the USA that its frightful mistake over Iraq was not forgotten and that the unipolar world was decidedly over.

 On 21 July, Cohen recovered somewhat his equipoise. He devoted an article to Sharon's brutality. But he spoiled his thesis by saying that Sharon's best accomplice was none other than Arafat! Then he trotted out what has become a Jewish-lobby cliché: the historian Benny Morris, who once demonstrated that Israel had applied ethnic cleasing in Palestine from 1947 to 1949, but who now accuses Arafat of not wanting to let Israel  have "an inch of land". Geoffrey Wheatcroft quoted Moshe Dayan as saying that not an inch of Israel had not once been Arab. But Dayan never advocated taking land from the Palestinians. Why does he now never figure in the Jewish lobby's agenda? And how can Arafat, who can't even be sure of the ground he stands on (if it weren't for international gestures such as France's), even dream of destroying Israel, whose right to exist has been fundamental to his political strategy for decades now? Morris is either doddering or, what is more likely, his hatred of Arafat reflects the Israeli opposition to a Palestinian state. Cohen's rehash of Morris' turnabout can only be a reflection of the Jewish lobby's refusal to come to terms with the right of Palestinians to statehood, which unfortunately undoes all the credibility that Cohen deserves for his often sympathetic approach to the plight of Palestinians.(31-7-2004)