As you read this, the Middle East is going to Hell in a hand basket at a horrifying rate of knots, with troops at the doors of the Church of the Nativity and tanks grinding down the streets of Bethlehem.

The temptation, as always, is to lay down the law and say how Zionist and Imperial the Israelis are being, how the poor Palestinians are suffering under the iron heel of Jewish hegemony. The pictures coming out of the refugee camps and the sight of Yasser Arafat having to make do with washing out of his tooth-mug are calculated to stir the humanitarian instincts of anyone who has any and turn the face of the world against the horrid Yids, who never change the spots on their leopards.

Israel does not have a history of murder and hijack and burning airliners and mass killings in airports. Israel does not have a secret army of mad people strapping explosives to their body and killing themselves and anyone else they can get. Israel does not say one thing in English and transmit another, very different, set of messages to terrorists in Arabic.

In other words, there is another side to the story and it would behoove the commentators and aforementioned bleeding hearts to remember this, before Arafat and his past are forgotten and he is given the Nobel Peace Prize. I`m not saying that the Israelis are right and the Palestinians are wrong just like that, in black and white terms. That is the way the tabloids and the axe-grinders argue their cases.

For instance, if the Israelis are to be believed, most of what the Palestinians want has been conceded during the negotiations that preceded this latest bout of blood-letting. If this is the case, and it can be verified by reference to the people who were at these negotiations, then precisely what is it that Arafat`s terrorists want?

Headlines? Notoriety? More blood on their hands, to go with the gallons of the stuff they collected in the `60s and `70s?

They`re getting their wishes, if that is the case, and it seems that the Israelis are just a bit fed up with being their punchbag. Now, for every mad teenager with a death wish, the Jews will provide a couple of tanks and a brace of gun-ships, in order to ensure that any other loony with a suicide wish is accommodated without the inconvenience of having to pull on a dynamite waistcoat.

With a situation as complex and insane as that which obtains in the Middle East, might I humbly suggest that all the talking heads who seem to know who to condemn and who to support all the time take a bit of time to ensure that they are not drawn into the con?

Take a shower, shock horror

Over the Easter break, it seems we also had one of those peculiar holidays that constitute our series of national days. This time around, I believe it was Freedom Day, the day that marks the end of the lease that the Brits had over a number of rather picturesque tracts of land around the country and their consequent hopping it out of the country.

Depending on your point of view, this was something of a non-event or, on the other hand, a heroic manifestation of the heroism of the working classes in their struggle for freedom and self-determination. So far as I`m concerned, it`s a nice holiday, except when it falls on a Sunday, as it did this year.

The thing with having a national holiday, though, is that the various dignitaries that we have dotted around the place have to inconvenience themselves by having to pose around whichever monument to our national pride was put up in years gone by, lest the faction that thinks that that particular episode in our history was being slighted by the non-marking of its (in)significance by the important folk.

Not that I have much sympathy for said dignitaries, of course, they asked for it when they got themselves put there.

That being as it may be, last Sunday`s bit of pomp and ceremony around the Freedom Monument next to the Casinò in L`Isla was marked by the attendance of a number of youths who thought it would be a good wheeze to have a bit of a protest about the military presences that come along here for a bit of R&R (rest and relaxation, for those of you who don`t know that particular acronym - and there are some, I know for sure).

This being a country that prides itself on tolerance and a plurality of human rights and freedoms, I would have thought that the gang of spotty youths who turned up would have been regarded with some amused (or bemused) shaking of the head and basically ignored.

Not so. The PN being in government, it was Radio 101`s turn to have a phone-in during which a number of concerned citizens thought it would be appropriate to call these people all manner of names, accusing them of endangering our tourism and Heaven knows what other types of crime. For all the world, it was reminiscent of the hysteria that used to greet the university students back in the `70s (showing my age, ain`t I?) when they had the temerity to point out to Mintoff`s regime that, just maybe, that wasn`t the way to go about things.

Of course, such is the seriousness with which the above-mentioned spotty youths take themselves that they were not reticent in being twits themselves, when they accused the police of all manner of brutal tactics.

I mean to say, it seems one cop even suggested that one of the protesters should take a shower. What could be worse than that? The Roland should haul me up before the European Court of Human Rights, since this is one of the moans he hears from me on virtually a daily basis.

Get it right

It seems that Alfred Sant has something of a transitory grasp of international affairs, his representation of his own party at the EU Mega-Conference notwithstanding.

One such manifestation of his ignorance of the facts is his characterisation, recently, of the deal the government made with the EU on the right to free movement of capital (the one where EU citizens are restricted in their mad desires to buy up every scrap of our land) as a transitory arrangement.

Our hero appears to have confused free movement of capital with free movement of persons, where in the latter case, arrangements have been made which are transitory (i.e. for a limited time) while in the case of the other arrangements, they`re permanent (i.e. for unlimited time).

The problem is, of course, that the MLP-inclined rags tend to pick up Sant`s pearls of wisdom and give them Oracular attributes.

While on the subject of MLP-inclined publications, just a small word to the lad who runs Maltastar.com, which is an amusing thing to have a look at of a morning. The word "ditch", when used in connection with aircraft manoeuvres, means to put the thing into the water. Last Wednesday`s edition said that a last second ditch by an Air Malta pilot avoided a tragedy in Italian skies. I have no doubt that the pilot performed his duties with the skill and efficiency that I know that all KM fly-boys and girls have, but I somehow doubt that the plane was ditched - it would have made headlines the world over, not just in Maltastar.com.

Just to show that I am not blind and biased, I`ll have a small slash at the boys over at Nazzjon while I`m about my job of poking fun at the media, in the hope that perhaps they won`t take themselves so seriously. Would the people at Nazzjon please note that Dr Austin Gatt`s stomach is not in his mum but in his mouth? In a piece about Ganni Zammit`s imitation of Ali G, Dr Gatt was characterised as being a chap whose ambitions should not include being an ambassador.

There is a Maltese phrase that describes this, namely "zaqqu f`fommu" (stomach in mouth, though it loses something in the switch to the vernacular) while in-Nazzjon saw fit to tell us that the dear chap has "zaqqu f`ommu" (i.e. in his mum).

Do get it right, if you have to use these expressions, why don`t you?

Hitting chords

I`ve struck a chord, it does appear, in my little foray into the boating world last week and a boating type e-d in (that`s a short way of saying that he sent me an e-mail) to tell me that the only reason why foreign boat owners come here is because it`s cheap, though he failed to add "cheerful" in the time-honoured manner.

In fact, in Austen-like prose, he went on to describe Malta as a skip floating in a sewer, presumably to underline his point that since cost is the only reason people come here, any move to raise costs would be counter productive. He also went on to say that as soon as he finishes the work he`s doing on his tub, he`ll be off, shaking the droplets of raw sewage from his fan tail as he sails into the sunset.

To which all I can say is "goodbye and don`t let us detain you any longer".

To be going on, I don`t know the ins and outs of the controversy and anything that does not rest on dry-land tends to send me into paroxysms of talking to God on the big white telephone, so I`ll say it once more and only once.

The only thing that annoyed me about the fact that the yachtsmen are moaning about the government`s moves to dispose of berths is the way they allied themselves, in spirit if not in fact, to the twerps who threaten to use their votes as revenge if they don`t get their way.

Another chord struck was when I mentioned golf courses and light pollution. I was told that there are plenty of places where golf courses are lit up at night, creating light pollution, though my informant did admit that the cost of running these courses is such as to make it unlikely that they would be a success in Malta.

I have nothing against people fighting to keep the skies dark but all I would ask them to remember is that there are such things as on-off switches.

No nosh

Continuing my chronicles of face-stuffing and culinary satisfaction, I submit that you will agree with me, if you work in Valletta, that there are many fine establishments dotted around the capital where you can satisfy your face and stuff your culinaries.

One such joint is La Sicilia Bar, off the beaten track, down the hill, virtually on the harbour shore. Or, more precisely, I should say this is reputed to be one such joint. I cannot confirm the justification or otherwise of the drooling I have heard about the place, because last Thursday but one, having phoned ahead and been told there was a table available for us, we trooped down there for a spot of lunch, but in vain.

When we got there, we were told by the diminutive female who was bossing about, in her best "customer is always wrong, go away because we`re busy" tone, that there was no such thing as a table available for us and if we were told that, it was only because the person who told us was tucked away in the kitchen and didn`t know what he was talking about.

"Now go away and find somewhere else to eat, we`re full and we don`t really care" was the sub-plot in this little piece of drama, so we did, never to return.

Well, not for some time, anyway.

Go to Jimmy`s

If you`re stuck for something to do over your lunch-break or on Sunday, you could do worse than trot along to the St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity.

You can get pretty decent snacks there but, more importantly, you can also feast your eyes on aspects of our national heritage that you would otherwise miss.

One current show is the antique furniture exhibition, which brings together a rather massive collection of bits and pieces from people`s homes and lets us, the plebs, see how the other half lived.

Seriously, it`s a good show and worth catching. It ends soon, so make sure you go along today, if not sooner.