In today's Spectator, Mark Steyn has another profound and amusing piece on the anti-Semitism (and anti-Americanism) of the European elite.

Americans are resigned to Britain?s and Europe?s need to ?damn? Israel, if only because they?re used to being on the receiving end themselves. Among British Conservatives, anti-Zionism tends to go hand in hand with anti-Americanism ? or, to put it in a more positive light, Europhiles tend also to be Arabists (Ian Gilmour, etc.). This is perfectly understandable: a certain type of Englishman looks at an Arab and sees a desert version of his most cherished self-delusions. Where Jews are modern, urban and scientific, Arabs are feudal, rural and romantic. Jews wear homburgs; Arabs wear flowing robes and head-dresses. Jews are famously ?in trade?; Arabs are just as famously hopeless at economic creativity: they have oil, but require foreigners to extract it and refine it. A backward culture that loves dressing up and places no value on professional activity will always appeal to a segment of the English elite. Look at the Prince of Wales in that wannabe Bedouin get-up he wore to meet Brother bin Laden the other week. Scarcely had he tossed the Highgrove hejab in the washer than he went out and gave a speech denouncing the ?arrogance? of skyscrapers. In America, blacks talk of the ?white Negro?; the Prince comes over like a white Arab.

There's a lot of other great stuff here as well, including the insight (which should have been obvious, but for some reason is not, to many) that Americans support Israel not because the Jews run America, but because it's the only thing resembling a democracy in the Middle East.

Turkey isn't a bad approximation of a democracy, although it does have some rigorous judicial penalties which the more "advanced" European countries appear to disdain.

Interesting question is how do you say that all the People's Republics of XXX or Democratic Republic of YYY aren't democracies albeit flawed ones? I guess you could count the number of governments in power over several decades and since Labour got out of running the Israeli government exclusively that rather decides the matter in the Israeli and Turkish favor, and against the Egypts and Libyas of the Arab world.

Does anyone remember that Archie Bunker's lawyers were Rabinowitz, Rabinowitz & Rabinowitz. When Archie called the firm he would ask to speak, "...to the father. He's the most Jewish."

"Interesting question is how do you say that all the People's Republics of XXX or Democratic Republic of YYY aren't democracies albeit flawed ones?"

That's actually an easy one. You measure them by the traditional yardstick for democracies--whether or not people can freely vote for the candidates and issues of their choice. Simply having some variant of the word "Democracy" or "Republic" in the name of your dictatorship is neither necessary or sufficient to make it one.