The UK: where anti-Israel viciousness is whipped up by journalists on the side of terrorists who strap bombs to reporters and by doctors on the side of thugs who brutalize hospital workers and by academics on the side of fanatics who shut down schools. It's the thoroughness of Britain's anti-Israel commitments that's really breathtaking: all the way down to Israeli tourism campaigns. This is a place where Nobel Prize winner Shimon Peres is shouted down for being a "war criminal" but where Hamas is embraced as a legitimate party of the Palestinian body politic.

Speaking of the Israeli President: when Shimon Peres is telling you that you're being unreasonably vicious about Israeli settlements and Israeli defensive tactics - maybe at that point it's time to think just how far the reservation you've strayed. And so off Olmert goes:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will go to London on Monday for meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, at a time when Britain - according to diplomatic officials in Jerusalem - is causing problems for Israel inside the EU. For instance, Britain - along with Ireland, Cyprus and Malta - led the unsuccessful charge inside the EU to link its agreement on Monday to upgrade diplomatic ties with Israel to developments in negotiations with the Palestinians. Senior diplomatic officials said the British position was that it was not the time to give Israel the "prize" of an upgrade... According to Israeli officials, Britain was behind an initiative that would have Israel clearly label on each product where it was made, specifying whether it was made in Israel or the "occupied territories."

They've also apparently been talking to Hezbollah - because that's an organization worth of the diplomatic "prizes" that the Brits want to dispense sparingly. Just a thought, but is there any chance that Britain's diplomatic and economic priorities are being set by something other than levelheaded and objective analysis?

References and previously after the jump...