Kim howls, Blair keeps quiet

This is strange. Kim Howells, junior foreign minister and former chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, has uttered some mild words of criticism over Israel's targetting of civilians and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Tony Blair, the Prime Minister who appointed the former chairman of Labour Friends of Israel to the post of junior foreign minister, hasn't said a word to criticise Israel and John Prescott, whose job title I can't remember, has said that there is no rift between the PM and the Foreign Office.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's deputy John Prescott denied on Sunday any suggestion that the British government was divided over support for Israel's military offensive in Lebanon.

During a visit to Lebanon on Saturday, Britain's junior foreign minister Kim Howells openly criticized Israel's tactics, while Blair and US President George W Bush have stressed Israel's right to defend itself.

"There isn't a division between the foreign office and the government," Prescott, the deputy prime minister, told BBC television on Sunday.

Prescott said he saw no sign of a rift when he attended a cabinet meeting on Thursday in which Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was present.

"The cabinet had a serious discussion about this matter and frankly there isn't a division at all," he said.

"But Kim was reflecting his concerns as he saw them and one can understand that if you've got thousands of rockets being sent one way, attacks in another that has meant war. War can't solve the situation," he said.

Howells disputed claims that Israel's bombardment of targets in Lebanon were "surgical strikes" aimed at stopping the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah from attacking the Jewish state.

"It's very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics that are being used," Howells told journalists in Beirut.

"If they are chasing Hezbollah, then go for Hezbollah. You don't go for the entire Lebanese nation," Howells, minister of state for the Middle East, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said.

The Israelis "are destroying the infrastructure of Lebanon and killing an enormous number of people," he said, speaking on the Sky News television channel.

I think this is a tactic but I'm not sure who it's aimed at. It's common in zionist circles to say that the Foreign Office is "pro-Arab" so did Howells have a diplomats' rebellion on his hands? Did Blair ask him to criticise Israel publicly so as to keep Britain in with a bunch of reactionary Arab regimes who must surely be exasperated with America? Or is Howells genuinely concerned for the well-being of the civilian victims of Israeli atrocities? If it's that last one then how did he ever get to be a friend of Israel in the first place?