I've never really been a fan of Maureen Lipman. Sure she is adored by millions for her stereotypical Jewish mother character Beattie in those godawful 1980s advertisements for British Telecom and her other roles have never greatly engaged with me.
But I don't deny she has an impressive track record both on stage and screen. So it was all the more interesting to see that our Mo writes for The Guardian.
Thanks to Melanie Phillips for introducing me to Maureen's most recent column.
On the issue of Israel, our Mo writes:
So Israel must be wiped off the face of the Earth. It's official policy according to the president of that well known democracy, Iran. A member of the UN and the human race, he last week told the rest of the world his true agenda for the Middle East. On the same day, the suicide bombers took up their old position in the Israeli marketplace and killed five innocent civilians. There must have been much hand-rubbing and backslapping in Iran that night.
It proves that whatever Israel does right is ultimately wrong. Pull out of Gaza, at astonishing personal cost to their own electorate, and somehow it works against them. They cannot win without loss. They cannot protect themselves, surrounded as they are on all sides by warrior states, without being labelled the aggressors.
No, I'm not defending them arbitrarily; there has been enough to complain about in their behaviour over the past 50-odd years. There invariably is when a country is submerged in a lengthy war. America bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The Lusitania and the Belgrano happened. An innocent Brazilian electrician was shot, here in London, in a moment of post-bombing panic. Stuff happens.
Well said Mo.