As a community we are sometimes prone to the feeling that the world is against us; that issues which are of deep concern to us are simply ignored elsewhere. So it is especially welcome that Louise Bagshawe, a Conservative MP who is not Jewish, has no significant number of Jewish constituents and with no special track record of involvement in Middle East issues, has so determinedly taken the BBC to task for its paltry and distorted coverage of the Fogel murders in Itamar two weeks ago.
Ms Bagshawe has asked all the right questions of all the right people; and she has done so for no other reason than that it is the right thing to do. Not that she is unique; simply that she is commendable. So, too, is her colleague Robert Halfon, whom we highlighted last week. Since then, Liverpool John Moores University, about whose links with Libya Mr Halfon has been seeking answers, has begun libel proceedings against Mr Halfon.
To describe this as disgraceful does not do justice to the contempt in which the university's authorities should be held for behaving like this. Mr Halfon's actions are a model of what an MP should do; like Ms Bagshawe, he is asking the right questions of the right people in pursuit of truths which some organisations are determined to keep secret. That Liverpool John Moores should respond with a libel suit says more about their mores than anything emanating from Mr Halfon.
