Perhaps it has something to do with its craving for an ever wider readership. As it has doubled its audience in little more than a decade (to more than 1.6 million weekly sales), the temptation to fall into line with the default assumptions that that audience could reasonably be expected to hold may have been too great to resist. Or perhaps it is simply that, like so many other institutions associated with the British political intelligentsia, it has surrendered to the politically correct orthodoxies that now run riot through the country’s foreign policy establishment.

Either way, the Economist isn’t what it used to be. Flat, dull, lazy and predictable, a once great institution is now little better than a receptacle for every received wisdom in the book.

There was a sense of dreary inevitability, therefore, about this week’s leader column (the most commented article on the Economist website) urging President Obama to impose a peace agreement from above lest the hapless Israelis manoeuvre the region into yet another war with their (largely guiltless) neighbours. The key points in the article are as follows:

** “…there is reason to believe that unless remedial action is taken, 2011 might see the most destructive [MidEast] war for many years”.
** An equivalence is drawn between Iran’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons “at any cost” and Israel’s desire to stop it “at any cost”.
** An equivalence is also drawn between Hezbollah and Israel who have both been engaged in a “…frantic arms race that has been under way since the inconclusive war in 2006…”
** Iran and Syria could be drawn into any war with Israel and Hezbollah now has the capacity to “kill thousands of civilians in Israel’s cities more or less at the press of a button”.
** Therefore, a peace agreement with the Palestinians is all the more urgent. Hezbollah, Iran and “sometimes Hamas”, are acknowledged to be implacable opponents of the Jewish state. “But”, wait for it, “it is the unending Israeli occupation that gives these rejectionists their oxygen. Give the Palestinians a state on the West Bank and it will become very much harder for the rejectionists to justify going to war”.
** Obama must impose a solution from above for everybody’s sake: “Israel will suffer too if Mr Obama fails, because the Palestinians have shown time and again that they will not fall silent while their rights are denied. The longer Israel keeps them stateless under military occupation, the lonelier it becomes—and the more it undermines its own identity as a liberal democracy”.
** The piece then proceeds to airbrush seven decades of Palestinian rejectionism and terror out of the picture. The authors even manage to mention the peace efforts of President Clinton without mentioning that (as Clinton has frequently made quite clear) it was the Palestinian side that rejected the agreements he sought to broker, while Israel accepted them.

Now, the article could easily be dismissed as tendentious garbage of the kind that no serious analyst or politician would give a second thought to. But given that the Economist is a favourite of the global diplomatic community it is also potentially dangerous and needs taking down. Fortunately, Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations has provided just such a take down in the Jerusalem Post. The article should be read in full, but here are his key points:

** “First, and most fundamentally, [the Economist article] confuses the main source of potential escalation and war, Iran, with the diplomatic target of the peace initiative it recommends, the Palestinians. Dealing with the latter will not alter the hostile intentions of the former”.
** “Historically, relations with the Palestinians and tensions with Iran’s proxies, Hizbullah and Hamas, have been on two completely separate tracks.” Gold cites the examples of Hezbollah aggression in 1996 and 2008 during which time Israeli leaders were in intensive negotiations with the Palestinian leadership.
** In so far as there is a correlation between the aggression of Iran and its proxies and talks with the Palestinians it is the reverse of what the Economist claims it to be. Iran activates terrorists in order to prevent peace agreements.
** Gold also takes the Economist to task for the fetishisation of the 1967 borders and for foolishly suggesting a course of action in which the Palestinians would be disincentivised to negotiate seriously since they would simply be given what they want without making any concessions: “…what motivation will the Palestinians have to concede anything on security or refugees,” asks Gold, “if they receive their territorial goals of the pre-1967 line on a silver platter? Israel will have lost all its territorial assets and have nothing to trade for concessions”.
** “The Economist pretends it is calling for pressure on “both sides,” but it is clear that it is talking about leaning mainly on Israel, to push it back to the 1967 lines and denying its right to defensible borders”.

Quite so. All that the Economist article amounts to is the standard anti-Israeli rant. For writing it and giving it such prominence, the editorial team that wrote the piece will certainly make friends in the British Foreign Office and the UN General Assembly. And that is presumably what they were aiming at. But sadly, in so doing they have simultaneously made enemies out of the history books and sullied a once outstanding reputation for independent thinking, sound judgement and basic principles of editorial integrity.