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Terribly British Schadenfreude
(Wall Street Journal; 25 Nov 03) - Melanie Phillips The fall of Conrad Black is being received in Britain with almost as much glee as the defeat of his hero Napoleon at Waterloo. The former Sunday Telegraph editor Sir Peregrine Worsthorne wrote that the Telegraph has become an "American-propaganda and Israel-propaganda sheet," reflecting a "neo-conservative, right-wing philosophy which is very much an American phenomenon." Indeed, it is his papers' staunch defense of Israel which has perhaps given the hostility to Lord Black its most distasteful edge - not least through the frequent attacks upon Barbara Amiel for writing in the Telegraph about Israel's predicament, which is considered intolerable not just because she is the proprietor's wife but, far worse, because she is a Jew. That kind of disdainful, anti-American, anti-Israel and even anti-Jewish philosophy lying behind the triumphalism over the humbling of Lord Black is - distressingly - very much a British phenomenon.