Friends, let me begin with a message similar to the one I delivered yesterday: I’m writing this column days in advance, so if I’m “behind the news,” forgive me. In fact, I’d like to start with an item concerning an interview given on April 14. It was given to Al-Jazeera TV by Clare Short. Who’s she? You remember: She is a longtime Labour MP in Britain, and served in Tony Blair’s cabinet. Would you like to know what she told her Arab audience?

As you know, there is an international court, which is new. But America is against this court, and did not ratify its establishment, because this court will try criminals around the world. So in the short term, it will be impossible to try George Bush in this court.

But on the other hand, if you remember Pinochet, he was a cruel military dictator in Chile. It took a very long time — many years — after the signing of the [U.N.] Convention Against Torture that a judge in France [sic] issued a ruling against Pinochet, and he was arrested there.

Let’s be realistic — I don’t believe that Blair and Bush will be arrested right away, but this issue may haunt them, because, after all, they will not die very soon, since they are not old. Just like Pinochet was tried — who knows? There are brave lawyers who are waiting for this opportunity, which will come one day.

This information comes courtesy the Middle East Media Research Institute, here.

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Ladies and gentlemen, there is a sickness in the West, as manifested by Clare Short on Al-Jazeera. She is one of those who repeatedly condemn Israel as an “apartheid state.” In fact, she has stated that Israel is “much worse” than the old South Africa. Yes, there is a sickness, one of whose most powerful symptoms is a deep misunderstanding of Israel, and a hatred of it. Will the West recover?

To add insult to injury, Clare Short was talking to people — Arabs — whose governments are world-class torturers, and whose officials are certainly never held accountable in any international court. Yet she was talking about Bush and Blair, who have done more to help Arab people than a billion Clare Shorts ever could.

Here’s some good news, though: Bill Cosby. In Georgia, he talked to an audience filled with “at risk” teenagers — black at-risk teenagers. And he lamented the casualness with which people treat the horrors afflicting black Americans, in particular. He said,

“Well, the mother’s on crack cocaine. Pass the salt. That girl’s baby has no father. Pass the salt. Oh, he shot him in the head? Pass the salt. We look at failure, and we’re like, ‘Pass the salt.’ ”

Cosby is well aware that many criticize him for airing racial dirty laundry. In response, he said, “That’s crazy. There are black people who have to walk around this dirty laundry.” And so on.

To read more, consult this AP article. And nice going, Cos.

Speaking to 60 Minutes, Col. Ziv Levy made a common point, but one worth repeating. He is an Israeli air commander. And he said, “We spend a lot of time and a lot of effort in training and being prepared for the worst. We cannot lose a single war. The first war we lose, Israel will cease to exist.” Yes, indeed. Arabs wage wars of annihilation against Israel. They lose. And then they go back and wait or prepare for the next one. This has happened over and over in Israel’s brief history. Will it happen always?

It seems that Israel’s enemies are in the catbird seat: They can lose and lose, and still survive. Israel is not interested in eliminating a single state. But Israel’s enemies: the opposite.

I remember meeting with Saif Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator’s son, along with other journalists in Davos. He had an explanation for why the Arabs had lost all their wars against Israel: Because Israel is a democracy, and those other countries are not democracies. In a democracy, explained young Qaddafi, merit is key, so that those who rise to the top levels of the military are apt to be capable. In the Arab countries, said Qaddafi, cronyism prevails, so the commanders tend to be no good. That’s why Arabs keep losing wars.

“May you never have democracy,” said an Israeli journalist under his breath. I have never forgotten it, and one can certainly understand it.

You want your regular dose of Che Guevara news? You got it. I quote from an article at Bloomberg.com (here):

Admirers of Ernesto “Che” Guevara have contributed more than three tons of bronze keys, kitchenware and old instruments for a statue to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Argentine revolutionary’s birth.

“My idea was to do a collective work,” said sculptor Andres Zerneri, 35. “I wanted thousands of people to send small pieces of bronze to be involved in the production of the sculpture.”

Zerneri received about 15,000 donations from as far away as Australia and Mexico — as well as from Cuba, where Guevara fought in Fidel Castro’s revolution.

By the way, would any of those “old instruments” be torture instruments? And I ask what I’ve asked many times before: Is there any totalitarian thug-murderer more celebrated than Guevara? How did the Nazis come to be so stigmatized? It must frustrate them that they can’t get any of the lovin’ lavished on Che.