Murders Most Foul

What a world we live in.

One where the murder most foul of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi death squad has been universally - and quite correctly - condemned by Western pundits. Since we are all aware of the horrific details of Khashoggi's death I need not repeat them here.

Suffice it to say that when thinking of Khashoggi's appalling end, I cannot help but recall another murder most foul, that of Hamas resistance fighter Mahmoud al-Mabhouh by a  Mossad death squad in a Dubai hotel room on 19 January, 2010.

In case you've forgotten the details, according to the Dubai police report which followed his death, al-Mabhouh was held down in his hotel room and injected with a substance which paralysed him completely, but left him fully conscious of his murderers' next step - they placed a pillow over his head and suffocated him to death.

Al-Mabhouh's death, like Khashoggi's, is one of those that no one with even a shred of decency can contemplate with any degree of equanimity. Hence my term murder most foul. The sheer terror of al-Mabhouh's final moments on this planet, like those of Khashoggi's, is literally the stuff of horror stories. Just to reiterate al-Mabhouh's grisly end, try imagining what it must be like to be fully conscious of what your murderers are doing to you, but unable, in any way, shape, or form, to resist. You simply cannot.

But there's another dimension to these two murders most foul.

While today's Western pundits have, to a man and woman, rightly, as I have already indicated, condemned Khashoggi's Saudi murderers, back in 2010, the Mossad murderers of al-Mabhouh received only applause from the same crowd.

And al-Mabhouh, Palestinian resistance fighter? The Western pundits of 2010, one and all, simply wrote him off as a terrorist deserving of his fate.