INTIFADA A LA ESPAÑOLA, escribe Hillel Halkin en el Jerusalem Post, observando una curiosa doble vara de medir (registro o Bugmenot.com):

Schadenfreude, the Germans call it. In Hebrew we say simha le'eyd. Unfortunately, there's no word for it in English - "malicious pleasure" is about as close as you can get. I wonder if there's one in Spanish.

Because it's Spain that's giving me the pleasure. And its Basques. You may have read about it in the papers last week After Basque regional president Juan Jose Ibarretxe proposed a new relationship of "free association" between the Basque region and the rest of Spain, with the future option of full Basque independence, the Spanish parliament in Madrid voted overwhelmingly to reject the plan.

Spain, declared Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, would never agree to an independent Basque state, even if that's what a majority of Basques wanted. Spanish territorial integrity would never be compromised.

This, mind you, from a country that has been, like all its enlightened European neighbors, preaching to Israel for years about the need for Palestinian statehood. How could we Israelis be so obtuse as to thwart the Palestinian right to national self-determination?

It turns out that what's urgent for the Palestinians is out of the question for the Basques. How come? Because the right to national self-determination, apparently, does not apply to Europe.

Of course, you might want to argue if you were a Spaniard that there's a logic to this. Unlike the Palestinians, the Basques aren't oppressed; they live freely in their homeland as full and equal citizens of Spain, without roadblocks, without checkpoints, without humiliation, without tanks and army patrols roaming through their cities. The Palestinians need a state because life under Israeli rule is intolerable for them. What do the Basques need one for?

Yet quite apart from the fact that the right to national self-determination means that it isn't the Spaniards' business to tell the Basques whether they need a state or not, one can easily turn this argument around.

Y a continuación Halkin hace exactamente eso: darle la vuelta al argumento.