The Spectator is by no means on par with The Sun, as far as readership concerns, qualitatively and qualitatively. It is an elitist weekly magazine, and the extent of its influence is unknown to me. The crux of last week's leading editorial, tiled Fighting Fanaticism, was:

"The condemnatory noises made by the West against Israel will not appease the Arabs, who believe that Israel can be made to do anything the Americans tell it to do, but will encourage the terrorists, who will derive moral justification for their acts from them. The West is shooting itself squarely in the foot by its insincere denunciations of Israel, suggesting a moral equivalence between a democratic state’s self-defence and the bombers of pizza parlours."
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&am...

BTW, countering that point of view, Emma Williams wrote in the same issue, Stop in the name of decency:

"Under the guise of ‘self-defence against terror’, Israel is now violating virtually every article of the Geneva Convention. And for what? The results of Sharon’s policy appear all too clear: hundreds killed, thousands swearing revenge, and hundreds of thousands in a humanitarian crisis"

Note the exact opposite spin given to the notion of "self-defence"

(Sorry 'bout the English but I'm away from my [un]trusy PC)