We live in interesting times, where the actions of rogue nations and the reactions of guerrilla groups can lead to the most peculiar alliances, to the oddest conjoining of disparate personalities, to the strangest unification of diplomacy and dementia.

And so it was last week that Ahern and Gibson were united in sharp frustration at the activities of Israel in Lebanon, and at Israel's few supporters amongst the league of nations. In the minister's case, that annoyance was articulated crisply, honestly and diplomatically, but there was no disguising his anger.

There was no hiding Mel Gibson's anger either following his arrest in Los Angeles on suspicion of drunken driving, but it would be a gross overstatement to say that he was diplomatic in his use of language, or that most of what he said was in any way justified. Still, I think I know what he was trying to get at.

Let's take the minister first.

Thus far, Ahern has had a decent war. Since Israel began its murder of Lebanese civilians a few weeks ago, he has been strong in his criticism of the disproportionate nature of its actions.

When the Israelis deliberately targeted a UN base in southern Lebanon, killing four unarmed officers, he . . .

and the Taoiseach . . .

was strong again. At the very least, the attack was reckless, he said. At worst, it was deliberate.

The Israeli ambassador, Daniel Meggido, the unctuous representative of an odious government, was brought in for a dressing-down.

Ahern appears to have done his best during the week to get the EU to agree to a strong statement calling for a ceasefire, but ended up having to defend a form of words which suggested that a cessation would be better. He manfully tried to argue that the difference between ceasefire and cessation was purely semantic but, as the latter word was included specifically to avoid having to use the former, he didn't convince.

Listening to him getting increasingly tetchy at bothersome media questions about the EU statement, I couldn't help thinking that he now knows how some of the rest of us feel. For the last few years we've watched as the government he represents rowed in behind the illegal US invasion of Iraq, believed and repeated its lies about weapons of mass destruction, handed Shannon airport over to the US war effort and refused to investigate suspicions that Shannon was being used to facilitate the torture of prisoners. Nothing was done because it is the core principle of Irish foreign policy in 2006 that you mustn't offend the Americans.

Last week, Ahern found out what it was like to be on the other side of a debate in which the US is calling the shots.

A lot is spoken about the root causes of conflict in the Middle East, but one great barrier to any real movement is the unflinching, unbending support of the United States for Israel. It is this support which has allowed Israel firstly to appropriate land to which it was not entitled on the basis of some fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, and then in later years to continue to occupy parts of Palestine in breach of United Nations resolutions.

It is that support . . . expressed in arms and money as well as United Nations vetoes . . . which frees Israel to commit the kind of war crimes it has perpetrated in Lebanon over the last few weeks and in Gaza over the last very many years. In the EU, this support involves using the British government (or, to be more accurate, Tony Blair) to oppose any action or statement which might seem critical of Israel.

Last week, Dermot Ahern's frustration with Blair and his hapless foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, over the Lebanon war mirrored exactly the frustration with Bertie Ahern and his foreign minister over the Iraq war which was felt by many Irish people.

The reasons for the US support of Israel bring us right back to the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California in the early hours of Friday 28 July when Mel Gibson, one of Hollywood's greatest cash cows, was caught speeding and was then found to be 50% over the legal blood-alcohol limit. As we all know by now, he reacted to his arrest by cursing the "f. . . ing Jews", asking the arresting officer James Mee if he was of the Jewish persuasion and offering the opinion that Jews were responsible for all the wars in the world.

We have only Officer Mee's notes as evidence of what Gibson said to him last weekend, and it must be possible that the actor did not blame the Jews for all the wars in the world ever, merely for the big one that's going on at the moment. If that was the case, Gibson was be merely offering the hardly controversial opinion that what we're seeing in Israel's demented response to the kidnapping of a couple of soldiers is an outrage perpetrated by a Jewish government . . . which, incidentally, gives Israeli citizenship and residency to any Jew anywhere in the world . . . and supported by a mainly Jewish population. What he sees, what many people see, in Lebanon and Palestine is a Jewish war of aggression and expansion.

Gibson didn't offer an opinion on whether the much-discussed, much-maligned "Jewish-lobby" in the US is behind American support for the war, as many have surmised. At least as likely an explanation, however, is that the White House is currently populated by the type of Christian fundamentalists who interpret the bible literally and would be open to any argument that God had put aside a little slice of heaven for Jews to appropriate thousands of years hence. This is foreign policy based on religious belief, which is even worse than a foreign policy based on not offending George Bush, and damnably difficult to change. It's no wonder Dermot Ahern looked so depressed last week.