The Jews were, after all, made to be attacked, annihilated and
scapegoated. First the pogroms, then the expulsion, then the name-calling. How odd of
God to choose the Jews, indeed. But, of course, no-one -- even the rabidly
pro Palestinian Western media -- really approves of these attacks on
ordinary Jews. No-one, that is, except the gore-glorying Arab mobs who celebrate
every blood-bedraggled mission by dancing in the little streets of the Palestinian townships.

We in the West would rather the ordinary Israelis who travel on buses or
who attend bar-mitzvahs or eat as a family in pizza parlours weren't blown
to pieces by Palestinian suicide bombers because it doesn't square with our
cherished notion that the poor Palestinian freedom fighters are being
savagely bullied by the US-backed fascist colonial Semitic superpower
that is Israel. Little urchin catapult wielders fighting against Merkava
tanks and Hellfire missile-shooting fighter jets.

Of course, all Palestinian violence is mere retaliation. Sure, wouldn't
you blow yourself up right beside a Jewish mother and her small children if
you had to queue up everyday at Israeli checkpoints? Sure, we all know that
Ariel Sharon is worse than Hitler. Remember the Lebanese massacres
(perpetrated by Lebanese Christians against Lebanese Arabs). How could
you ever forget when they're mentioned in every news report, even as the
blown-to-pieces bodies of Israeli children are picked off the streets of
Jerusalem. Don't, of course, mention the 1997 suicide bombing which
killed 13 Israelis in Jerusalem just after Israel had given the PLO control of
Hebron. It doesn't really fit in with this schema whereby all
Palestinian violence is just the understandable reaction of a downtrodden people to
the gratuitous incursions and the targeted killings by Israel.

Don't mention, either, the fact that while Israel only targets
terrorists who endanger the lives of their families by using them as human shields
(thus the killing of the Hamas leader's family last week, for which
Israel apologized) while the lovely, generous Palestinians (as described on
Liveline last Tuesday) support terrorist organizations who purposely
kill Israelis at random. But then they're only Israelis. Jews. And what are
they doing in Zion, anyway. Zionists! Fascists! Colonists!

And so the West lends immoral support to the Palestinians and delivers
high-minded lectures to Israel about 'how to handle terrorists without
hurting anyone'. Lesson one when, eh, we haven't worked out the details
yet.

The Swedes are very good at giving this advice. They had a great record
in the last war facilitating Nazi steel transportation. And, of course, the
UN High Commissioner Mary Robinson, formerly President of neutral Ireland,
has been getting up on her high nelly lecturing Israel and telling them to
be respectful of minorities. Especially, one presumes, suicide bombers at
bus-stops. It wasn't that long ago since Ms. Robinson was emoting about
how she herself was a Jew (back in August last year in South Africa, to be
precise). She might just show a little consideration for the embattled
and terrorized Jews of Israel now.

She might also bear in mind that someone else recently announced in
public that he was a Jew. The kidnapped Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl was
forced by his captors to say on video in a sick parody of the
Palestinian Martyrs' final self-glorifying videos that he was a Jew and that his
father was a Jew and his mother a Jew. That said, his Muslim captors slit his
throat and cut off his head. Nice people.

In the ongoing Middle Eastern and potentially worldwide battle between
Islam and Judaism it is sincerely to be hoped that this time out some European
countries may learn the lesson of their obscene history and bring
themselves to say and mean that 'in that case, I'm a Jew'. They could start by
giving moral support to the only democratic state in the Middle East as it
tries to quell a coldly calculated uprising inspired by little else except the
ideology and praxis of terrorism and the undiluted anti-Semitic hatred
of the toxic wing of Islam.