I am very disappointed to see that Lord Phillips of Sudbury, whose robust independence of mind I have greatly admired in the past, has nevertheless succumbed to the moral contagion infecting our society on the issue of Israel. In a letter in the Times on the killing of Sheikh Yassin, he writes:

'If terrorism is “the systematic use of violence and intimidation”, then Israel, too, is guilty of it. According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, the Israelis have killed four times more minors than the suicide bombers since the start of the intifada in 2000. To say that such killings were not intended (however predictable) is of no comfort to those bereaved. To argue that they were the result of self-defence is rendered spurious by the relentless Israeli build-up of settlements in Palestine, the ongoing confiscation of large areas of the same behind the “fence” and their oppressive and degrading occupation. Brave Israelis say the same, including many air force and army personnel refusing to take any further part in this grisly business, and young conscripts willing to face prison for their refusal to serve. They recognise that the terror is two-way, and so should we in our description of it. It will also prove a service to Israel itself.'

Here once again is the lethal conjunction of ignorance, propaganda (no less venomous for coming not from 'brave Israelis' but Israeli extremists) and moral inversion. First, the statistics. If you look at the authoritative breakdown of the casualty figures produced by the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism in Herzliya, a rather different picture emerges. While 54% of Palestinians killed by Israelis were actively involved in fighting -- excluding stone throwers -- and no fewer than one in eight of their fatalities were killed by their own side, 80% of Israelis killed by Palestinians were non-combatants. Moreover, while some 40% of Israeli non-combatant fatalities were women and girls, only 8% of Palestinian fatalities were women and girls. The disproportionate number of Palestinian youngsters who were killed, refered to by Phillips, was made up overwhelmingly of teenage boys and young men. Looked at along with the figures for women and girls, the most likely explanation is not that the Israelis are targeting the most vulnerable civilians but that Palestinians place their boys in harm's way by taking on the Israeli troops. And what the figures overall show is that while the Israelis mainly attack the people trying to kill them, the Palestinians mainly attack the innocent. In other words, precisely the opposite to Phillips's smear.

Next, the 'degrading and oppressive' occupation would not exist at all were it not for the fact that the Arab states and their Palestinian proxies are continuing their fifty year old war of extermination against Israel, and century old war of terror against the Jewish people in that land. Personally, I think both the settlements and the siting of the security fence are wrong. (Even though there are no borders, only cease-fire lines, and even though Israel is legally within its rights, and even though it is an exaggeration to say 'large areas' of land have been confiscated, it is still wrong for Israel to have taken a legitimate security measure and used it to cause hardship to ordinary Palestinians).

But for heaven's sake, none of this should justify or excuse terrorist mass murder. Nothing can excuse or justify terrorist mass murder. Yes, some Israeli refuseniks can't stomach either what Israel regrettably has to do or reprehensibly should not be doing. But to say that terror is 'two-way' is simply obscene. There is all the difference in the moral universe between killing the innocent and taking measures to prevent the innocent from being killed. There is actually a moral obligation on a country to try to prevent its innocent citizens from being thus targeted for death. To label such attempts by Israel as 'terrorism' is not only morally bankrupt, but paves the way for further terrorist slaughter. It is an attitude which is no less despicable for becoming, alas, all too commonplace particularly among the intelligentsia of the west, whose own hands as a result are becoming increasingly bloody.