With its customary hypocrisy, the alleged civilised world has recoiled in horror at the declaration by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’. So he’s a genocidal, Jew-hating maniac. So what’s new? Iran has never made any secret of its intention to annihilate Israel. It exports demented anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred to the Muslim world, it funds terrorists to murder as many Jews as possible (see the most recent victims this week in Hadera) and it is racing to build a nuclear weapon so that it can expeditiously carry out its professed aim to eradicate the Jewish nation state.

All this the world has known; and yet it has sat on its hands, occasionally extricating them to be wrung over Iran’s accelerating nuclear programme before resorting to the tried and tested strategy of maximum uselessness, diplomacy through the United Nations — fresh from that organisation’s triumph in disarming (not) that other threat to the world, Saddam Hussein; for which failure the head of its nuclear watchdog, Mohamed al Baradei, was doubtless awarded the Nobel Prize by a grateful Swedish establishment and wider world for whom America, not Iran, appears to be the greatest enemy of civilisation.

So Iran continues merrily on its diabolical way, murdering Israelis here, murdering Iraqis there, serenely building its apparatus of mass destruction while the alleged civilised world looks at Iraq and looks at President Bush and sucks its teeth and settles down to wait for the new Jewish holocaust wrapped in the mantle of sanctimonious opposition to pre-emptive action, and with Israel well on the way to being itself safely delegitimised and dehumanised. After all, are we not told by allegedly civilised people in Britain and Europe that it would have been better had Israel not been created?

How seriously can we take those expressions of horror at Israel’s putative annihilation, when those very same people lionise the Palestinians who are committed to precisely the same objective but whose every word and deed reinforcing that genocidal aim is sanitised or simply ignored? Since the Gaza pull-out, Israel has all but disappeared from the media radar. Why? Because the hacks only get excited when Israel behaves in a way they can condemn. Sure, Hadera was covered; but no-one would know, from the British media, that since the Gaza pull-out Palestinian attrition has relentlessly continued and has only resulted in so few incidents because so many attacks have been thwarted. Tom Gross’s invaluable resumés provide a flavour of what has been happening:

• During the course of an anti-terrorism raid in the West Bank, Israeli forces have found a hand grenade hidden by Palestinians under a baby. In a briefing following the discovery, Lieutenant General Arik Khen of the Israeli army said, "We felt something wasn't right. We demanded to search the baby and we found she (the wife of a wanted Palestinian) was carrying a grenade that she attempted to hide under the baby." The army said that the apprehension of five wanted terrorists in this raid almost certainly prevented a deadly attack against Israeli civilians. The IDF general added that searches were ongoing and daily attempts to carry out "terror attacks by Palestinian groups against Israeli civilians have not stopped even for a minute."

• During Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's meeting with U.S President George W. Bush last Thursday, Bush agreed that Palestinian terrorists could be absorbed into the official Palestinian security organizations, and groups such as Hamas would not be disbanded as Israel and the Road Map demand. President Bush is supporting Abbas's decision to try and work with Hamas even though the Americans have consistently repeated that violent groups have no place in a democratic process.

• At the beginning of this week Luay Saadi the leader of Islamic Jihad's military wing in the West Bank was killed in clashes with Israeli troops. Saadi is believed to have been responsible for two recent suicide bombings. (Islamic Jihad said yesterday's suicide bombing in Hadera was revenge for the killing of Saadi. Israeli military sources pointed out that a bomb of this magnitude takes longer than two days to plan.) This year alone Saadi was responsible for organizing suicide attacks which led to the killing of 12 Israelis and the injuring of 150 others in suicide attacks. He was originally arrested in 1999 by Israel but freed from prison in January 2004. Israel is under constant pressure from other countries, including Western democracies, to release Palestinian prisoners. Saadi was not the first released Palestinian prisoner to quickly go on to kill Israelis again. For example, the Palestinian terrorist who blew himself up on August 28, 2005, at the Beersheba bus station was released in 2004 as part of a prisoner exchange with the Palestinian Authority.

• The Israeli military has discovered that Palestinian terrorists are preparing to launch mortar and rocket attacks on Jerusalem. Palestinians have smuggled launchers and mortars into Palestinian suburbs near to Jerusalem. On October 16, the Israeli army detained a 50-year-old Palestinian who was in the process of smuggling a mortar shell and firing mechanism from Bir Zeit to Jerusalem in the trunk of his vehicle. Meanwhile Palestinians continue to fire Qassam rockets into southern Israel. A Qassam rocket was fired into the Israeli town of Sderot from Gaza yesterday morning, prior to the suicide attack in Hadera. Five Qassams were fired into Israel on Tuesday.

• Israeli soldiers prevented a 15-year old Palestinian from crossing a checkpoint south of Nablus after he had attempted to avoid the security check. The Palestinian boy had in his possession a mortar shell and two knives. The mortar shell was detonated in a controlled manner by border police. This is the sixth weaponry smuggling attempt stopped by the Israeli army at the Hawara security crossing in the last two months.

• The Palestinian Authority continues to promote hate ideology on its television channels. PA TV has broadcast two shows that deny Israel's legitimacy as a state and another that depict Israelis as cruel and inhumane murderers. A play filmed in front of a live audience and broadcast on PA TV shows Palestinian "resistance fighters" in Israeli jails. A prisoner recounts how he was repeatedly beaten by an Israeli soldier for saying he comes from Jaffa. In "The Canaanite," a Palestinian-produced series for daily viewing during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, an actor depicting an Israeli soldier gleefully and cold-bloodedly murders a bride in her wedding gown. On Jordanian TV during the month of Ramadan, the series "al-Shatat" (the Diaspora) has been aired. The series features a "Jewish conspiracy theory" showing Jewish plans to dominate the world and repeats the blood libel lie that Jews ritually kill Palestinian children. (Jordan has now pulled the series after the translation service MEMRI exposed its vile nature.)

When is the world going to recoil in horror and issue fierce denunciations of all this too?