When Canada had two people kidnapped by the FLQ in 1970, Canada's government -- not a particularly militaristic one -- declared the War Measures Act and sent the tanks onto the streets of Montreal. If those streets had been booby-trapped the way Jenin was, civilian casualties would have been huge.

In Russia, when Chechens and Russians fight over the same piece of land, the reaction of Moscow is brutal. When 42 people, including 17 children, died recently in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan (next-door to Chechnya) after a bomb was planted along a parade route, President Vladimir Putin called the terrorists "Nazis" and promised they would take the consequences. Those consequences are unlikely to make many waves in the UN or NGOs.

But like the NGOs and the UN, most media throughout the world when talking about terrorism in Israel adopt a tone so different to that used when talking about terrorism anywhere else that you have to make the assumption a completely different yardstick is used. Israel is now like Orwell's Emmanuel Goldstein, a hate figure for virtually every progressive special interest group regardless of its connection to Israel. But why?

The United Nations hates Israel and Jews because the UN is the club for and run by the Third World. The Third World, its supporters and Europe hate Israel because Israel is the stalking horse of America and in their eyes America's symbol. Moreover, Israel is the only truly democratic country in the Middle East and a representative of the very Western ideas that both traditional dictators and the quasi-Marxist and theocratic dictators of the Third World despise. In addition, there is a genuine element of sympathy for the Palestinians in a conflict that has been going on over the same piece of land for most of the 20th and now into the 21st century.

Then, of course there is genuine anti-Semitism. That virus is alive and kicking.