This is a terrible thing, whatever organisation was responsible. Its scale is of a different order from previous terrorist bombings - on a level not far below earthquakes, or carpet bombing carried out by the British and Americans in World Wat II.

But if it does turn out that this is a consequence of what has been happening in the Middle East, (and it is worth remembering that when Oklahoma happened everyone jumped to the wrong assumption), that does not mean that the ordinary people living there, people like us in all essentials, are any more responsible for what happened today than the people in small town America were responsible for what Timothy McVeigh and his colleagues did in Oklahoma.

People "celebrating" on streets in Palestine? I'm sure there were people "celebrating" on streets in our countries when they heard about Hiroshima. And they would be if Baghdad or Kabul were to be destroyed next week in some spectacular demonstration of American nemesis. Some people, not most peoiple.

The mindset responsible for what happened today, and for those "celebrations" is in no way peculiar to terrorists in the Middle East. It's a mindset that says "Now we are at war, we will do whatever we see as necessary, and we will have no regard for the people we kill. They are all the enemy."

And when people say things like "ragheads", "Allah worshippers", "make a crater of their country", that is precisely the mindset they are embracing.

God help us all. And God is the same God as Allah.