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“The French and British plan to ask the UN for … financial sanctions against Libya, and intend to take Libyan leaders to the International Criminal Court over crimes against humanity.” Jerusalem Post 25^th February 2011).

The French and British, and the US president and others, express outrage over the fact that the rulers and government of Libya shoot indiscriminately at civilians in Libya.

They do not, however, choose to express outrage over the fact that the rulers and government of Gaza shoot indiscriminately at civilians in Israel – most recently with two Grad rockets fired at homes in the Israeli city of Beersheba.

Is there any action, no matter how barbaric, that will convince the hypocritical West to censor the Palestinian Arabs, or are we condemned to permanently live in a two-tier society, with one set of lenient rules for Palestinian Arabs (underpinned by billions in no-strings-attached financial rewards) and an entirely different set of diplomatic, economic, commercial and media shackles imposed on Jews in Israel? This kind of two-tier social system is what used to be termed ‘apartheid’.

We are waiting for the French and British to announce their plan to ask the UN for financial sanctions against the Gaza government and their intention to take the Gaza leaders to the International Criminal Court over crimes against humanity. Unless, of course, the shooting of rockets at Jewish civilians tucked up in bed at night is not considered a crime against humanity. Who knows, perhaps the UN doesn’t even regard Israeli Jews as part of humanity.

Only the UN can answer that question. After all, it was that august body that appointed Gaddafi to head the UN Human Rights Commission a few years ago.

British Prime Minister David Cameron may be moving in the right direction, however. He has gone on record as strongly criticising the utterly failed “Neighbourhood Policy” whereby the EU expropriates massive public funds from its taxpaying citizens and siphons the money off to dictatorships and savage regimes in the Middle East ostensibly for the purpose of ‘furthering democracy’, without getting anything in return. Least of all democracy. “We can’t be in this position where we are using our taxpayers’ money, other member states’ taxpayers’ money… when we are not getting anything in return,” said an aide to David Cameron during a recent visit to the Middle East.

Jews trying to have a safe night’s sleep would agree.

In these times of revolution in the Arab world and the much-hyped Western support for emancipation and democratisation in some of the world’s most barbaric Arab regimes, it is time also for the naive West to revolutionise its thinking, remove its blinkers and, for the first time in 60 years, treat everyone equally. That means imposing the law equally on all tyrants, mass-murderers, terrorists, thieves, gun-runners, human rights abusers and genocidal maniacs. Including those hitherto protected by the West – the Palestinians. If the shoe fits, the wearer should be made to wear it – whatever his ethnicity.

Otherwise we perpetuate the current two-tier social system. Apartheid, to you and me.