Imagine you are sitting at prayers in your local mosque on a Friday when suddenly thirty of your fellow worshippers are shredded to bits by a bomb. This is a frequent occurrence in Pakistan and Iraq. The murderers are Muslims themselves and we in the rest of the world no longer bat an eyelid on hearing of such an event. Why is that?

It’s because this is what we have come to expect from that group of people. They do it so often that it has become a humdrum matter of fact. In a market place, at a wedding, at a funeral or in a mosque, if you are a Muslim you have to expect that another Muslim faction is out to get you.

If you are a woman who has been caught talking to a man who is not your husband, brother or father, then you could be stoned. If you have been raped you may be accused of adultery unless you have four male witnesses to confirm the rape. Can you imagine a group of gang bangers coming forth in support of the woman they have just raped?

if you are a woman in Saudi Arabia you are not even allowed to drive a car.

Left wingers and women’s libbers don’t seem to be bothered by this discrimination at all. They are too busy picking on Israel for protecting its borders. Of course, there is a double standard here but it’s one that I’m proud of because it means that the world expects more from Israel than it does from the other side. And it does this because Israel is a democracy with a modern court system.

I have been writing about this double standard since 2007. Here and here and here.

If Israel defends itself by not allowing arms to be smuggled into Gaza and in the fracas nine Turkish activists are killed, then Israel is condemned.

If international navigation is placed in jeopardy because Somali pirates are constantly hijacking ships for ransom, we seem to accept the situation in a rather complacent manner. They need the money, the charities explain, as if any of that booty would go to feed the poor people of Somalia.

Anyway, they are Muslims and isn’t that what Muslims do?

If Israel were to do this sort of thing then there would be outrage at the UN. The Brits and the French would shriek in horror at such piracy as has been committed by the Somalis. Note that Israel only wanted to inspect the stunt aid flotilla and offered to transport legitimate aid to the Gazans.

Even this was not good enough. Israel is expected to sacrifice more than any other nation in the world. Its security, its right to exist and its desire for a peaceful life next door to neighbours who only wish it harm.

In other words, the double standard is at work here because Israel is not like its neighbours. It has a conscience and a system of justice that is not Neolithic and this is held against it in a perverse way.

It’s actually a reverse sort of compliment from the world which expects the highest of standards from Israel while accepting the lowest from its opponents. That is why the world shrugs its shoulders indifferently at suicide bombings, beheadings and stonings perpetrated by Muslims against their enemies as well as on their own fellow Muslims.