Yesterday the House Commons voted 274-12 in favour of the following motion: “This house believes that the government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-states solution.”

By so doing, the British government officially gives its support to a terrorist organisation that shares the same aims as Islamic State with which we are at war. The government of the Palestinian Arabs is a coalition of Fatah and Hamas – this latter party is designated a terrorist organisation by most of the civilised nations. Hamas is not interested in “a two states solution,” but declares every day that its aim is the destruction of Israel.

British MPs have thus chosen to give encouragement to an organisation which lists genocide as part of its agenda. It was the cowardly terrorists of Hamas who recently fired hundreds of rockets at Israeli towns from schools and hospitals in Gaza.

Israel uses its weapons to defend its people, while Hamas uses its people to defend its weapons

No denunciations of this evil policy were forthcoming from the West who instead condemned Israel’s legitimate attempts to destroy Hamas’ rocket launchers and its network of tunnels through which the terrorists regularly emerge to attempt further slaughter in Israel’s southern towns and villages. Incidentally, the West – including Britain – pours countless £millions of aid into Gaza which money does not go to the welfare of the people but to the purchase of more weaponry and the expansion of the system of tunnels.

Of course Israel would prefer to have a peace-loving Palestinian state for its next door neighbour. Indeed it has tried to negotiate this on many occasions. In 1998, for example, at Camp David, Bill Clinton came within an ace of achieving this happy arrangement – only for Yasser Arafat to leave the negotiating table, return to the Middle East, tear up the agreement he had just signed under Clinton and start a second intifada – a terrorist uprising – against Israel. By all accounts, Hillary Clinton’s comments on Arafat’s treachery are unprintable.

Israel is a democracy surrounded by barbarous enemy tyrannies who have tried four times since 1948 to wipe Israel off the map. Thus in sixty-six years the Israelis have been obliged to fight four defensive wars against these aggressors. Hamas are furious at the moment because the Egyptian president has locked up its supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood and cut off much of its weapons supply line.

Shame on those 274 MPs.