FOUR Palestinian terrorists, disguised in the uniforms of Israeli soldiers, walk into the outskirts of Hebron and murder four Jews, including a little girl aged five.

This seemed to me to be the most important news story of last Saturday evening, but what were our inane bulletins banging on about instead? The silent Pixie Sven and his "relationship" with the sedative Ulrika. The daft plane-spotters in Greece. Good grief - that such pastimes can nurture the human imagination! Not just plane-spotting, but in Greece too. If they were in Greece, why didn't they take the opportunity to learn Plato in his native language; or at least to visit the Acropolis if only to sit on the steps eating an ice cream and burbling, "Gosh, it's very old!"

The other story of the night was the media's dislike of David Blunkett's saying we are being "swamped" by illegal immigrants. What other word might they prefer to describe the nightly scene in northern France where asylum-seekers risk their lives by first climbing the high wire fences and then attaching themselves to the exterior of cross-channel trains?

It has all provoked a "debate" about whether illegal immigrants should be sent back to their country of origin. There can be no question about this. Of course they should be sent back - or else what's the point of the word "illegal" here? If they are illegal, this means they should not be here. What next? Are we to legalise felony out of an unwillingness to offend thieves?

But back to the big story of the murder of four more Israelis by Arafat's death squads. This is the latest episode in a long-running crisis which is certainly going to intensify in the weeks and months to come - especially if the US decides to wage war on the Iraqi dictatorship. Almost the whole world says that the US should not do this but that the Arab-Israeli conflict should be settled first. I don't think so. On the contrary, if Saddam were eliminated - and, one might dare to hope, Syria's equally vile Sadat along with him - the international pressure on Israel would be greatly eased and the Palestinian question would no longer assume the same seriousness.

The British Foreign Office, the corporatists in the EU, and indeed most of the world's press - and especially the anti-semitic BBC, which ought to think of re-titling itself the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation - constantly side with the Arabs and denounce Israel. They say that the Israelis should "give land for peace" - which is nothing but a craven recommendation of the policy of blackmail as the way to conduct practical politics. What - give us what we want or we'll continue killing you? Besides, the Palestinians have been offered their own state many times. And when they were offered it, their response was to gather their other Arab allies and wage war on Israel - not just once, but four times since 1948.

The Arabs wish only to drive Israel into the sea. How many more times do the Foreign Office, the EU bureaucrats and the BBC need to hear one or other of the Arab leaders say that their aim is the destruction of Israel before they will accept that it is the Palestinians and not the Jews who are the problem in the Middle East?

As for the Palestinians, they are allowed full democratic and religious freedom in Jerusalem, and their holiest mosque is on Israel's temple mount. Contrast these freedoms with what goes on in almost all the Arab states where dictators oppress their own people, in most of which Christians and Jews are not even allowed to hold a religious service.

It is, of course, politically incorrect to say so, but the Arab world is a shambles and has been so for 400 years. It is time these things were understood by the political bigots in the West who cast Israel in the role of oppressor when truly it is the victim.