I suggest the right word for Hamas is ‘barbarians’. It was the Greeks who coined this word when savage, uncivilised tribes attacked their cities, looted and plundered, raped their women, and butchered the civilian population. They called these savage, primitive tribes ‘barbarians’ because they could not speak Greek. To Greek ears their guttural utterances sounded like childish noises – like ‘bar, bar, bar’ – so they called them ‘barbarians’. This all happened in the ancient world where Greek civilisation was sophisticated and advanced. This was the civilisation that invented democracy, philosophy and great art. So ‘barbarian’ means those people who are outside the gates of civilisation – and who, if they manage to break in, will destroy civilisation. That, I suggest, makes ‘barbarians’ the right word to label these murderous, terrorist thugs who fired 3,500 rockets into Israel and then invaded to butcher the innocent. Sadly, there are also ‘barbarians’ here in Australia – people who have cheered and encouraged the Hamas terrorists. They are the ‘barbarians’ in our midst, and they would destroy our civilisation if we let them.

A Speccie reader asks if the citizens of Israel should be called ‘Israelites’ or ‘Israelis’. The convention is the ancient people of Israel (in the Old Testament) are called ‘Israelites’ and the citizens of the modern nation are ‘Israelis’. Not a big difference really. Jews are the indigenous people of Palestine having lived there for more than 3,000 years – until they were driven out, first by the Romans, then by invading Arabs. It’s the Arabs who are the newcomers in Palestine.