So, Mahmoud Abbas shows his true colours by jumping into bed with Hamas in a leadership reconciliation agreement, and the response from the European Union is as follows: it ups its donations to the Palestinians by 85 million euros. France chipped in with a little slap across Israel's face all of its own by offering an extra 10 million euros just days after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had met French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris to ask him not to.

Europe's decision to raise its donation was a response to Israel's suspension of tax revenue transfers to the Palestinians following the reconciliation agreement. Understandably, the Israelis want guarantees that the money they transfer won't end up in the hands of Hamas. It's a rather straightforward national security issue, and the EU response was therefore deliberately calculated to undermine Israeli national security even as Brussels continues to designate Hamas as a terrorist organisation, which of course it is.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA responded to the move with a glowing quotation from European Commissioner Štefan Füle, who said in announcing it: "With this decision, the Commission is demonstrating again its indefatigable support of the Palestinian people."

It does not come any clearer than that.

So, what this means is that through this country's membership of the European Union every British citizen - Jew and non-Jew alike - is now funding a Palestinian terror group which refers to Jews as the "sons of apes and pigs", denies the Holocaust, swears allegiance to the Protocols of Zion, openly aims at the total destruction of Israel, and last week mourned the death of Osama bin Laden as an "Arab Holy Warrior".

In other words, your taxes are funding antisemitism of an intensity unseen since Germany in the mid-1930s - and they're putting cash into the pockets of terrorists.

Of course, the clueless chancelleries of Europe - and Britain is as bad as any of them - are in such a state of denial about Hamas, antisemitism and global terrorism generally that the notion that there's anything wrong with all this will be completely lost on them.

Most of the senior figures in our foreign ministries (ditto our media, our universities and our non-governmental organisations) have accepted the Palestinian narrative of victimhood lock, stock and barrel.

And that is why any strategy by people and organisations aiming at a fair deal for Israel that does not internalise this as the core of the problem - and then loudly and publicly take up the fight on that basis - is destined for certain failure.

Robin Shepherd is director of
international affairs at the Henry Jackson Society