A few years ago, Ehud Barak, now Israel's Defence Minister, told a CNN interviewer: "We are living in a tough neighbourhood." That was back in the days when the focus was on the Israel-Palestine conflict and it was easier for the West's anti-Israel constituency to ignore the cut-throat régimes that surround the Jewish homeland.
So now that the horror of Assad's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, the violent power struggle in Egypt, and Libya's blood-stained battle for freedom, is pouring forth from every news outlet in the world, the facts about the Middle East should now be clear as daylight: Israel is dealing with a world in which justice is rarely achieved without bloodshed.
But make no mistake: this is no longer only Mr Barak's message, it is the message of the people of Syria, Egypt and Libya. So as the PSC's anti-Israel campaign across the UK reaches a new, disturbing low, we must conclude that those who repeatedly seek to undermine and delegitimise the Jewish state are driven by something far more frightening than the facts.
