Gayford Woodrow, the consul general in Jerusalem, sent a dispatch to the Foreign Office on Sept 12, six days after the attack, saying: "Before we reproach the Arabs too much, perhaps we might try to put ourselves in their shoes. They are, after all, human beings with normal human failings. The Palestinians in particular have seen their land taken away from them by a group of mainly European invaders equipped with superior armed force and modern technology.

Sound familiar? Tell you what, Mr. Woodrow, old chappie, if those pitiable Palestinians had murdered 11 British athletes (no, it would have to be more to be proportionate to the British population . . . ) would you be quite so sanguine, old thing? (Right ho, then, yes, you probably would. I'm sure after 9-11 you expressed similar sentiments to your fellow Foreign Office retirees in the hushed musty halls of your club . . . .)

Whatever one's moral criticism, it must be agreed that the Munich operation was well planned and that the Arabs there carried it out to the bitter end.

Of course, the fact that it was done well trumps all moral criticism, doesn't it? Didn't we all secretly admire Hitler's extermination plan for being so damnably efficient, eh what?

It is said that lives were really lost because of Israel and West German bungling incompetence."

[No, actually the bungling incompetence was all on the German side. Israel's mistake was in allowing those highly efficient Germans to take over the rescue attempt.]

Mr Woodrow's head of department, James Craig, wrote on his letter: "Not bad but he goes just a little too far."

Too far. Oh quite. Won't hit quite the right note with the American cousins, what, old Craig, old thing?

David Gore-Booth, a first secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "Before we shed too many tears about the Lufthansa hijacking, decide to boycott airlines like the trade unionists at Heathrow or feel obliged to express our concern to the German government, it would be as well to ask ourselves what the implications are so far as the Arab/Israel dispute is concerned. It is self-evident that the hijacking is a manifestation of the Palestine problem. . . . What the hijacking does is to remind the international community that the Palestine problem exists: in one sense this is unwelcome to the Israelis as it shows their pretence for what it is, but in another it provides them with an excellent opportunity to enlist the aid of the international community in erasing the problem.

Hence their apoplectic reaction to the hijacking, which is of course calculated to produce the desired attitude in airline workers at Heathrow. It also provides them with an excellent opportunity to slip into Syria, bomb a few more bases and kill a few more innocent people with impunity. Deplorable though the hijacking may be it caused the loss of no lives whereas . . . casualties in Syria may be as many as 45 or even more.

So who's worse, the British or the French or the Germans? I think it's a tie.