America's narrowing vision of the Middle East

Earlier this week, Stuart and Doreen Shapiro were forced to flee their Brooklyn home after receiving a spate of death threats deemed serious enough to warrant an increased police presence on the streets of their neighbourhood.

Their offence was to have as a son a humanitarian worker who had breakfasted last weekend with Yassir Arafat in the Palestinian leader's compound as Israeli forces came knocking holes in his creaking offices.

According to the New York Times, Adam Shapiro, a Manhattan lawyer, persuaded Israeli officers to let him and others into the compound to treat wounded Palestinians. Mr Arafat gave him breakfast in gratitude. Mr Shapiro's sins were visited upon the parents and they are now in hiding.

We should not make too much of the plight of the Shapiros. There have always been idiot thugs eager to dress up their psychopathic tendencies in the respectable guise of a so-called cause. And we can sympathise with those non-violent neighbours who reacted with disgust to the news that one of their own spent Passover weekend breaking bread with the Palestinian leader as he praised the suicide bomber who slew more than 20 Jews as they sat down for a seder.