ANALYSIS – For the last seventy years, one nation has been allowed to act without answering to any international law or norms. If anyone else had perpetrated the massacres committed by the government of Israel against the people of historic Palestine, there is no doubt that the world would have acted swiftly to end the bloodshed. But this is Israel which is regarded as a special case by the USA who uses its power as one of the five permanent members of the security council to give carte blanche to its vital ally in the region. Before its assaults on Gaza which have followed a siege punishing its people for daring to vote for Hamas, Israel had tricked the weak Palestinian Authority into working with it before seizing land during a vicious war in 2002. By then of course a wall had been constructed by that ghastly man called Ariel Sharon to protect the people of Israel from terrorists using suicide bombers to attack main land Israel. This was of course the same Sharon who along with Menachem Begin launched a war into Lebanon to destroy the PLO and oversaw the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. The war in Lebanon resulted in the creation of Hezbollah and later Hamas who are now the latest terrorists that the Israeli state is dealing with as it pounds Gaza without imputiny. Terrorism is of course awful.  It was awful in the 30s and 40s too when the Stern gang, Irgun and a wanted terrorist called Menachem Begin plied their deadly trade against the defenseless Palestinians. Today, Israel is attempting to disarm Hamas in the same way that it did the PLO – but it won’t succeed no matter how many people it kills. Trouble is that unless the world acts to rein in this pariah state it is going to continue to on it murderous rampage against the people of historic Palestine and that throws into the doubt the validity of the UN and the rule of law its charter is designed to uphold.