It didn't take long for them to crawl out of the woodwork. A contingent from the monstrous regiment of phoney revolutionaries and useful idiots joined the orchestrated anti-Israel demonstrations in the UK yesterday - among them Annie Lennox, Bianca Jagger and one Alexi Sayle - a comedian who, having spent the 80s spouting Marxist platitudes, has spent the past few years making fun of his past position. A man worth listening too, then.

They marched alongside demonstrators who held banners which proclaimed 'We are Hamas.' Of course of the people taking part, many would have been quite genuine useful idiots, others still genuine Israel-haters. After all, there have been no demos protesting at the 6,000 rockets fired by Hamas into Israel in recent years.

But I'd wager that the defining characteristic of those who choose such occasions to display their sense of aggrieved humanity (just look at the expression on Lennox's face) is simply this: sheer ignorance.

Ignorance of what Hamas is, or stands for. Ignorance of its beliefs, not least on the rights of women or gays (one of the most unintentionally funny banners ever must surely be that spied on a US campus a few years back - 'Gays for Hezbollah'). Ignorance of Islamism's hatred of Jews. And only a genuinely ignorant or genuinely illiterate person could equate the casualties of the recent actions with the Holocaust, as was being done yesterday.

It is the same ignorance which sees the broadcasting on a major UK channel of a Christmas day speech by the Iranian President as a bit of 'edgy' fun.

PW