Civilian targets

I, like Dr Grimmer, may consider those aged between 13 and 17 as children, not adults, but this is not a distinction which the perpetrators of Palestinian terrorism make (The Irish Examiner, August 7).

Hamas considers those aged 15 and over as legitimate targets while the mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Akrameh Sabri, has stated that the killing of Israeli children is permissible, given that they will eventually grow up to serve in the army; for him,"Israeli society is an entirely military society, without civilians".

The Qatari cleric, Sheikh Yussuf al-Kardawi, goes even further. In his weekly programme ‘Sharia and Life’, watched by tens of millions on Al-Jazeera, he frequently justifies the killing of Israeli children’ by appealing to the democratic nature of Israeli society in which all citizens are to be held accountable for the actions of their elected governments.