I refer to K Temoc's letter Palestinian issue not exclusively a Muslim cause . In his letter, he considers al-Qaeda a terrorist organisation while 'Palestinian resistance groups' aren't. His terminology is flawed.

In order to call al-Qaeda a terrorist organisation and Palestinian terrorist groups mere 'freedom fighters', he compared not their tactics but rather their goals. While indeed the likes of Fatah may have little in common with al-Qaeda in terms of goals, that doesn't change anything.

What makes a group a terrorist one isn't their goals, their plans, their dreams of their ambitions. It isn't because of their cause or their wants. It is rather in the way they try to obtain it.

Temoc fails to see that terrorism isn't a cause of its own, but rather a way of fighting. Apparently Islamist al-Qaeda advocates 'anarchic nihilism' - never mind that their ambition is quite temporal - to establish a world-wide caliphate.

But I wonder, how is it that al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation for advocating an 'ultra-religious agenda' while Hamas and Islamic Jihad - who differ very little in religious ideology - are 'freedom fighters'?

And Temoc's grasp on history is even more disappointing. For example, he tried to draw parallels between Jewish militias and Palestinian terrorist groups. But one of the instances he quoted implied that they bombed 'a hotel' in Jerusalem.

That hotel in Jerusalem was, by the way, the King David Hotel and it wasn't a hotel per se. It was the command center for the British military. Most of the bombing's victims were the British military and their staff, not hapless Swedish tourists sunbathing on the sundeck.

And the embassy targeted in Rome wasn't merely any foreign embassy but that of the United Kingdom.

But what better way to explain support of Israel than by American grassroots stereotyping them under the banner of America's Christian Right? Take for example Churchill County in Nevada, which voted overwhelmingly Republican last November as well as for legalised prostitution - not exactly a Christian Right cause.

Even in the so-called blue states where there is little sympathy for Christian fundamentalism, pro-Israel sentiment runs deep.