With walkie talkies and pagers exploding is anything really safe? What’s next mobile phones?

This week, the world watched on as thousands of people were seriously injured and killed as their personal devices exploded.

At least 37 people were killed, including two children, and some 3,000 wounded in the two days of explosions as Israel targeted supposed Hezbollah members by remotely exploding devices.

Now, whatever anyone might feel about the politics, was this not an act of terrorism. In so much as what we have been told what terrorism is?

Essentially, we have an attack in a public place which does not discriminate between military personnel nor civilians. The act of taking out thousands of people because they happen to be in the vicinity of these devices is an act of terrorism is it not?

There really is no other way of describing this. Imagine this happening in any place at any other time.

Yet, we like to pick and choose what constitutes terrorism. All forms of terrorism must be condemned but we tend to ignore those that are carried out by our allies.

Because to condemn an act of terror carried out by someone we are supporting and arming means we lose all moral high ground and all our foreign policy decisions are called into question.

Instead of calling it a terror incident we call it an 'operation' or 'neutralising' the enemy.

Clearly, if the perpetrator in this case had been a Muslim group and government or had Muslim ties then this would have been a case of terrorism.

But it was not described as such by western governments because the victims were said to be part of a ‘proscribed terror group’. So, any actions carried against them regardless of how many civilians were killed or maimed does not matter.

We have become accustomed to calling out one set of mindless barbaric acts but ignoring others. It is almost second nature.

There are many examples where we water down the actions of our own government and our allies. 

If this was a film or TV series, the perpetrators would be seen as some evil empire and the heroes would have been those attempting to stop this mindless act of violence from happening.

I guess, from the reactions my government, we have been rooting for the wrong guys in the movies all this time?