6-Jun-11: Many nations have enemies - but what do you call people like this barbarian?

The massacre of the Fogel family - father, mother and three children aged 11, 3 and a three month infant, all slashed to death in their beds - had a devastating effect on Israeli society when it happened on a Sabbath night in March in the quiet Samaria community of Itamar. Not because murders of innocents in their homes is unknown in this country. Far from it. But unlike a bombing or a shooting or a drive-by killing, these murders were carried out by people who could see, touch, smell their victims as they slashed their flesh. The grandfather of the three slaughtered children said the scene was "horrendous, beyond description, beyond comprehension".

Two cousins, Amjad Mahmad Awad and Hakim Awad, from a village a short hike from Itamar, were charged with the murders, indicted in an Israeli court and confessed. DNA evidence found at the Fogel family home connects the two Awads to the crime.

Now in a reminder of how this ongoing war is not based on grievances or claims but on hatred so intense, so all-encompassing and profound that it leaves civilized people gasping, Amjad Mahmad Awad, 19, has given voice to the credo of terrorists everywhere:

"I don't regret what I did, even if it means I'm sentenced to death... I'm proud of what I did."

People who have not had to confront terrorism from close up often have difficulty comprehending just how far from familiar norms the values and standards of such people are. The hatred harbored by these people is simply in a different league. Imaging a life in which you compromise and come to terms with such people is something you cannot do once you become aware of the barbarity animating their lives and actions.

Now go try to find a single non-Israeli news channel that has published yesterday's statement by this vile and repulsive man.

For the record, the murderer of our daughter is made of the same sickening material.