Save the West from rewarding terrorists

After decades of indoctrinating Palestinian children with Jew-hatred, the Palestinian desire to erase Israel from the map has become a fact of life. As such, for current generations, there is no longer any space for serious discussion about a sovereign Palestinian state. The 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza was billed as “a test case for peace.” The Palestinians failed.

Just as Israel alone can wage war to free its hostages and topple Hamas, President Trump, as leader of the free world, is best positioned to press Western allies to abandon plans for recognizing “Palestine” – plans that prolong suffering and reward terrorism.

In the abstract, resolving the war in Gaza should be straightforward: An invading force attacked a sovereign nation. The aggressor was repelled but took hundreds of hostages, resulting in a counterattack to return those kidnapped and defeat the invading force.

If Hamas lays down its arms and releases the hostages, the war ends. It should be that simple. But tragically (and predictably), for Hamas, this war is not about people and certainly not about Israeli hostages – to Palestinian terrorists, both are expendable necessities.

Hamas is, first and foremost, a fanatical religious movement built on two tenets that many Western leaders refuse to confront. That failure has led to policies – such as the planned recognitions – that prolong the conflict.

Their first tenet is the complete eradication of the Jewish state; their second tenet is do whatever it takes to achieve the first. Neither point is up for reasonable debate. The atrocities of October 7, captured on Hamas’s own cameras, showed the world that terrorism, rape, the use of human shields, torture, and the weaponization of food are all justified means to the end. Israel’s destruction, and nothing less, is what Palestinian terrorists endeavored to set into motion on October 7.

For Hamas, the Jewish state’s cardinal sin is her very existence. And all the pseudo-socialist Western leaders who ignore this truth, while threatening Israel with recognition of “Palestine” and clamoring about coexistence, are acting in both a dangerous and fundamentally unserious manner.

When Europeans bend their knee to Palestinian terrorists, they are not promoting peace but indulging in domestic antisemitism – emboldening extremists while civilians on both sides continue to suffer.

For Israel and her true allies, it is unconscionable to reward – with a sovereign nation, no less – those who celebrated relatives who raped, murdered, and kidnapped their way through southern Israel, just as some did on 9/11.

And should the recognitions proceed, they will be met with a flick of the wrist from Jerusalem and should be met with condemnation from Washington. Palestinian leaders may wave the proverbial flag of victory, and their allies may send out verbose press releases, but not a single fact on the ground will shift so much as a hairsbreadth.

Such recognitions will be hollow, serving only to prolong the conflict by selling Palestinians a false fantasy and diminishing the geopolitical influence of those nations whose actions, in this context, are tantamount to declaring the world flat.

While even now, in the wake of the October 7 horrors, most Israelis seek peace with their neighbors, the vast majority of Israelis do not believe such peace is possible.

Israel knows her enemy more intimately than do Hamas’s allies in Washington or its sympathizers in Paris, Canberra, and London. Jerusalem knows that from Hamas’s ideological perspective the only acceptable outcome is death. Consequently, international opinion and lofty dictates will have no impact on Israel’s efforts to prevent another invasion.

After decades of terror being ignored, glossed over, and justified by an international community more interested in virtue signaling than in human life, Jerusalem will never again allow the diplomatic double standard for “Palestine” to put her citizens in harm’s way.

Aside from Hamas and its ilk, everyone wants to end the forever wars in the Middle East. President Trump has shown he has what it takes to do exactly that – and by condemning our allies’ plans for “Palestine” and underscoring the consequences of their moral bankruptcy, he can help bring this conflict to a close.

Sandra Parker is the Chairwoman of the Christians United for Israel Action Fund.