The West is proving that Islamist terrorism works
The instinct is no longer to support Israel, but to reward the fanatics who carried out the October 7 attacks
What would be the worst foreign policy message imaginable? There are many contenders, but the frontrunner has to be simply that “terrorism works”. Once this lesson has been learnt, the door will be open to years of violence against us. It’s called appeasement, and history has taught us where it leads.
If you, like me, are concerned by the rise of Islamist extremism around the world, the danger it poses to Jewish communities everywhere, and the way it threatens both the firmness of liberal values and our national security, the inconstancy of Western support for Israel in its mission to destroy Hamas – including here in Britain – should fill you with dread. Most voters want our country to stand up for democracy, not capitulate to the terrorist forces rising to menace it in the most brutal manner imaginable. Why can’t our leaders express without equivocation that backing Israel in its fight to destroy Hamas completely was, and is, the right thing to do? Why do they stay silent, giving succour to our enemies?
Instead, seven months on from October 7, Western politicians seem intent on pursuing what Ronald Reagan called the “utopian solution of peace without victory”. As he put it during the Cold War: “They call their policy ‘accommodation’ and they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he’ll forget his evil ways and learn to love us.” Of course, the opposite is true.
It is difficult to look back at the months since October 7 and conclude that this has not been the message. An unprovoked massacre of 1,200 innocents, involving the most depraved scenes of butchery, mutilation, infanticide and necrophilia, has lead to a groundswell of support – for the perpetrators. From the Ivy League to Oxbridge, university authorities are indulging students that openly support the “intifada”: an appalling wave of terror that claimed thousands of lives, many in suicide bombs of the sort we suffered in the Manchester Arena a few years ago.
On our streets, tens of thousands march not in the spirit of peace but of violence, not just against the Jewish state but also against the Cenotaph, the Union flag, the statue of Churchill and ourselves. Who bothers to recall any more how this war started? Who spares a thought for the hostages? Who has the imagination to consider how Britain would have reacted were such attacks directed at our own children? And how the call to eliminate the perpetrators would be the only moral course of action in the cause of future peace?
Shamefully, however, we seek to avoid “direct confrontation”, hoping that the subversives will “learn to love us”. As Reagan said during waves of civil disobedience at Berkeley in the 1960s: “Some of you who should know better, and are old enough to know better, let young people think that they had the right to choose the laws that they would obey, so long as they did it in the name of social protest.”
And so the message is amplified. Terrorism works. In Gaza, Tehran, Moscow and Beijing, our enemies nod with the approval of so many crocodiles, concluding that our disregard for our own values is far from limited to the domestic theatre.
Look at the messages we have been sending overseas. In any normal universe, there would be no question: such outrages as those of October 7 could only be met with annihilation.
This, after all, was the conclusion drawn by London and Washington when Islamic State committed atrocities against our people. From Mosul to Raqqa, we didn’t bother sending text messages telling civilians to evacuate. We just did the job and, as a result, the world is a safer place.
Yet with Hamas hunkering down in Rafah, the world is conspiring to tie Israel’s hands. Uncle Sam is threatening to stop shipments of bombs and artillery shells if an offensive goes ahead. The loudest criticism is of Israel, not Hamas. Imagine if, 20 years ago, the terrorists who carried out 9/11 were surrounded and we had an opportunity to take them out. Would we have left them alone, giving them a chance to recover their strength? I highly doubt it. Yet here we are.
The messaging to our enemies, in short, is clear: however appalling your crimes, the Western public will have your backs. Fearing confrontation, their leaders will bend to the pressure. Terrorism works, at least when it comes to massacring Jews. God help us.