

This is the third and final installment of a three-part series on the Gaza situation, political fallout, root causes, and real-world ramifications.
Certainly, the spark of the present crisis is Hamas’ cowardly terrorist attack upon Israeli civilians. Indeed, for many people—and not only in Gaza and the Arab world—the existence and continued survival of Israel is the paramount problem. But absent Israel’s eradication and, quite likely, a genocide of its Jewish citizens, this root cause must be taken as a given. What, then, within Gaza, the Arab world, and many Western nations, are some corollary root causes exacerbating the difficulty in forging an Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist?
As patently evidenced by their customary lack of material support and unwillingness to permit resettlement, most Arab nations use the Palestinians as a pawn to deflect their own populations from focusing on liberty, democracy, and prosperity at home. This would constitute an existential crisis for these authoritarian nations, which would likely be unable to survive their failure to meet the rising expectations of their peoples. The great dilemma for these Arab nations: should a free, democratic, prosperous, and peaceful Gazan state be created, it will not be in their regimes’ best interests. Far better for them to have Palestinians’ and the Arab world’s unrest, invective, and violence directed at Israel than internally at their governments. For example, following this cynical strategy, many Sunni and Shia nations abet the propagation of hatred within the Palestinian people. This includes inculcating the young with hatred of Israel and Jews in general, which will poison the prospects for peace for generations to come.
These Arab regimes are not alone in doing so, for, despite claiming to support peace and the “two-state solution,” they have partners in international institutions and many Western nations who have their own root causes for promoting hatred of the Jewish state and its citizens, including their prejudicial ideological imperatives and domestic political aims.
In the West, particularly, an ancient hatred has melded with postmodernism to produce virulent antisemitism. Traditionally housed on the right, over the past half-century, antisemitism had been in retreat or at least dormant in this political quarter. This is no longer the case, as an influential cadre of neo-isolationists spinning many thinly veiled anti-Israel tropes has spurred a recrudescence of antisemitism on the right. Why has this not been routinely and righteously denounced by the left, which until recently had been a bastion against antisemitism?
Because, unlike yesterday’s liberals, today’s progressive movement is postmodernist. Influenced by the Baby Boomers’ old New Left that, in turn, was imbued with the radical theories of European socialists and Marxists, today’s postmodernists—including the bulk of American progressives—are secular to the core and hostile to all religion. As a result, they have rejected the Biblical notion that we are all created in God’s image and hence are all endowed with human dignity.
In its place, the progressives’ new mantra is that race determines all and that the world can be divided into power relationships consisting of “oppressors” and “oppressed.” In one of history’s great ironies, a mere two generations after Hitler defined Jews as an inferior race that had to be wiped off the face of the earth, the progressives have now defined Jews as the ultimate white colonial oppressors of Palestinian “people of color.” In a world where so many have lost their moral bearings, the plight of Jews and Israel, their national home, is dire indeed.
In tragic consequence, then, the right and the left have a mutually shameful need to ignore the antisemitism of the other side of the political divide. But this is not the end of Western nations and their leaders’ political imperatives to abide hatred of Israel and aid the establishment of a separate state in Gaza. One need only look at the influx of new citizens of Arab and/or Muslim descent into European nations and the far smaller number of Jewish citizens who reside in them. Being democracies, for these leaders, the math is obvious: condemning Israel and supporting a “two-state” solution is a political winner. Still, even if one were to ignore the domestic political incentives to assail Israel and support Gazan statehood, in the battle between Israel and the Palestinians, it is apparent that these nations and the international organizations to which they belong have long ago abandoned any pretext of being an impartial arbiter and become Palestinian and Hamas partisans.
It is also abundantly clear that the proposed “two-state” solution will not work. If implemented, it will constitute the rewarding of Hamas’ terrorist butchery, rape and kidnapping of civilians in Israel on October 7 and Hamas’ subsequent attempts to steal humanitarian aid to rebuild itself at the expense of starving the Palestinian people (which, as we have seen, they have blamed on Israel, a scurrilous charge that a feckless international media has abetted).
Already, one of the ramifications of even considering this is the moral abomination of pretending Hamas’ terrorist attack did not happen or attempting to justify it by citing Israel’s “occupation” and “genocide” of Gazans. Rewarding, or at the very least blithely ignoring, terrorism will ensure more terrorism. It signals both Hamas and the majority of Palestinians that once a new state is established in Gaza, such terrorist acts can continue until the hated Jewish state is eradicated. Bluntly, for Hamas, Gazans, and the haters of Israel throughout the world, the continued international support for a “two-state” solution after the October 7 terrorist attack encourages, facilitates, and condones their hatred and terrorism.
As for Israel, the crisis has provided its opponents with an opportunity to revile it on the world stage and has witnessed latent antisemitism resurface. But what else was Israel to do after the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7? Simply, Israel did what any nation would do: it defended itself against a terrorist organization by rooting it out and eliminating the threat. That Hamas inhumanely used hostages and Gazan civilians to cravenly shield itself was not unexpected, and that is why Israel has gone to tremendous lengths to avoid civilian casualties. Rather than protect civilians, however, Hamas not only blamed Israel but also blatantly lied about the number of casualties, especially of women and children. Far too many around the world chose to believe Hamas’ lies over the truth about Israel. The result is the international vilification of Israel, of which that nation is painfully well aware.
But Israeli leaders also recognize the international community is not allied with them. It never has been, and if history and the current wave of antisemitism are any guide, it likely will not be for quite some time. Consequently, as has often been the case, in an existential crisis, Israel did what it needed to do to survive—international opinion be damned. It is lost upon so many that, while they wonder what impact this crisis will have on Gazans (an issue noted above), they spend no time recognizing the ramifications for the Israelis, which, combined with their ancient and modern historical experiences, affirms that it is better to be respected—and even feared—than loved in a world that has long sought your extermination. Thus, in defending itself, Israel did not suddenly become a political pariah. But, in its dangerous region of the world, Israel’s actions once again spoke volumes to its enemies that the Jewish state will survive and thrive—and that its enemies will not.
For the rest of the world, the calculation remains both elementary and ineluctable: if you reward terrorism, you get more terrorism. The international community fails to understand this. Israel does. Now, you know why they are reviled.
And why Israel is right.
An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) represented Michigan’s 11th Congressional District from 2003 to 2012. He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a co-host of “John Batchelor: Eye on the World” on CBS radio, among sundry media appearances.
Andrew Zack is a Detroit-area attorney who is observing these events with great trepidation.