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The recognition of Palestine as a legitimate state by France and other European nations is intended to signal that those powers want Israel to stop its war with Hamas in Gaza. Instead, it signals that these powers may not have the stomach to win a war.

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War is hell, Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman said. So it is. There is no way around the death, destruction, suffering, and cruelty inherent in any armed conflict between peoples and nations.

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That horror is even more intense in urban conflict. Every building could house an enemy position. Every window is a sniper’s seat; every doorway could hide a team ready to ambush you.

Civilians caught in this maelstrom inevitably suffer. They have no weapons with which to defend themselves or possess too little training to resist professional soldiers. They die, starve, and suffer beyond compare — and there’s nothing they can do about it except leave if they can.

The type of warfare Hamas fights is even worse for civilians because they use their own people and their structures as shields. Hospitals become redoubts. The woman ostensibly looking for food could be a fighter herself, or a distraction for Israeli soldiers as Hamas terrorists take aim.

Israel thus has always faced a terrible choice in fighting its barbaric foe. They either avoid the inevitable destruction of urban warfare by holding back — and Hamas wins by surviving in control of the Gaza Strip. Or they go in with all they’ve got and use their vastly superior firepower to minimize their own casualties.

When Europeans and others elsewhere urge Israel to focus on the return of the hostages Hamas took nearly two years ago, they are essentially saying that Israel should not win its war.

When they recognize Palestine despite the fact that the war is ongoing, they are providing diplomatic cover to one side that attacked and kidnapped civilians in their futile and eternal effort to wipe Israel from the map.

Israel obviously cannot submit to this type of blackmail without postponing the inevitable day of reckoning with its mortal enemies. It’s to the Israeli Prime Minister’s eternal credit that he is resisting the temptation to declare victory when he knows he would be passing the ball to his successor.

At the end of his historic career, Benjamin Netanyahu plans to leave his country with secure borders rather than chase fleeting admiration in precincts already predisposed to loathe Israel.

French President Emmanuel Macron and the other European leaders cannot be wholly ignorant of these facts. The fact that, knowing all this, they still choose to endorse the patina of peace over victory raises a deeply haunting question.

If their nations were attacked, would they suffer the pain needed to survive? If they had to launch a counterattack, could they cause the pain needed to prevail?

This is no longer merely hypothetical. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated this. City after city has been devastated by the invaders. Ukrainian defenders have not abandoned the cities despite humanitarian concerns, knowing the huge advantages dense urban environments provide defenders.

Both sides know that winning a war requires brutal behavior. They do it anyway because both sides mean to win.

Imagine a Russian invasion of Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states. Would the defending nations abandon their cities in the face of the onslaught, knowing this makes their rapid conquest likelier? Of course not.

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But what then do the French and the other NATO nations do when the slaughter rises and civilians are caught in the crossfire? Do they urge a ceasefire in the middle of a war they are fighting, as they urge on Israel? If they do, they sap their morale and willingness to fight. If they don’t, they expose themselves as hypocrites.

And what if they have to turn to the offense? Could they lay siege to the Russian Baltic city of Kaliningrad, a necessary feature of any victory? That would mean causing the same degree of suffering to Russian civilians that Israel is causing in Gaza.

The only logical implication of their actions regarding Israel is that the recognizing powers would strongly prefer not to endure or cause the suffering war inevitably causes. This sends a powerful message to Russian President Vladimir Putin — which perhaps is why he has chosen to start sending drones and planes into NATO nations’ airspace.

Many who recognize Palestine would argue that Israeli actions in Gaza aren’t war, but genocide. This claim would be laughable were it not so evil.

The European Commission defines genocide as “an act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Israel is not, and never has, done this to Palestinians in Gaza or anywhere.

Israeli soldiers are not murdering civilians they encounter, nor are they butchering those under their control. Their efforts to restrict the manner and extent to which food and other vital supplies enter Hamas-controlled territory are simply what every nation does in war to force their enemy to submit.

The British blockaded Germany during World War I in an effort to force Germany’s defeat. That caused immense civilian suffering and starvation, yet Britain rightly believed this was merely a collateral casualty to the overriding objective of denying material to the enemy. They caused many more civilian deaths in that war than Israel’s acts are causing in its war, yet no one would ever accuse Britain of committing genocide against the German people.

Allied strategic bombing campaigns against Nazi Germany are another example of using all the might at one’s disposal to compel the enemy to submit. They killed countless German citizens, as did similar German raids against British cities. The firebombing of Dresden alone flattened an entire city and killed 25,000 civilians.

War is, indeed, hell. 

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Putin’s drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities are merely a modern example of the same pattern. So too are Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russian oil and military facilities, even if they have civilian uses. European leaders condemn the Russians and cheer the Ukrainians, but merely display which side they prefer.

Could they endure the devastation Ukraine has in the three and a half years of war? Could they cause the pain Ukraine has in their desire to win?

Perhaps it’s notable that European powers have not won a significant conflict without American involvement since World War II. Their efforts to retain their colonial possessions failed, and their few successes — such as Britain’s victory over Argentina in the Falklands War — came in short conflicts without the need for extended urban combat.

Perhaps the horror of World War II and the subsequent ascension of America have led European elites to discount the idea of victory altogether. 

That’s certainly what appeared to be the case for decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Most European nations effectively disarmed after 1989. They lauded their peaceful European Union and often were dismissive about American warnings and wars. They addressed Russia’s remilitarization under Putin by deepening economic ties, believing — perhaps wishing — that this would tie Russia to it rather than tying Europe to Russia.

Even former President Joe Biden’s public warnings that Russia was about to invade Ukraine didn’t affect the European faith in diplomacy. The humiliating photograph of Putin receiving Macron in Moscow before the invasion at the far edge of a gigantic table revealed literally just how far apart the two men were in their world views.

It’s notable that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz refuses to follow Macron’s lead and recognize Palestine. The Nazi regime’s actual genocide against Jews would cast a long shadow over any such act, but Merz is also staking his term in office on rebuilding Germany’s military power. He likely knows what fighting a war would mean for his nation and does not want to start his historic effort by sending a contrary signal to his people.

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Israel has always had to deal realistically with war. It has been attacked by countries four times in its brief existence and is regularly under assault from terrorist groups on its borders. It should be no surprise that with its back against the wall, it knows what winning a war takes.

Let’s hope for Europe’s sake that the mistaken recognition of Palestine does not foretell that it no longer does.