(Extracts from Jonathon Sacerdoti in the Spectator, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/thejerusalem-massacre-and-the-illusion-of-peace/
)
You can tell a
great deal about countries and people by how they react to a horrific act of
terror. And this morning’s massacre at the Ramot junction in Jerusalem came at
a moment heavy with symbolism: just as the world was waking up to reports of
Donald Trump floating a new plan for the release of Israeli hostages held in
Gaza, the illusion of a negotiated, civilised discussion with the Palestinian
movement was shattered. The gunfire in Jerusalem was a brutal reminder that
such fantasies collapse the moment they are tested against reality.
To speak of
‘bringing back peace’ in this context is not only ahistorical, it is delusional.
The official
reaction of Hamas was to describe the killings as a ‘heroic operation’. In
their statement, the gunmen’s slaughter of men and women waiting at a bus stop
was described as a ‘natural response’ to alleged Israeli crimes, a ‘message’
that Israel’s plans will not go unpunished. It was Al Jazeera, as ever, which
carried the statement first. The Qatari channel, lavishly funded by Doha, has
long acted as Hamas’s official megaphone, amplifying every word of their
propaganda.
And yet Qatar
continues to be treated as though it were a neutral mediator, even by the
United States and Israel itself. This pretense is dangerous. Qatar is not a
broker of peace but Hamas’s survival mechanism, its banker and broadcaster.
President Emmanuel Macron condemned the attack, but spoke of the need for a
‘political solution’ that alone could ‘bring back peace.’ His words ring
hollow. What peace is he referring to? There has been no peace to return to.
For decades Palestinian terrorism has murdered Jews year after year through
shootings, suicide bombings, rockets, kidnappings and invasions.
To speak of
‘bringing back peace’ in this context is not only ahistorical, it is
delusional. Macron imagines that some political arrangement will dissolve what
is in fact a religiously charged, maximalist campaign against the existence of
the Jewish state. He fails to grasp that these murders are not random acts of
desperation but deliberate executions of civilians because they are Jews,
motivated by an ideology which sanctifies their killing. To respond with
bromides about political solutions is to indulge the fantasy that appeasement
can pacify jihadism.
If France’s
reaction was weak, Spain’s is absurd. Among the dead in Jerusalem was a
Spaniard, a young immigrant who came to build his life in Israel. One might
expect Madrid to express outrage and solidarity. Instead, Spain has taken the
opposite path. Only yesterday Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced punitive
measures against Israel: closing Spanish ports and airspace to the transport of
defensive weapons, blocking fuel shipments for the Israeli military and
promoting an arms embargo.
This, at the
very moment Israel is fighting an existential war against Islamist violence –
the same violence that murdered a Spanish citizen in Jerusalem today. The sheer
ridiculousness of such a response should be obvious. Rather than standing with
the victims, Spain punishes them, while giving comfort to the cause of their
killers.
Every decent
person wishes to believe in the possibility of peace, to find those with whom
life can be shared. Israel has tried. But the truth it must now face, and which
the world must also confront, is that the battle is not with extremists on the
margins alone. It is with a movement rooted in Islamist rejectionism, dedicated
to the erasure of the Jewish state, and willing to murder Spaniards, Frenchmen,
and above all Israelis in pursuit of that goal. Until that truth is
acknowledged, there will be no peace to bring back.
