Almost two years ago, Hamas members crossed into Israel and murdered, raped, and kidnapped their way through kibbutzim, agricultural settlements, and a music festival. These murderers used body cameras to document the massacre, during which they killed parents in front of their children, threw a hand grenade into a bomb shelter filled with civilians, and raped and killed women. The terrorists killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 others; the website Hope for Hostages reports that, of these, 148 abductees returned to Israel alive and Hamas turned over the bodies of 61 others. Only 26 hostages remain alive in Gaza. Such depravity and death testify to the excesses of Islamist ideology.
[D]epravity and death testify to the excesses of Islamist ideology.
Human rights organizations largely ignore these facts while they falsely accuse Israel of perpetrating genocide against the people of Gaza, even as Israel allows food and medicine into the territory and many sources indicate that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza is lower than in other conflicts in the Middle East.
Even before Israel responded to the October 7, 2023, attack, radicals in the United States and Europe took to the streets to condemn Israel.
Hamas documents show Iran and Hamas orchestrated the October 7 massacre to disrupt Saudi accession into the Abraham Accords. Put another way, all the deaths that occurred on October 7, 2023, or after happened as the result of Iran and its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon refusing to allow the peoples of the Middle East to put conflict aside in order to develop the region.
The United Arab Emirates, whose leaders were the pioneers of the Abraham Accords, now work to make humanity a multi-planet species, most recently sending a probe to Mars to investigate its atmosphere. While Hamas teaches people to hate and kill Jews, Abu Dhabi established a space agency that runs summer camps for high school students. While Hamas dug tunnels to sneak terrorists into Israel, hide weapons under hospitals, and imprison hostages, Dubai constructed the Burj Khalifa—the tallest building in the world.
While Iranian elites pursued a nuclear weapons program to intimidate its Arab rivals in the Middle East and terrorize Israel, the Emirates encouraged investment in its tourist industry by building an indoor ski slope in the middle of the desert and a complex of artificial islands in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s fantasies of laying waste to Israel brought disaster on themselves, the people they govern, and their allies in Lebanon and Gaza.
To help the Middle East requires supporting those leaders and peoples who seek coexistence.
Emirati leaders have chosen hope and agency over grievance and resentment, and the people they govern enjoy a high standard of living as a consequence. By way of comparison, Iranians face an impending water shortage and a collapsing economy because their leaders chose truculence over peace.
Rather than amplify Iranian and Palestinian rhetoric, true liberals in the United States and Europe must acknowledge that the hostages represent not perverse trophies for rejectionist forces, but the failure of Iranian, Palestinian, and their Middle Eastern allies to step into the modern world as the Emiratis have done. Helping the Middle East requires supporting those leaders and peoples who seek coexistence, not destruction of Israel or the promotion of intolerant Islamism.
Leaders of civilized countries must not indulge Hamas at the United Nations, but rather celebrate those who take risks for peace.
