Genocide as Genesis?

A terrible syllogism haunts the current Gaza convulsion: If catastrophe created Israel, then catastrophe can create Palestine. That, in plain English, is the lethal logic Hamas now broadcasts—an echo of the late Yahya Sinwar’s grisly thesis that a self‑inflicted martyrdom, televised in real time, will win the world’s imprimatur for a Palestinian state. Sinwar’s strategy is not politics by other means; it is politics by mass starvation. And it is working.

France, ever alert to moral grandstanding, has promised U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state this September. Paris is not rewarding Mahmoud Abbas – his Fatah is a political fossil – but the very movement that butchered its way across Israel on October 7. The message? Terror pays divestiture dividends; massacre merits nationhood. If October 7 becomes Palestinians’ Independence Day, civilization will have signed its own ethical abdication.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem’s coalition—tethered to supremacists Smotrich and Ben‑Gvir—played into Hamas’s hands. Bowing to their demand, Israel halted U.N. food convoys in March, confident Gazans still had “four to six months” of reserves. In a war zone, scarcity breeds hoarding; hoarding raises prices; high prices invite Hamas taxation. Thus did an Israeli blockade morph into a Hamas payroll plan. Add the ill‑fated GHF distribution hubs—gauntlets where desperate men sprinted toward sacks of flour and met live fire—and one sees how a righteous cause became a recruitment poster for the very enemy it sought to strangle.

Cue Washington. President Trump – no dove – nonetheless grasps optics. With IDF coffins returning from Khan Yunis and Gallup charts showing American youth shifting Palestinian‑ward, he dispatched envoy Steve Witkoff to broker a ceasefire-hostage swap. Hamas balked, Israel balked, Doha talks collapsed. Now two locomotives barrel toward collision: an Israel determined to extirpate Hamas “once and for all,” and an international community threatening diplomatic derailment unless the guns fall silent. Put plainly, it is Will versus Won’t on a track of Can’t.

What, then, is to be done? First, flood Gaza with aid—yes, flood. Hunger is Hamas’s currency; debase it. Israel should airdrop, convoy, and maritime‑deliver food until flour is cheaper than propaganda. Second, lock in a narrow buffer zone—no grand annexation fantasies—and trade it for the hostages. Insist that any post‑war authority be Arab‑funded, Egypt‑policed, and U.S‑guaranteed. If Hamas tries to rearm, the IDF should reserve the right to strike, à la the raid on Syria’s nuclear archive: in, out, mission accomplished.

Finally, Israel’s leaders must speak less of “total victory” and more of limited objectives clearly achieved. The objective is not to create a rubble‑free Gaza utopia—history says that dream is dust—but to ensure that no enclave on the Mediterranean plots the next Simchat‑Torah slaughter. Disarm Hamas enough to deter, empower Gazans enough to choose, and enlist the region to enforce.

The caution against giving murder a moral mandate is clear. The world now teeters on that precipice. Recognizing a state mid‑slaughter would weaponize victimhood and canonize atrocity as statecraft. For Israel—and for the decency of nations—the imperative is clear: starve the strategy, not the people, and refuse to let genocide become genesis.