VENI, VIDI… DID I REALLY UNDERSTAND!?

When an Ideology Matters More Than a Child

“Peace will come when Arab mothers love their children more than they hate us.”

Few statements attributed to Golda Meir have been quoted, praised, and condemned as often as this one. To some, it captures an uncomfortable truth. To others, it is an unfair oversimplification of the Arab world.

Yet there is another remark attributed to Golda Meir—far less well known—that appears to say exactly the opposite:

“I believe Arab mothers pray the same prayer as Israeli mothers: peace for their children and for the entire region.”

Read separately, the two statements seem irreconcilable.

Read together, they raise a far more profound question.

How can an ideology become stronger than the most powerful human instinct of all—a mother’s love for her child?

That, in my view, is the real question we should be asking if we want to understand jihadism.

Too often, the debate swings between two equally simplistic positions. One insists that terrorism has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. The other claims that terrorism is the true face of Islam.

Both approaches sacrifice understanding for certainty.

Jihadism did not emerge in an intellectual vacuum. Its leading ideologues—from Sayyid Qutb to Abdullah Azzam—built their doctrines upon particular interpretations of the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Islamic tradition. Those interpretations are rejected by countless Muslims and by many respected religious authorities. But denying their religious roots is no more intellectually honest than claiming they speak for nearly two billion believers.

That is why the real question is not whether Islam is a religion of peace or a religion of war. No civilization, and certainly no faith with more than fourteen centuries of history, can be reduced to a slogan.

The real challenge is understanding why certain religious interpretations have succeeded in transforming martyrdom into a political and spiritual ideal.

That is the defining feature of jihadism.

Its greatest achievement is not the manufacture of bombs.

It is not the launch of rockets.

It is not even the execution of terrorist attacks.

Its greatest achievement is changing the meaning of death.

Every civilization passes on a hierarchy of values to the next generation. Freedom, justice, honor, family, knowledge, prosperity—each culture arranges them differently.

Yet one principle appears almost universal:

Children’s lives are meant to be protected.

When an ideology succeeds in reversing that hierarchy and presents death as the highest expression of loyalty to a cause, we are no longer facing merely a military threat.

We are witnessing a profound moral transformation.

History offers many examples. Imperial Japan glorified the kamikaze pilot. Nazi Germany elevated total sacrifice for the Reich into a civic virtue. The Khmer Rouge deliberately dismantled family bonds in the name of revolution.

The historical circumstances were different.

The ideologies were different.

But they shared one essential mechanism: human life became subordinate to an absolute truth.

Contemporary jihadism follows the same pattern, expressed through its own religious framework. The martyr is no longer seen as a victim but as a role model. Death is no longer a tragedy but a reward. Sacrifice no longer inspires grief; it commands admiration.

And once that happens, war is no longer fought only on the battlefield.

It is fought in the human mind.

Perhaps that is why peace in the Middle East cannot depend solely on new borders, diplomatic conferences, or political agreements. All of those matter.

But they will never be enough as long as organizations remain capable of persuading young people that dying is the noblest destiny they can embrace—and persuading families that such a sacrifice represents the highest possible honor.

This is not an indictment of a religion.

It is a warning about what ideas can become when they harden into absolute truths, beyond questioning and beyond criticism.

Golda Meir may have expressed that intuition too bluntly. Or perhaps the words attributed to her have simplified a far more nuanced thought.

Either way, the question remains.

No mother is born wishing for her child’s death.

And if an ideology can ever turn that death into an ideal, the problem no longer belongs to a single war, a single religion, or a single people.

It belongs to all of us.