Hamas’s Takeover
of Gaza: How Appeasement Amplifies Violence
GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary
By Gennady Stolyarov II
06-22-07
Appeasement
simply does not work. It failed to work against Hitler in the 1930s,
and it failed to work over the past forty years against Palestinian
terrorists and the organizations that support them. The recent
brutal and violent takeover of control in the Gaza Strip by Hamas is
further evidence of an already well-known proposition. Yet it is a
proposition which virtually all the governments of the Western world
presently choose to ignore. While history teaches us that
appeasement in the present amplifies violence in the future, the
leaders of the civilized world keep repeating the same mistakes.
What happened
in Gaza was that a group of half-hearted and moderate thugs – the
Fatah gang led presently by Mahmoud Abbas and formerly by Yasser
Arafat – was displaced from power by a group of relentless and
fanatical thugs – the Hamas gang led by Khaled Mashaal. This is the
same group which has been orchestrating repeated homicide bombings,
missile launches, and other attacks against Israeli soldiers and
civilians. This is the same group which released a press statement
in 2006 claiming that "America is offering political, financial and
logistic cover for the Zionist occupation crimes... Therefore, the
people and the nations all over the globe are required to teach the
American enemy tough lessons." These are the murderers now in charge
of Gaza.
How did this happen? How did a major terrorist victory occur before
the eyes of the entire world, while the superior military and
economic might of the West has not impeded it in the least? The
answer needs to take into account decades of concession after
concession, compromise after compromise, whereby Israel – urged by a
succession of American administrations – surrendered a host of real
advantages – land, sovereignty, the rights of its citizens – in
exchange for a mere promise on the part of Fatah’s leaders not to
commit further acts of wanton aggression, as well as a mere hope
that Fatah would crack down on Hamas and other more overtly violent
Islamist groups.
As a result of
Israel’s concessions, largely forced upon it by the blunders of its
Western allies, what began as a small terrorist group that murdered
Olympic athletes in 1972 gradually turned into an authoritarian
regime with its own territory and subjects to oppress, its own
apparatus of propaganda and public education/indoctrination, and a
series of ever-escalating demands imposed on Israel. Israeli
politicians – either because their hands were forced by the West or
because they harbored naďve hopes about the effectiveness of
appeasement – committed acts of gross coercion against their own
citizens living in Gaza, desecrating their homes, livelihoods, and
liberties. These politicians expected that vacating the Gaza strip
would somehow, magically, bring about peace and end the militants’
demands for ever more concessions. In fact, Israel’s departure from
Gaza only produced the current bloody civil strife – and that is
only the beginning.
Appeasement
not only fails to stem violence; it encourages violence, because it
rewards brute force by meeting the demands of those who initiate it.
Economic theory suggests that a policy which gives incentives for a
certain kind of behavior will tend to produce more of that behavior.
Thus, a policy which gives incentives to violent force will produce
more violent force, and the groups which are reluctant to provide
the increase will be displaced by less scrupulous competitors.
Hence, the double-faced militants of Fatah who still had a peaceful
public image to be concerned about were supplanted by the overtly
bloody militants of Hamas, who commit murder of innocents and gloat
about it. If both the West and Hamas stay their present course,
Hamas’s leaders have good reason to expect that by escalating their
level of violence, they will gain yet further concessions from the
West.
The only way
to break the vicious cycle of appeasement, empowerment of evil, and
increased violence is to respond to force with force. Fortunately, a
powerful force already exists in the region: the Israeli army. It is
a force which has crushed entire coalitions of Arab countries in the
past, and it can surely do so again if the allies of Israel let it.
Thus, the only way to truly resolve this crisis and to stop Hamas in
its tracks is for the United States and the countries of Europe to
back off and stop insisting that Israel compromise with the
militants. Give the Israeli troops a free hand with Hamas, and it is
certain that the terrorist menace shall be quickly extinguished.
Gennady Stolyarov II is
Editor-in-Chief of
The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles
or Reason, Rights, and Progress. His works have been published by
Le Quebecois Libre,
Enter Stage Right Magazine, the
Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Rebirth of Reason, and other organizations. Mr. Stolyarov can be
contacted at
gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.
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GrasstopsUSA.com 2007
