The latest world congress of antisemites concluded last Wednesday after world leaders once again reassured each other that those evil Jews are, in fact, starving children, and that therefore they must not be left to peacefully coexist, secure in their own sovereign nation. The outcome of the conference fully justified the Trump administration’s decision to boycott the conference, which it called “an unproductive and ill-timed … publicity stunt.”
Conference of antisemites
Of course, evil is never so blunt. Rather, Saudi Arabia and the recently radicalized France co-hosted a “High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution” at the U.N. headquarters in New York City. But when world leaders discuss settling the “Question of Palestine” and implementing a “Two-State Solution” in a U.N. context, no one can miss their meaning.
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The conference produced a seven-page document that endorsed a renewed effort to achieve a two-state solution between Israel and Palestinian Arabs. The plan insisted that Israel agree to an immediate ceasefire and prevent the starvation of children in Gaza, before it eliminated Hamas or effected the return of the remaining hostages. Seventeen individual countries, the European Union, and the Arab League all signed onto the document.
The closest the document came to balance was a declaration that “Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority … in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State.” The call for Hamas’s disarmament is apparently a first for Arab nations like Qatar, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. But the framing presumes that a Palestinian state ruled by the Palestinian Authority would produce different outcomes than one ruled by Hamas — a highly contestable assumption.
However, the country that stole the most dramatic headlines at the conference was the United Kingdom. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer threatened that his government in September will follow France into recognizing a non-existent state of Palestine “unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a cease-fire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two-state solution.”
The illogic of Starmer’s ultimatum was apparently lost on his government. His threat only has leverage insofar as Israel dreads international recognition of a Palestinian state. But he demanded that Israel recognize a Palestinian state, which would result in broader international recognition of a Palestinian state.
In other words, Starmer’s declaration amounted to an announcement that the U.K. will recognize a non-existent Palestinian state within Israel’s borders, regardless of Israel’s position. Of course, he paid lip service to even-handedness by insisting that Hamas also “sign up to a cease-fire, disarm, and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza.” But Starmer ignored the reality that this is Israel’s war aim, which it will lose all leverage to effect if Israel accepts his terms.
Thus, the U.K.’s recognition of Palestinian statehood will be as empty as it is insulting. Since it jettisoned its imperial holdings after World War II, the U.K. no longer controls events in the Middle East, nor even seems to follow them very closely. Foreign Secretary David Lammy called Israel’s rejection of a two-state solution “wrong morally and it’s wrong strategically,” which indicates nothing but Lammy’s own tenuous grasp of morality and strategy.
This mystifying mountain of malice directed at Israel prompts us to ask why Israel faces such criticism. Of course, Israel always faces a background environment of antisemitism around the globe. But the more proximate cause for this criticism is the recently resurrected lie that Israel is starving Gazan children. “There seems to be a diplomatic tsunami against the Jewish state, and it’s fueled … by much of what’s happening in the media,” observed CBN Middle East bureau chief Chris Mitchell on “Washington Watch.”
“It’s a media campaign that Hamas is running, talking about starvation in Gaza,” Mitchell added. “The media is actually pushing countries like the U.K. and other countries to go ahead and declare a Palestinian state.”
For decades, propaganda has been the most powerful weapon of Israel’s terrorist enemies, and this time has proven no different. Even President Donald Trump, one of the friendliest world leaders toward Israel, said Monday that he “doesn’t mind” Starmer’s new position on Palestinian statehood because the U.S. is “looking [to] get people fed right now. That’s the number one position, you have a lot of starving people.”
Condemnation of international bias
But “like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight” (Proverbs 26:2). The rhetorical punches thrown at Israel never land a solid hit because they are only thrown at strawmen. The tsunami of criticism directed at Israel does not — or should not — change the unfairness and unworkability of a two-state solution. International leaders are holding Israel to a double standard that no other nation faces, while Hamas remains free to play at ruling without an actual, functioning state.
1. Feeding the enemy
For starters, Israel’s critics — one might even say “Israel’s adversaries” — demand that the Jewish state fight this war while feeding their enemy. “In the history of modern warfare, there’s never been an instance where one party feeds the other party in the midst of war,” argued Caroline Glick, a senior advisor to the Israeli government, on “Washington Watch.” In fact, “nothing that Israel has been doing in Gaza has any precedent in the history of warfare.” Glick added that 94 million tons of food have been delivered to Gaza — by or through Israel — since the beginning of the war, amounting to 3,200 calories per person per day.
From ancient sieges to 20th century races for oil, warfare has often revolved around control of key resources that make warfare possible. Wars often end because one side runs out of the food, water, oil, or whatever they need to go on fighting. By requiring Israel to feed Gaza — and therefore Hamas — the international community has actually prolonged the war and multiplied the bloodshed.
Western leaders must ask themselves, “What would they be doing if they were fighting the kind of war that Israel is fighting?” insisted Mitchell. “Israel’s fighting an embedded terror group … Many of those fighters come from tunnels. They use Palestinians as human shields. … There’s just no recognition of the difficulty of what the IDF is doing.”
2. Danger and dysfunction in a PA-run state
To make matters worse, the international community’s demand for a “two-state solution” involves a double pretense. Firstly, they demand statehood for the Palestinian Authority (PA), a corrupt, dysfunctional organization that instills no confidence in its ability to govern, and which has repeatedly turned down offers for statehood in the past, when it means peaceful coexistence with Israel.
Although often touted as a so-called moderate alternative to Hamas, the PA runs “a ‘pay to slay’ program, which actually rewards terrorists who kill or maim Israelis,” noted Mitchell. “The ‘seven front war’ that Israel’s been fighting — one of those fronts is there in Judea and Samaria.”
“There is as much threat from terrorism in the areas [of Judea and Samaria] under Palestinian Authority control as we’ve seen in the past in Gaza,” agreed FRC President Tony Perkins. A Palestinian state in this larger, more centralized region, “strategically, from a security standpoint, would … make Israel even more vulnerable than … having Gaza under the control of Hamas in the southern part of the country,” he added.
3. Two-state solution already tried and failed
Secondly, the demand for a two-state solution ignores the fact that this policy has already been tried, and it failed. “That’s what we had prior to October the 7th, in effect. We had Gaza self-governing … There was no Israeli involvement whatsoever. And it was nothing more than a launchpad for terrorism,” argued Perkins.
In fact, “October 7th was the fruit of what they actually did 20 years ago, where they actually unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza Strip,” argued Mitchell. “There were many people at that time [who] warned, ‘If Israel pulls out of the Gaza Strip, there would be a terrorist state to take its place.’ That’s exactly what happened. Two years later, Hamas took over from the Palestinian Authority and created … the biggest terror base in the world. So that, in a sense, was a Palestinian state for almost 18 years.”
This Palestinian state did not fail from any lack of funding or well-wishing. Countries around the globe “donated billions and billions of dollars to Gaza over the 18 years that Israel wasn’t there,” Glick recalled. “Billions of dollars [were] just taken [and] diverted by Hamas to build the most complicated, complex defenses ever seen: again, 450 miles of subterranean tunnels whose sole purpose was to wage war against Israel, to hold terrorists, to hold hostages, to hold missiles.”
4. Creating perverse incentives
Another consideration against recognizing Palestinian statehood while Israel is still fighting in Gaza is that it will be seen as a direct result of Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7, 2023. “It seems like it’s exactly rewarding Hamas for what happened on October 7th,” Mitchell protested. The global community would officially deny any connection, of course. But everyone understands that “we wouldn’t be having this conversation had there not been October 7th,” as Perkins put it. This is because “there would never have been a war if they hadn’t invaded Israel and slaughtered our people,” Glick added.
Terrorists — who naturally seek evidence to justify their terrorism, if only to suppress their own consciences — will inevitably interpret the results as international capitulation to their tactics. As a result, they will continue using terrorist means to achieve their political ends. When you reward terrorism, you get more terrorism.
5. Political pandering to loud minority
This fifth critique is less a condemnation of recognizing Palestinian statehood as a policy than it is a condemnation of the politicians who pursue such a foolish idea. “Europe has been overrun, in many ways, from migrating Muslims who have brought in a different ideology. And I think what we see there in the U.K. and France is, they’re pandering to this very vocal minority,” proposed Perkins. “They’ve lost their countries, almost,” Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) exclaimed in agreement on “Washington Watch.” “The ideology from the Islamic side has taken over the streets.”
Confidence game by terrorists
But the most damning critique of all is that the supposed reason behind recognizing Palestinian statehood is based on false propaganda. “There have been images flashed across the TV screens and on newspapers around the world” showing Palestinian “children that looked malnourished,” Perkins described. “One of these was taken by a Turkish state news agency and was picked up by British publications, [then] The New York Times here in the United States.” But the featured boy “had other medical issues that they hid, that none of the reporters talked about. And his mom and his brother, who were cut out of the pictures, were fine. They were healthy.”
The New York Times “did issue sort of a non-apology,” Mitchell noted, but the damage was already done. “They’re taking the word of Hamas and using some of these images.” In fact, this applies to many media reports about the war in Gaza and Israel’s supposed atrocities, because “most of the facts coming out of Gaza are manufactured facts from Hamas,” Perkins pointed out.
“The Western media … have been presenting Hamas’s lies as fact, really in some cases since October 7th,” complained Glick. “The myth that Israel was trying to starve the people of Gaza began getting disseminated just days after the largest, most brutal, and sadistic massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust … It was very, very quick, the shift to say Israel is indiscriminately bombing Gaza, Israel is causing a famine. And none of this was remotely true. It also wasn’t true that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians.”
Thus, “while the Jewish state has been physically fighting on seven fronts, its battle on the eighth front, that’s the one that appears to be escalating most right now,” warned Perkins. “And that is the battle for truth … We’ve known that Hamas has been pushing out anti-Israel propaganda, and the legacy media eats it up.”
“Everything that Hamas has been putting out of Gaza — and they control the information flow out of Gaza — have been deliberate lies [where] the goal of those lies is to ‘paint the light as dark and the darkness is light,’” Glick concluded, alluding to Isaiah 5:20. Hamas and its backers are running a “con,” and Western media outlets have proven to be alarmingly gullible marks.
Meanwhile, Hamas has looted aid to finance their war machine, resold it to Gazans at exorbitant prices, and attacked an alternative aid distribution system set up by the U.S. and Israel that tried to feed Gazans for free, testified both Mitchell and Glick. Hamas has done all this while refusing to agree to ceasefire terms and refusing to release the remaining hostages, whom it holds in inhumane conditions. In other words, the problem in Gaza is Hamas, not Israel, and the Israelis no longer have the
appetite for détente with their duplicitous, genocidal foe.
This is not to deny the plight of civilians in Gaza, but to assign blame to the true culprit — Hamas. The solution to this crisis is not to hamstring Israel and empower their enemies, but to help Israel finish the job. “As Foreign Minister [Israel Katz] said today in the press briefing, ‘We’re not going to be Czechoslovakia [in 1938],’” Glick declared. “We’re not going to allow ourselves to be devoured by people who want to devour us.”
Because of this attitude among Israelis — who actually control the situation on the ground, Tuberville told Perkins, “at the end of the day, there’s not going to be a two-state solution. You and I know that that ship has sailed a long time ago.”
Foreign nations can do something to help, but not by lobbing grenades about a “two-state solution.” Countries who really want to help the people of Gaza can line up their air convoys at Israeli checkpoints. The U.A.E. and Egypt have airdropped aid into Gaza, but the governments of Europe have failed to act. Instead, they’re playing into Hamas’s game by blaming — or at least punishing — Israel for Hamas’s faults.
Originally published at The Washington Stand.
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand, contributing both news and commentary from a biblical worldview.
