How Should the U.S. Respond to the Gaza Crisis?

Recommend (26) Comments (21)

By Elan Journo

In response to the Hamas bombardment of Israel, Washington must encourage and help Israel to annihilate that Islamist group, once and for all.

The failure to wipe out Hamas on previous occasions has encouraged Palestinian terror groups. It teaches Islamists that their terrorist war will be rewarded, that their quest to destroy Israel--and ultimately America--is achievable.

In fact, the acts of war by Hamas against Israel are precisely what people should expect from Bush’s so-called democracy strategy in the Middle East.

The administration campaigned for elections in the strongholds of various Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, groups that it should have worked to destroy. In the Palestinian territories, Bush insisted that Hamas be allowed to participate in the 2006 elections--and the jihadist group won a landslide. Thanks to that political victory, Hamas gained an unearned legitimacy for its vicious war to exterminate Israelis and Westerners. Winning power with the aid of their enemy confirmed for these Islamists that the West will abet its own destroyers.

America’s self-defense entails crushing Islamic totalitarianism--not ushering its jihadists into political office and galvanizing them to redouble their war against us.

To put an end to Hamas’s brazen aggression, the jihadist group must be defeated. It is proper and necessary for America to aid and bolster Israel, its one true ally in the Middle East, in the face of a common enemy.