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Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22392/war-on-civilization
Civilization Cannot Survive If It Negotiates with Barbarity as If It Were a Partner Who Is Misunderstood
(Gatestone Institute) A Conversation with Pierre Rehov by Gregoire Canlorbe - Pierre Rehov is a French documentary filmmaker, director, and novelist. Q: Hamas claims that Israel is on their land. Rehov: Jews have lived on that land for nearly 4,000 years. Palestinians, by contrast, contrary to myth, actually do not exist. As the late PLO senior official Zoheir Mohsen stated in an interview on March 31, 1977: "In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism." If you want to understand Oct. 7, forget the comforting story of "desperation turning violent." Pogroms are not born from desperation; they are born from permission - social, religious, political permission to commit the unthinkable and feel righteous doing it. Many people in the West looked at videos of barbarity and still rushed to "contextualize," rationalize, excuse. This reflex is precisely what keeps pogroms returning throughout history: the world's temptation to treat Jewish blood as a negotiable detail in a political narrative. The Palestinian project is a world where religious and political absolutism rules, where minorities submit or vanish, where women are controlled, where dissent is crushed. Israel is the laboratory target. If the West rewards Oct. 7 with political gains, it teaches a lesson to every violent movement on earth: massacre pays. So Israel is defending itself, and in doing so, it is also defending the principle that civilization cannot survive if it negotiates with barbarity as if it were a partner who is misunderstood. Israel cannot outsource its survival, and the U.S. cannot pretend that totalitarian jihadism can be "managed" indefinitely. Either you dismantle the infrastructure of terror, or it regrows. Diplomacy is beneficial only if it restores deterrence. A settlement that rewards aggression teaches the world that borders are temporary and violence is profitable. A diplomatic outcome can be good if it protects sovereignty, if it prevents repetition, and if it signals strength rather than fatigue. We are living through a war of reality. Propaganda kills judgment. When judgment collapses, democracies begin to hate themselves, to doubt their right to defend their citizens, and to romanticize forces that would destroy them. The West will be defeated - if it is defeated - by the refusal to oppose danger when they see it.