There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel.... That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back.
The real root cause of terrorism is that it is successful -- terrorists have consistently benefited from their terrorist acts. Terrorism will persist as long as... the international community rewards it, as it has been doing for the past [many] years.
Hamas has been greatly rewarded by the international community, by human rights groups, by the media, by many academics and by millions of decent people for its indecent double war crime tactic of firing rockets at Israeli civilians from behind Palestinian human shields. Israel has been significantly punished for trying to protect its citizens from these rockets.
So here... is the twelve-step program that Hamas and the international community should follow if it truly wants to see terrorism become the primary tactic used against democracies by those with perceived grievances.
Step 9: Accuse the democracy of war crimes and bring cases against its leaders and soldiers in courts sympathetic to Hamas around the world. Bringing the lawsuits will create a presumption of guilt, even if the charges are dismissed months or years later.
Step 10: Schedule various United Nations "debates" at which tyrannical dictatorships from around the world line up... to condemn Israel for crimes routinely committed by these dictatorships but not by Israel.
Step 11: Trot out the usual stable of reliable anti-Israel academics to flood newspapers and television shows with some of the worst drivel about international law, human rights and the laws of war -- drivel that would earn students failing grades in any objective law school course on these subjects.
Now here are six steps for those democracies that would actually like to put an end to terrorist attacks against its civilians.
Step 4: Never allow human rights, international organizations or war crime tribunals to be hijacked by the supporters or terrorism and the enemies of democracy to punish only those who seek to protect their civilians against terrorism.
Not only must terrorism never be rewarded, the cause of those who employ it must be made... worse off as a result of the terrorism than it would have been without it.
No wonder Hamas, and other terrorist groups, regard their war crimes tactic as a win-win for terrorism and a lose-lose for democracy.
There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel.... That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back. Pictured: The scene of a building hit by Palestinian rocket fire in the southern city of Ashkelon on May 14, 2021. (Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
This article was originally published in a slightly different form in 2009. Nothing has changed.
There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel and that other terrorist groups will increase the use of terrorism against civilians around the world. That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back. This is one of the most important lessons to be learned from the recent events in Gaza, but it is not a new lesson. In 2002, in a book entitled Why Terrorism Works, I made a point that is even more relevant today than it was then:
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