The year 1959 saw the release of a Peter Sellers movie called The Mouse That Roared, a satire in which a fictional microstate declares war on the United States – not to win, but to lose spectacularly and collect generous aid in defeat.
“There isn’t a more profitable undertaking,” the prime minister says, “than to declare war on the United States and to be defeated.”
Then, it was a punchline in a movie. In today’s Middle East, it’s a strategy, one that Hamas has employed with horrifying real-world results. And if the international community allows it to succeed, it will be result in a moral and strategic catastrophe.
Hamas led the October 7 terrorist invasion of Israel knowing full well it couldn’t defeat the Jewish state on the battlefield. That wasn’t the goal. The goal was to provoke a war, force Israel into a prolonged ground combat in Gaza, and then shift global attention from the massacre, rape, and kidnapping of innocent Israelis to the suffering of Palestinian Arabs – much of it caused by Hamas’s own use of human shields.
Right out of Marxist handbook
It was a plan right out of the Marxist terrorist insurgency handbook: Commit mass atrocities, draw retaliation, and win the peace by playing the victim.
Hamas’s leaders, responsible for the slaughter of some 1,200 people and the kidnapping of civilians, are reportedly seeking safe haven in exile, most likely within the borders of its longtime host Qatar. The unspoken premise is that Hamas will remain part of the Palestinian Arab future; that its leaders have some sort of right to flee Gaza and live to fight another day, even though they are mass murderers.
We’ve witnessed this before.
In 1982, the IDF had Yasser Arafat and the PLO leadership trapped in Beirut. After years of terrorism, hijackings, and open war, Israel was poised to end Arafat’s reign of terror once and for all. However, under intense pressure from the Reagan administration, it allowed Arafat and his senior commanders to leave Lebanon under international protection.
Beginning of tragedy
The world applauded what it saw as a “diplomatic solution.” In reality, it was the beginning of a long-term tragedy.
Arafat regrouped in Tunis, rebuilt his network, and rebranded himself from terrorist to “statesman.” Yet, the blood never stopped flowing. Under his leadership, terror continued – from suicide bombings in Israeli cafes to the glorification of martyrdom in Palestinian school textbooks to incitement in Palestinian Authority-controlled media.
The Oslo Accords, meant to offer hope, instead entrenched Arafat’s corrupt and authoritarian rule while doing nothing to dismantle the terrorism infrastructure. By sparing Arafat in 1982, the West traded short-term quiet for decades of terror and blood.
Such a mistake cannot happen again.
Hamas is a terrorist army
Hamas is not a political movement with a military wing. It is a terrorist army with a political wing.
The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews – not coexistence, not compromise. Its leadership isn’t interested in allowing a State of Israel of any size to exist. What interests Hamas is staying alive long enough to claim a moral victory, rebuild, and plan its next campaign of attacks on Israeli civilians.
Letting Hamas’s leaders escape into exile would be more than a tactical error. It would be a crime.
Allowing them to spin their survival as victory and rally the next generation around their so-called “resistance.” It would also send a disastrous message to terrorist groups worldwide: Mass murder leads to international negotiations, global attention, and eventually, attainment of goals.
Israel has the right – nay, the obligation – to finish what it started and dismantle Hamas completely, just as the United States hunted down Osama bin Laden and decimated the ISIS leadership. That means no retirement in Qatari hotels, no political rehabilitation, no foreign protection deals.
This is no movie. The price of letting Hamas win the peace will not be comedy; it will result in more innocent bloodshed.
The writer is the national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.