And then they recognized Islamist supremacy.

The Red-Green Alliance is increasingly influencing leftist politics across the West — and Israel pays the price. No self-respecting diaspora Jew can trust the Left anymore.

photo: Merch HÜSEY/Unsplash

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At the very moment Jews are still reeling from the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, three of the West’s leading democracies have decided to hand Hamas a political victory on a silver platter.

Today, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the United Kingdom’s recognition of a “Palestinian state” — minutes after similar declarations from Canada and Australia. If this weren’t reality, one would assume it was satire.

It is pure lunacy.

Defenders of the move will say “domestic political considerations” explain this rogue recognition, but that excuse doesn’t hold. According to two separate polls — one by France’s Representative Council of Jewish Institutions and another by JL Partners in Britain — over two-thirds of French citizens and nearly 90 percent of Britons oppose their governments’ recognition of a Palestinian state without preconditions. Ordinary citizens, unlike their political elites, understand that rewarding terror without demanding even the most basic concessions (such as the release of Israeli hostages or Hamas’ surrender) defies both common sense and common decency.

Starmer tried to reassure the public by declaring that “Hamas will have no future, no role in the Palestinian government or a role in security.”

But what if Palestinians want Hamas to have a role in their state?

You see, if the Palestinians are said to deserve their own state, and if democracy is universally praised as the best form of governance, then what happens if Hamas once again wins at the ballot box — just as it did in Gaza in 2006 — only to abolish future elections, entrench its rule by brutal force, and transform that “state” into a jihadist fortress? That is exactly what happened in Gaza, yielding years of bloodshed, multiple wars against Israel, and culminating in the atrocities of October 7th.

For decades, Palestinian society has elected, supported, or tolerated Hamas and its Islamist allies. Western “leaders” cannot pretend Palestinians are children who don’t know what they are doing. They are adults, perfectly capable of making decisions, and their decisions have overwhelmingly focused not on coexistence with Israel, but on rejecting the Jewish state’s existence and prioritizing destruction over statehood.

To see how misguided this approach is, one must recall the Oslo Accords. Signed in 1993 on the White House lawn, Oslo was presented as a historic breakthrough. It was born out of the First Intifada and years of secret negotiations in Norway.

Then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Palestinian leader (and mega-terrorist) Yasser Arafat, and U.S. President Bill Clinton shared a famous handshake that seemed to symbolize the dawn of peace. The agreement created the Palestinian Authority, which was granted limited self-rule in Gaza and parts of the West Bank. In return, the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized Israel’s right to exist, renounced terrorism — at least on paper — and pledged to resolve disputes peacefully. The world applauded, Nobel Prizes were awarded, and the narrative was set: Peace was finally within reach.

But the reality turned out very differently. Within months, suicide bombings began to tear through Israel’s buses and cafés, killing scores of civilians. The Palestinian Authority did not dismantle terror groups as promised. Instead, it quietly tolerated and even coordinated with them.

Arafat himself spoke one language in English to the West and another in Arabic to his people, where he compared Oslo to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah: a temporary truce Muhammad signed with the Quraysh before breaking it when circumstances were more favorable. To Palestinians, this meant Oslo was never about peace; it was a tactical pause.

Palestinian textbooks continued to glorify violence, erase Israel from maps, and raise a generation taught that martyrdom was nobler than coexistence. Corruption within the Palestinian Authority grew rampant, with billions in international aid diverted into the pockets of Arafat’s cronies.

Terror groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad flourished in the permissive environment Oslo created, gaining strength and legitimacy. When Bill Clinton presented Palestinians with an unprecedented offer of statehood in 2000, Arafat rejected it outright and launched the Second Intifada: a campaign of suicide bombings, lynchings, and shootings that left more than a thousand Israelis dead.

Out of that rubble, Hamas rose to power in Gaza. In 2006, Palestinians freely elected them in legislative elections. By 2007, Hamas had violently seized control of Gaza, throwing political rivals off rooftops and establishing a permanent base for terror.

Instead of turning Gaza into the “Singapore of the Middle East,” as optimists once predicted, Hamas turned it into a missile launch pad, its economy strangled not by Israel, but by the obsessive choice to prioritize tunnels and rockets over schools and jobs. Oslo had not delivered peace; it had delivered chaos, jihad, and the entrenchment of rejectionism.

It is worth remembering how Hamas came to power in the first place. In 2006, they won Palestinian legislative elections not by openly campaigning on jihad, but by promising “reforms” — an end to the rampant corruption and mismanagement of the Palestinian Authority. That appeal to accountability and change resonated with Palestinians who were tired of Arafat’s cronies siphoning off aid while their lives remained stagnant.

Hamas sold itself as the clean alternative. And now, nearly two decades later, Hamas can once again turn to the Palestinian electorate with an even more powerful argument: Look, we got you a state. Recognition by London, Ottawa, and Canberra hands them a political trophy to brandish as proof of their effectiveness. It will not weaken Hamas; it will strengthen them. What they once achieved by the promise of reform, they will now claim through the promise of results.

Hence why Western “leaders” today sound eerily like Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s, mistaking declarations and handshakes for guarantees of peace while underestimating the fanaticism of their adversaries. Chamberlain believed Hitler could be appeased with words on paper; he waved the Munich Agreement as proof of “peace for our time,” only to discover that Hitler never intended peace at all.

In the same way, Starmer, Carney, and Albanese speak as if Hamas can be willed away with diplomatic pronouncements, as though Palestinian society’s repeated embrace of rejectionist movements is some minor obstacle rather than the central problem. Just as Chamberlain underrated Hitler’s intentions, today’s leaders are underrating Hamas and the ideology it represents: an uncompromising dedication to Israel’s destruction. The result, if history is any guide, will not be peace, but catastrophe.

The only logical conclusion is that these Left-wing politicians are not acting out of strategic foresight or principled diplomacy, but out of domestic political cowardice. They are trying to appease their own radical base.

Many of today’s liberals and leftists often insist that the Far-Left does not truly represent their side of the political aisle. Yet when the moment comes, many of their leaders consistently make Far-Left choices to satisfy the very radicals they claim to keep at arm’s length. Starmer, Carney, and Albanese are not statesmen thinking about long-term peace or stability; they are politicians desperate to pacify vocal segments of their electorate.

And, so, we must be honest: The Far-Left is becoming today’s Left. The loudest, most uncompromising elements of their coalition are the ones setting the agenda.

Even worse, the Red-Green Alliance is hijacking today’s Left. By this, we mean the unholy pact between the radical Left (the “red” heirs of Marxist class struggle) and the Islamist movements symbolized by “green” (the color of political Islam).

At first glance, they seem like ideological opposites: one secular and revolutionary, the other religious and theocratic. Yet they share a common enemy: the West, liberal democracy, and above all, Israel and the Jewish People. Their marriage of convenience thrives on grievance politics, the exploitation of victimhood, and the weaponization of human rights language to advance illiberal, often totalitarian ends. What was once a fringe alliance on the margins of Western campuses and anti-war marches is now shaping the policy choices of entire Western countries.

No diaspora Jew in the West can look at a leftist party today and find safety in it. The mask has slipped. For all their rhetoric about tolerance and justice, these movements have chosen to side with those who glorify the murder of Jews. Once, Jews could at least hope that liberal parties would defend them against reactionary forces on the Right. Today, the imminent danger comes from the Left, where the obsession with “Palestine” has become a litmus test of ideological purity, and Jewish safety is dismissed as an inconvenient distraction.

In fact, what we are seeing today is Oslo Accords 2.0. The First Intifada delivered Oslo; the October 7th massacre has somehow delivered premature recognition of “Palestinian statehood.”

Once again, violence has preceded diplomatic reward. Once again, Western “leaders” are mistaking gestures for substance, projecting their own fantasies of compromise onto a society that has never demonstrated the willingness or ability to build a peaceful state alongside Israel. Once again, recognition is being offered without responsibility, sovereignty without accountability, and legitimacy without reform.

The consequences are not theoretical. By recognizing a “Palestinian state” now, Western governments are teaching Palestinians the worst possible lesson. Instead of incentivizing reform — dismantling terror networks, fighting corruption, and preparing their people for coexistence — this move sends the opposite message: Rejection is rewarded, violence pays, and sovereignty requires nothing in return.

That lesson will not remain confined to Ramallah and Gaza. Iran will celebrate this as vindication of its “axis of resistance.” Hezbollah will interpret it as proof that terrorism bends the will of the West. Jihadist groups elsewhere will be emboldened to escalate, convinced that mass violence followed by victimhood narratives remains the fastest road to legitimacy.

Even more obscene is the timing. Dozens of Israeli hostages remain in Hamas captivity, enduring unimaginable horrors. To recognize a Palestinian state in this moment is to tell their captors: Your crimes are irrelevant, your brutality carries no consequence. It erases the hostages, turning them into forgotten props in a Western morality play. This is not diplomacy; it is complicity.

Worse still, it represents a grotesque moral inversion. Israel is punished for defending itself against the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, while Hamas is implicitly rewarded despite committing that slaughter. The democracies of the West are treating Israeli self-defense as provocation, while treating terror as entitlement. It is the UN’s twisted logic imported wholesale into Western foreign policy.

The truth is uncomfortable but undeniable: Palestinian society has not yet produced leadership willing — or even capable — of governing in peace with Israel. To recognize a state now, in the immediate aftermath of October 7th, is not just premature. It is reckless, delusional, and morally bankrupt.

If Oslo taught us anything, it is that wishful thinking in the West cannot substitute for reality in the Middle East. Recognition without responsibility leads not to peace, but to more bloodshed. And this time, with Hamas emboldened and the West rewarding rejectionism yet again, the costs will be even higher.

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