Israel’s survival depends on one thing: ending ’Palestine.’

Palestinianism is not about building roads, or governing a territory, or seeking coexistence. Its highest aspiration, its unifying ideal, is the genocide of the Jews.

photo: Cole Keister/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Yonatan Daon-Stern, a student of philosophy and art history.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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We have lived through weeks, perhaps more than weeks, of dramatic, unprecedented declarations and actions by Western governments against the Jewish People, at the very moment of their war for existential survival, in the shadow of the worst disaster since the Holocaust.

Remember, not only did Europe birth the Holocaust, but much of the continent collaborated in its execution.

France began it. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, announced that he would recognise a Palestinian state — whatever that means. The very notion is, of course, absurd: a “state” without borders, without a capital, without functioning governance, without the most basic attributes of sovereignty. Yet the idea spread. The United Kingdom followed. Australia followed. Others, too. The names hardly matter; the trend is plain.

But if there was one act that stood apart in its symbolism, it was Deutschland — the Deutsches Vaterland — imposing an arms embargo on Israel. The Germans will not sell weapons to the Jews so that the Jews may not defend themselves against their worst enemy, since the Germans themselves. Isn’t that symbolic? Is that not the purest revelation of the state of the world?

It is easy, comfortably easy, to be outraged at Europe. To dwell on the irony, to condemn its weakness, to speak of its surrender to radical Islam. And yes, Islamist pressure in European cities plays its part. But these explanations are excuses. They lie beyond our control, and so they cost us nothing to repeat.

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Let us step back and remember where this began.

Europe was never safe for the Jews. At best, there was a narrow window in the 19th century — after emancipation, before the rise of modern antisemitism — when Jews enjoyed a measure of relative freedom. But even then, they were never fully accepted. They were still excluded, still mistrusted, still attacked.

And yet, they carried European societies. They tragically financed much of the railways of Austria and Germany. They were leaders in science, philosophy, literature, and music. They stood at the cultural and economic summit of Europe’s great powers. And still, they were never safe. We know how it ended: in the camps, in the ashes of Majdanek.

So it should not surprise anyone that Europe is turning against Israel now. In truth, Israel was founded precisely because Europe could not be trusted with Jewish survival. “Never Again” was not a gift Europe gave us; it was a vow we made despite Europe.

Yes, the situation has worsened with the rise of Islamist influence in Europe’s major cities. And yes, this has made Jewish life there more dangerous, driving many — especially from France — to emigrate. But Islamist pressure is only the latest layer. Beneath it lies the same old Europe, the same old hostility to Jewish power, now expressed in the language of “international law.”

And here, there is a bitter symmetry. Having rejected the Jews, Europe now finds itself host to a different people, one that despises its freedoms, mocks its culture, and seeks its submission. This is no accident, and perhaps, in some grim corner of history’s ledger, it is justice.

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And here is the harder truth: The recognition of “Palestine” abroad is possible only because Israel created it.

Israel shook hands with longtime Palestinian leader and mega-terrorist Yasser Arafat during the 1990s. Israel brought him from Tunis. It gave him land. It armed him. This was one of the most notorious terrorists of the modern era, the most prolific Jewish killer since the Germans, and Israel put him in charge, under the delusion that he would fight terrorism. It was an insanity akin to inviting Hitler to lead the war against antisemitism.

In the anarchy that followed, his rivals — Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other armed factions — were allowed to thrive. Israel tolerated them all, granting them space, legitimacy, and time to grow. Decade after decade, it maintained both the Gaza and Judea-Samaria branches of this so-called “Palestinian state,” feeding the very enemy it claimed to be fighting.

This road to October 7th began not in the streets of Gaza, but in the decisions of Israeli governments that refused to win decisively when they had the chance — in 1948, in 1967, and in every war since. They could have integrated all the land into Israel proper, applied Israeli law, ended the refugee fiction, and closed the file forever. They did not.

Instead, they bowed to “international pressure” — as if we had forgotten that it was those same international pressures that did nothing to stop the trains to the death camps — and so the issue remained, festering, until that fateful October day.

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October 7th was not an aberration; it was the culmination of what “Palestine” means.

Palestinianism is not about building roads, or governing a territory, or seeking coexistence. Its highest aspiration, its unifying ideal, is the genocide of the Jews. That is its dream, its celebration, its very identity. On October 7th, that dream was acted out in full, and it was cheered in the streets of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria alike.

It was the Palestinians who committed the massacre. But Israel’s crime was that it criminally mismanaged its own defence, allowing it to happen. We funnelled Qatari money into Gaza. We allowed Hamas to grow, dismissing it as a nuisance rather than a mortal threat.

We failed to fortify our towns. We did not defend our people. We militarily controlled Gaza until 2005, then tore down our own settlements, expelled our own citizens, and handed the territory to the enemy. That retreat lit the fuse. Everything that followed — the tunnels, the rockets, the massacre — was the consequence of our own choices.

This failure was not only operational. It was conceptual. Israel has never truly understood who its enemy is. It has treated the war as a conflict with this or that faction (Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Organization) rather than with Palestine itself, the political entity in all its forms. This is the very “state” that France, the UK, Australia, and now Germany effectively recognise.

We can cry about Macron. We can rage about Merz. But the fact is: October 7th was not made in Paris or in the Reichstag. It was made in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv. It was carried out with the help of decisions signed by Israeli hands.

And yet — when we blame ourselves, we do so for all the wrong reasons.

We do not indict ourselves for the causal failures: for refusing to win decisively in 1948, in 1967, in Lebanon, or now; for letting this war drag on into its second year without victory in sight. No. We blame ourselves for failing to “explain” the war to Europe. For not telling them we have a plan. For not asking their permission often enough.

This is the perverse inversion at the heart of our political culture: the belief that the war is lost on the international diplomacy front, rather than on the battlefield. If only the Germans understood our “narrative,” they would not embargo our weapons. If only Macron saw our “restraint,” he would not recognise a Palestinian state.

Europe will always hate the Jews. It never loved them. What matters is not whether Paris or Berlin approve of us, but whether Sderot and Kfar Aza are safe. What matters is not whether the BBC likes our tone, but whether “Palestine” exists tomorrow.

And on that front, the only front that matters, we have failed. October 7th was our doing, not because we executed it, but because we allowed it to happen. The Oslo Accords were our doing. The retreat from Gaza was our doing. The endless half-wars, the negotiations with murderers, the humanitarian aid to our enemies — all of it is ours.

When we love ourselves more than we love the idea of being loved by others, we will finally have peace. Until then, we will keep trading our security for the illusion of approval — and paying for it in Jewish blood.

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There is nothing special about the “recognition” of Palestine. It is not a turning point. It is not a shock. We should not get excited about it, certainly not more excited than we were about the horrors brought upon us in Oslo during the 1990s, in Gaza in 2005, and in the countless other disastrous, strategic, and moral failures that have marked Israel’s modern history.

Think of how different things might have been if we had not made those choices — if we had not invited Arafat, armed him, and handed him land; if we had not abandoned Gaza to Hamas; if we had fought our wars to victory. There would be no hostages. Thousands would not have died — not only on October 7th, but in the decades since Oslo, which has claimed more Jewish lives than that single day.

This is the real measure: Why did we found the Jewish state in the first place?

We founded it because Europe was not safe for Jews; because Europe was, to put it mildly, antagonistic to Jews. That is why Israel exists: to protect Jewish life. To be the one place where a Jew’s safety does not depend on the goodwill of others. Of course, Jews who were expelled from Arab lands also needed a safe place to live. The purpose was always the same: security for our people. That is the sole moral claim for Israel’s existence.

It is not to appease foreign governments. It is not to win the approval of the talking heads in Paris, Berlin, London, or Washington. When Treblinka was operating at full force, nobody cared. And when October 7th happened, nobody truly cared either. Some might have pretended for a while and then returned to form. We see their true face now.

Israel’s obligation is only to its own citizens: to give them security, to give them justice. That means annexing the Gaza Strip — not to manage it, but to end the Palestinian ideology.

And in the face of these international recognitions of a so-called Palestinian state, it means abolishing the Palestinian Authority as well. This anarchic entity, divided among factions, has no legitimacy — except the legitimacy we foolishly grant it. Remove it. Replace it with direct Israeli control. And then, finally, bring peace: Secure borders, unified sovereignty, and no more of this endless, managed war.

Do it for ourselves. For our children. Not for their cameras, their editorials, or their prizes.

The moment when we love ourselves more than we love the idea of being loved by others will be the moment we finally have peace. That is the moment we will win.

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