Moral clarity starts with naming the enemy

Everyone agrees: Hamas is a terrorist organization.

It’s not up for debate. It’s enshrined in official designations from Brussels to Washington to Ottawa, scribbled into the margins of UN resolutions somewhere between a generic ceasefire call and an overcatered buffet for peace.

And yet — nothing.

We point, we label, we analyze. But we don’t act. We watch, measure, interpret. We craft statements while rockets are being fired and civilians — both Palestinian and Israeli — are paying with their lives.

This is the modern West: an alliance of highly informed spectators, commentating on savagery in real time. Bold in rhetoric, paralyzed in response.

We bomb debates, not bunkers. We circulate hashtags instead of halting horror. And while we feign moral agony at every tragedy, Hamas thrives — confident, calculating, and completely unafraid of consequence.

They kill.
They parade hostages.
They use children as shields.
They store missiles beneath hospitals and homes.
They turn suffering into spectacle — and the cameras, as always, oblige.

And the response?

A sigh. A tweet. A resolution. Maybe a warning — always to Israel, never to those who started the fire.

Let’s be clear: if you want to help Palestinians, if you care about the innocent trapped in Gaza’s chaos, if you truly wish to prevent further destruction — the first step is not to “balance” blame. It’s to eliminate Hamas. Root and branch.

Not with platitudes. Not with well-meaning lectures from safe capitals. But with action — political, strategic, and yes, if necessary, military. The same way we treated ISIS. The same way we promised we’d treat terrorism anywhere.

Because if you label it “terrorism” but refuse to fight it, your words are hollow. And your silence is complicity.

Instead, the world demands restraint — always from the one democratic nation in the Middle East, facing a death cult burrowed in civilian lives. We want Israel to be precise to the point of paralysis. We ask it to fight monsters with monk-like moderation, and apologize when its defense isn’t immaculate.

Meanwhile, we never demand the impossible — or even the minimal — from those who use civilians as shields and genocide as doctrine.

Why?

Because it’s easier to critique democracies. Because it's safer to rage at those who will still allow you to speak. Because confronting the root of Islamist extremism would mean naming uncomfortable truths: about antisemitism, about theocratic fascism, about a strand of ideology that despises freedom, equality, and life itself.

And yet, if we truly care — about peace, about Palestinians, about the very concept of human dignity — then the conversation cannot be about “both sides.” It must be about truth and consequence.

Hamas is not a legitimate resistance. It’s not a government. It’s not a misunderstood movement.

It is a death machine.

And it must be dismantled. Not for Israel’s sake.
For the sake of every mother in Gaza. For every child who deserves to live without being a pawn.
For Jews and Arabs. For all of us.

If the West still has a spine — between its climate declarations and identity summits — it must use it now.

Not for slogans.
For survival.
For clarity.
For courage.