The fight for Israel has always been a struggle of love over death — love of the land, and love of the human endeavor to build a thriving society and a better world, despite genocidal enemies, both past and present.
The Palestinian cause, in contrast, has become what writer Douglas Murray calls a death cult — committed to destruction, seeking death in every generation, contributing nothing to the world but the passion of violence.
The victims of the terror attack in Washington, DC, on Wednesday night were young staffers at the Israeli embassy — one Christian, one Jewish — who loved each other and were planning to become engaged.
Could there have been a more symbolic set of victims, representing the deep bond between Christians and Jews who embrace and support Israel? Entwined in love, their lives are forever connected in their loss.
And could there have been a more symbolic perpetrator? Crazed, to be sure, but merely following the logic of the slogans he shouted: “Free, free Palestine!” and “There is only one solution — intifada revolution!”
To “free” Palestine means to destroy the State of Israel and to exile and murder the millions of Jews within it. An intifada is not an ordinary protest movement, but a bloody campaign of terrorism against civilians.
It is too early to know, hours after the attack, whether those slogans, repeated by activists on campuses and in city streets in the months since the Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2023, motivated the murderer directly.
But no one who uses those slogans can pretend any longer that they do not know they are linked to terror and death. “Palestine,” as such, has had every chance to achieve statehood, and has chosen destruction instead.
The victims were attending an event focused on the question of how to deliver humanitarian aid in conflict situations, hosted by the American Jewish Committee for young diplomats in the nation’s capital.
As the world accuses Israel of denying aid to Palestinians in Gaza — aid that Hamas steals — Israelis and Jews are trying to solve the problem of how to help the most vulnerable — how to love others while defending those you love.
The attraction of the Palestinian cause is its supposed authenticity. Death is more definite than love, more concrete, more certain. Love is ephemeral, invisible, contingent, requiring constant effort and even artifice.
But only love can build, create, and grow. As fragile as it is, it is so much more powerful than death. That is why the Palestinian cause continues to fail — and that is why Israel continues, in spite of it all, to succeed.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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