Resolving the Middle East conflict requires intellectual honesty, historical context and moral clarity. These are not border disputes. They are existential struggles rooted in theology, ideology and survival. The recent Israeli strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure underscore how much higher the stakes have become.
The origins of this enmity stretch back over 1,300 years. The Jews’ original ‘sin’ in Islamic doctrine was not conquest or colonisation, it was rejection. When the Jewish tribes of Arabia refused to accept Muhammad’s claim to prophethood, the response was extermination. The Banu Qurayza were beheaded, their women and children enslaved. This was not a footnote of history but a precedent that jihadist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah still glorify.
Contrast this with Christianity’s beginnings. When the Jews rejected Jesus’s messianic claims, the early Christians responded not with bloodshed but sorrow. They endured persecution, preached forgiveness and offered salvation rather than imposed it. One path sanctified the sword, the other the cross. Islamism remains firmly rooted in the former.
In 1988, Hamas codified its genocidal vision in a Charter citing a Hadith:
The Day of Judgement will not come until Muslims fight the Jews… even the stones and trees will say: “O Muslims… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
This is not hyperbole. It is a theological war cry turned into policy. In 2006, Gazans elected Hamas with full knowledge of its founding document. Despite a 2017 ‘policy update’, the Charter remains intact. The rebranding was pure PR. Western-sanitised jihad.
Israel, meanwhile, withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, dismantled 21 Jewish settlements and handed the territory to the Palestinian Authority. In response, Hamas seized power in a violent coup and received over $13 billion in aid, more per capita than post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan. Instead of building a state, it built terror tunnels and launched over 30,000 rockets at Israeli civilians.
Israel turned adversity into innovation. From a GDP per capita of $1,500 in 1948, it now exceeds $54,000. It leads in cybersecurity, medical tech and agriculture. Tel Aviv has more startups per capita than Silicon Valley. Gaza, by contrast, chose martyrdom over modernity.
The threat no longer ends at Gaza’s borders. Israel’s recent pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear sites reflect a deep and growing fear that Iran will not merely fund terror, it will enable apocalypse. This fear is entirely rational.
Iran’s Supreme Leader has called Israel a “cancerous tumour” that must be “eradicated”. Former President Ahmadinejad infamously proclaimed, “Israel must be wiped off the map.” Ayatollah Khatami recently declared, “The day will come when the Islamic world will destroy Israel. This is a divine promise.” These are not rhetorical flourishes. They are marching orders.
Iran funds and arms Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. If it acquires nuclear capability, even a dirty bomb could be handed off to its proxies with plausible deniability. Israel knows this. That’s why it acts. Not for conquest, but for survival.
The West’s Cold War-era doctrine of mutually assured destruction relied on rational actors. Iran is not rational. It is eschatological. Islamism is not a deterrable enemy. It is a theological death cult supported by Iranian state sponsorship.
Israel, too, has its extremists. The inclusion of Jewish supremacists in the current Government is a dangerous provocation and must be condemned. But there is no moral equivalence between fringe ideologues within a democracy and genocidal doctrines enshrined as official policy by terrorist regimes.
History offers precedent. Ideologically rigid and violent movements from the Nazis, Imperial Japan, the Tamil Tigers to ISIS are not negotiated out of existence. They are defeated.
A solution must begin with that clarity. Hamas must be dismantled. A transitional administration led by Arab states should govern Gaza, with reconstruction tied to civic reform and de-radicalisation. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar must step up not just with money but with moral leadership. The mosques, madrassas and media that radicalised must now be used to reform. If they truly seek regional stability, they must act before Iran acquires nuclear weapons because after that, peace becomes a fantasy.
Iran must be given a choice. Join a new regional order built on trade and cooperation or continue down the path of pariah status and face the consequences.
Alternatively, if the Arab world continues to abdicate leadership, Israel will do what nations must when faced with annihilation: survive.
The choice, for Israel, is not between war and peace. It is between Judaic evolution or extinction. In the end, the world must decide. Will it continue moral relativism in the face of theological absolutism, or will it stand on the side of Western Judeo-Christian civilisation?
Clive Pinder is the host of KVEC’s CeaseFire and a columnist for the San Luis Obispo Tribune. He is a devout atheist and apostate of groupthink. Follow him on Substack.
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