By Michael D. Evans
Published: June 2, 2007

We cannot win the war on terrorism by vowing to defeat the terrorists on one hand and trying to appease them on the other. You can’t fight the terrorists on one front and ignore them on another so that they can push in unhindered. We need to realize that a major front in the war on terrorism is the battle line drawn through the heart of Jerusalem.

Though liberals in the United States have painted the struggle of the Palestinians as a political revolution for freedom from oppression, no nation in the world has ever aimed strictly at civilians in order to overthrow their enemies. The war the terrorists fight is a war on innocence – they don’t care who their victims are so long as they get headlines, even if that means killing children or babies in strollers, as has happened all too often. The truth must be recognized: Arafat and those that have been aligned with him are not “freedom fighters,” but terrorists. Israel’s struggle against the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other such organizations is its own war on terror. How can we ignore an ally’s fight against terrorists – in fact, trying to force them to appease the terrorists – and expect to win our own?

We cannot win the war on terrorism by calling Palestinian terrorists “good terrorists” and bin Laden’s terrorists “bad terrorists.” Terrorists are terrorists, and if we hope to win the battle against them, we have to treat them all as criminals, none of them as diplomats [including the newly elected Abu Mazen, a.k.a. Mahmoud Abbas.] If a man breaks into your home to steal something or harm your family, you don’t negotiate with him about what rooms in your house he can live in; you have him arrested! We can no longer afford to legitimize terrorism as a negotiating technique to win more concessions from sovereign governments. As we have seen, there will be no appeasing these thugs until they have it all.

In October 2003, I attended the first annual Jerusalem Summit – a forum to discuss establishing peace in the Middle East. I had the honor of being the keynote speaker on the first evening of the conference. World leaders and media celebrities who also spoke during those three days included such men as former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Middle East Forum Director Daniel Pipes, Israel Minister of Tourism Benny Elon, the Honorable Richard Perle, FOX News host and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, and Ambassador Dr. Alan Keyes. Interestingly enough, the theme of this first summit was “Winning the War on Terrorism through Moral Clarity,” with the Scripture of Zechariah 8:19 printed on the program cover: “…so love truth and peace.”

As he addressed the conference, former Prime Minister Netanyahu had this to say:

Conscience is a moral compass. Conscience is absent in some societies and they endorse terrorism. Terrorism is deliberate and systematic action to kill innocent civilians. Israel is fighting terrorism. But the U.N. doesn’t make the distinction between these two kinds of “violence”, because that would say some of the U.N. members are perpetuators of war crimes, or terrorism. . . .

The U.N. will not stop the terrorists; only an alliance of free states led by the U.S., geared to bring down regimes that fuel and propagate terrorism, can do that. We must implant values and morality in civilizations. Salvation will not come from the U.N. . . .

The Israeli Defense Forces must continue to fight terrorism, for Israel’s survival as a nation, and to uphold justice and morality.”

The Minister of Strategic Cooperation between the U.S. and Israel, Uzi Landau, added this:

No cause justifies terror . . . Israel is a small target; America is the big one. But we are on the front line. If terror is not defeated here, it will move to the U.S. and to Europe. Our war is a war of free societies against terror.

And as Ambassador Keyes put it:

In the wake of September 11th we should have taken a stand clearly and unequivocally, that if you practice terrorism you lose your claim to legitimate participation in all and any international processes whatsoever . . .

The hope and heritage of righteousness and faith . . . says, “Come what may, do evil what it will, God is God and I shall stand for Him.” This, I believe, is the moral heritage that transcends any struggle for evil. . . . We shall fight the fight as it is necessary in the world but we shall win it first in our own souls and spirit. So that at the end of the day we shall stand—not as people who have defeated evil, but as people who have once again vindicated the truth that—come what may—you cannot crush out that faith which holds on forever to the righteous will of God.”

The war on terrorism cannot be won without resolve for victory, without a conviction to call terrorism evil (whoever may be instigating it), and without the resolve to win the battle first in the spirit realm through prayer. Natural insight is not enough to win this fight, when we need God’s guidance.

When you begin weakening that resolve and conviction, you begin developing a tolerance to look at children with no legs and allow those who maimed them to walk free. I’m not talking about being hateful or mean-spirited, nor am I preaching a racist hatred of Arabs and Muslims—what I’m talking about values. We cannot violate our rules of law and evidence to go after such men, but we can’t let terrorists and murders walk free for political reasons either, when we have the evidence to convict them in our hands. What I am talking about is real love—God’s love—that includes justice, but not vengeance. If we are to win the overall battle against terrorism, we must win it first in Israel.