Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s statement marking the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre begins with words of moral clarity. But it ends by returning to a Western illusion that has already cost Israel dearly: the belief that jihad can be persuaded to compromise.
The concept of compromise, Harold Rhode writes in his new book, is alien to the jihadist worldview. Rhode, a student of Bernard Lewis and a former adviser on Islamic affairs to the U.S. Department of Defense, argues that jihad seeks to subjugate and Islamize non-Muslim societies and cannot accept abandoning its objectives, because doing so implies humiliation—something considered worse than death.
The mistake made by many Western leaders—and, before Oct. 7, by many in Israel as well—is their inability to accept this fundamental difference.
Meloni commemorated what she rightly called the “deliberate massacre of innocent people” on Oct. 7 and pledged to fight antisemitism. But she then turned to what she described as the “dramatic and unacceptable suffering” of Gaza’s inhabitants and the “growing violence” against Palestinian civilians in Judea and Samaria.
“The spiral of violence must be stopped,” Meloni said, adding that Italy would continue working toward two states living side by side, with “security” for Israelis and “a future of freedom and dignity” for Palestinians.
But there is no symmetrical “spiral of violence.”
Palestinian suffering in Gaza is the consequence of a war unleashed by Hamas on Oct. 7 and of Hamas’s deliberate use of civilians as indispensable human shields for jihad, as Yahya Sinwar himself explained.
Palestinian society, dominated by despots, demands every sacrifice that jihad requires in pursuit of victory. Evacuations, escape routes and designated safe zones—announced to Gazans through leaflets and telephone calls—were obstructed by Hamas, which embedded itself in hospitals and schools.
Meloni hopes for an agreement based on “two states.” But she knows well that Israel has repeatedly offered such a solution, only to be met with rejection. Its enemies have not sought compromise; they have continued to pursue Israel’s destruction.
The Palestinians turned a Gaza freed of Israeli settlements into a labyrinth of tunnels filled with weapons and terrorists. The Palestinian Authority, given control of the major Palestinian population centers, has produced thousands of terrorist attacks and a torrent of hatred through its education system.
The “settlers,” meanwhile, have become a convenient means of placing some 600,000 Israeli citizens living in Area C under indictment because of the actions of perhaps a couple of hundred violent extremists—people sought by the police or already behind bars and unequivocally repudiated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
Giorgia, I remember well the powerful testimony you gave, when you were Italy’s minister for youth, before the parliamentary commission on antisemitism that I founded.
That is why I believe you can recognize the danger now confronting us. Faced with an antisemitic and anti-Western alliance, the answer cannot be another attempt to impose Western ideas of compromise on those who regard compromise as defeat.
Jihad does not seek a compromise with Israel. It seeks victory over it.
And peace cannot be built until the West understands the difference.
