This essay was originally published on GrasstopsUSA.com.

            Appeasement simply does not work. It failed to work against Hitler in the 1930s, and it failed to work over the past forty years against Palestinian terrorists and the organizations that support them. The recent brutal and violent takeover of control in the Gaza Strip by Hamas is further evidence of an already well-known proposition. Yet it is a proposition which virtually all the governments of the Western world presently choose to ignore. While history teaches us that appeasement in the present amplifies violence in the future, the leaders of the civilized world keep repeating the same mistakes.

            What happened in Gaza was that a group of half-hearted and moderate thugs – the Fatah gang led presently by Mahmoud Abbas and formerly by Yasser Arafat – was displaced from power by group of relentless and fanatical thugs – the Hamas gang led by Khaled Mashaal. This is the same group which has been orchestrating repeated homicide bombings, missile launches, and other attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians. This is the same group which released a press statement in 2006 claiming that "America is offering political, financial and logistic cover for the Zionist occupation crimes... Therefore, the people and the nation all over the globe are required to teach the American enemy tough lessons." These are the murderers now in charge of Gaza.

            How did this happen? How did a major terrorist victory occur before the eyes of the entire world, while the superior military and economic might of the West has not impeded it in the least? The answer needs to take into account decades of concession after concession, compromise after compromise, whereby Israel – urged by a succession of American administrations – surrendered a host of real advantages – land, sovereignty, the rights of its citizens – in exchange for a mere promise on the part of Fatah’s leaders not to commit further acts of wanton aggression, as well as a mere hope that Fatah would crack down on Hamas and other more overtly violent Islamist groups.

            As a result of Israel’s concessions, largely forced upon it by the blunders of its Western allies, what began as a small terrorist group that murdered Olympic athletes in 1972 gradually turned into an authoritarian regime with its own territory and subjects to oppress, its own apparatus of propaganda and public education/indoctrination, and a series of ever-escalating demands imposed on Israel. Israeli politicians – either because their hands were forced by the West or because they harbored naďve hopes about the effectiveness of appeasement – committed acts of gross coercion against their own citizens living in Gaza, desecrating their homes, livelihoods, and liberties. These politicians expected that vacating the Gaza strip would somehow, magically, bring about peace and end the militants’ demands for ever more concessions. In fact, Israel’s departure from Gaza only produced the current bloody civil strife – and that is only the beginning.

            Appeasement not only fails to stem violence; it encourages violence, because it rewards brute force by meeting the demands of those who initiate it. Economic theory suggests that a policy which gives incentives for a certain kind of behavior will tend to produce more of that behavior. Thus, a policy which gives incentives to violent force will produce more violent force, and the groups which are reluctant to provide the increase will be displaced by less scrupulous competitors. Hence, the double-faced militants of Fatah who still had a peaceful public image to be concerned about were supplanted by the overtly bloody militants of Hamas, who commit murder of innocents and gloat about it. If both the West and Hamas stay their present course, Hamas’s leaders have good reason to expect that by escalating their level of violence, they will gain yet further concessions from the West.

            The only way to break the vicious cycle of appeasement, empowerment of evil, and increased violence is to respond to force with force. Fortunately, a powerful force already exists in the region: the Israeli army. It is a force which has crushed entire coalitions of Arab countries in the past, and it can surely do so again if the allies of Israel let it. Thus, the only way to truly resolve this crisis and to stop Hamas in its tracks is for the United States and the countries of Europe to back off and stop insisting that Israel compromise with the militants. Give the Israeli troops a free hand with Hamas, and it is certain that the terrorist menace shall be quickly extinguished.

G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right, Le Quebecois Libre,  Rebirth of Reason, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, weekly columnist for GrasstopsUSA.com, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress. Mr. Stolyarov also publishes his articles on Helium.com and Associated Content to assist the spread of rational ideas. His newest science fiction novel is Eden against the Colossus. His latest non-fiction treatise is A Rational Cosmology. His most recent play is Implied Consent. Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.

Read Mr. Stolyarov's new comprehensive treatise, A Rational Cosmology, explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time, sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, here.

Read Mr. Stolyarov's new four-act play, Implied Consent, a futuristic intellectual drama on the sanctity of human life, here.