There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel.... That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back.

The real root cause of terrorism is that it is successful -- terrorists have consistently benefited from their terrorist acts. Terrorism will persist as long as... the international community rewards it, as it has been doing for the past [many] years.

Hamas has been greatly rewarded by the international community, by human rights groups, by the media, by many academics and by millions of decent people for its indecent double war crime tactic of firing rockets at Israeli civilians from behind Palestinian human shields. Israel has been significantly punished for trying to protect its citizens from these rockets.

So here... is the twelve-step program that Hamas and the international community should follow if it truly wants to see terrorism become the primary tactic used against democracies by those with perceived grievances.

Step 9: Accuse the democracy of war crimes and bring cases against its leaders and soldiers in courts sympathetic to Hamas around the world. Bringing the lawsuits will create a presumption of guilt, even if the charges are dismissed months or years later.

Step 10: Schedule various United Nations "debates" at which tyrannical dictatorships from around the world line up... to condemn Israel for crimes routinely committed by these dictatorships but not by Israel.

Step 11: Trot out the usual stable of reliable anti-Israel academics to flood newspapers and television shows with some of the worst drivel about international law, human rights and the laws of war -- drivel that would earn students failing grades in any objective law school course on these subjects.

Now here are six steps for those democracies that would actually like to put an end to terrorist attacks against its civilians.

Step 4: Never allow human rights, international organizations or war crime tribunals to be hijacked by the supporters or terrorism and the enemies of democracy to punish only those who seek to protect their civilians against terrorism.

Not only must terrorism never be rewarded, the cause of those who employ it must be made... worse off as a result of the terrorism than it would have been without it.

No wonder Hamas, and other terrorist groups, regard their war crimes tactic as a win-win for terrorism and a lose-lose for democracy.

"Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we're going to stand up and defend it." — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, 60 Minutes interview, May 2, 2021.

For American diplomacy, this is a significant admission that America no longer wants to lead the world, but instead gracefully back away as the world's reigning superpower.

The Chinese communists in Beijing, however, are not known for either subtlety or nuance in how they handle their affairs in their own backyard. Where China is concerned, words and statements matter. Weakness displayed is weakness exploited.

To win the Cold War in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan's genius was to go further than simple containment. Reagan believed a simple containment policy would always leave you on defense. He compared it to getting possession of the football and punting on first down.

So the leaders of the free world should not only be speaking – and acting – in opposition to China's human rights abuses and expansionist, aggressive movements internationally. They should be attacking the worst, most vicious exponent of Leninism – the Chinese Communist Party – as the cause of the human rights problems and global instability that we see in the world.

It is by design and for keeps.

The letter's signatories remind the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee of their charter commitments and international obligations pertaining to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for Genocide.

"At least one million of these victims are incarcerated in scores of concentration camps, some replete with crematoria, where they are being brainwashed, raped, forcibly aborted and sterilized, tortured, organ-harvested and forced to perform slave labor. Is that acceptable to the U.S. Olympic Committee? Would your organization want to be associated with, let alone be seen as condoning, such barbaric behavior?" — From the letter "Stop the 2022 Genocide Games" signed by at least 115 human rights and faith organizations.

"[T]he PRC has given no indication that it will abandon the genocidal oppression of Uyghurs and others, let alone dismantle the massive infrastructure used for this purpose. Rather, the CCP will no doubt exploit the 'Genocide Games' as proof that the world is indifferent to, if not actually implicitly endorsing, its crimes against humanity." — From the letter "Stop the 2022 Genocide Games."

"Then there is the matter of the Chinese Communist Party's involuntary extraction of vital organs. Eminent international human rights experts have found that forced organ harvesting is taking place in the PRC on an industrial scale. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of China's own people, ethnic and religious minorities and prisoners of conscience have been murdered to profit the CCP. Is the U.S. Olympic Committee willing to associate with the perpetrators of these crimes?" — From the letter "Stop the 2022 Genocide Games."

More than three million deaths worldwide have been caused by Communist China for failing to disclose, and even outright lying about, the human-to-human transmissibility of the Wuhan virus. Virtually every country has been victimized by what can only be regarded as Communist China's mass murder. So why should nearly 200 countries reward China with the economic bonanza and implicit legitimacy that hosting the 2022 winter Olympics would confer?

All the countries crushed both by deaths caused by Communist China's conscious export of its virus and the economic devastation that followed need to make sure that instead of being enriched and celebrated, Communist China should be held to account -- at the very least by being invoiced for the damage it caused and removed from hosting the Olympic games.

Last year, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei admitted for the first time that his country was supplying the Palestinian terrorist groups with weapons...."Iran realized Palestinian fighters' only problem was lack of access to weapons" — Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Reuters, May 22, 2020.

The [earlier] denial exposes the extent of Iran's scheme to deceive the international community not only regarding its supply of weapons to the Palestinian terrorist groups, but also concerning its plan to acquire a nuclear bomb and bolster its production of nuclear material.

Iran... repeatedly violated the terms of the [2015 JCPOA] nuclear deal, according to the UN's nuclear monitoring Atomic Energy Agency.

Were it not for Iran's financial and military aid, the Palestinian terrorist groups would not have been able to attack Israel with thousands of rockets and missiles.

In the past, Iran used its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, to attack Israel. Iran is now using its Palestinian proxies to achieve its goal of eliminating Israel and killing Jews. This is a war not only between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist groups. Rather, it is a war waged by Iran against Israel.

The Western powers that are currently negotiating with Iran about the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal are emboldening the mullahs and allowing them to continue their war of "kill[ing] all the Jews."

The Nazi's were obsessed with race. They suppressed dissent, controlled the dissemination of news and controlled culture. In 1933, the German Student Union started to burn books in an effort to align German arts and culture with Nazi ideas. Books of authors such as Hemingway, Helen Keller and Jack London were considered dangerous and had to be "canceled." The students did not see themselves as suppressing culture; they saw themselves as advancing a just culture.

"The first thing every totalitarian regime does, along with confiscation and mutilation of reality, is confiscation of history and confiscation of culture. I think they all happen almost simultaneously." — Iranian professor and author Azar Nafisi, whose book Reading Lolita in Tehran was canceled in Iran.

What used to be unimaginable is now taking place in America. We see certain aspects of totalitarianism in the United States: the obsession with race, declaring an ethnic group collectively guilty, shaming, humiliations based on ethnicity, lootings, arson, racist violence, intimidation of opponents, cancel culture, controlled dissemination of news, and indoctrination of children in schools. We see fake news, conspiracy theories, an overhaul of history, a new language imposed, and unprosecuted theft. All in the name of a more just culture.

The Palestinians are upset because Jews are being permitted to tour the Temple Mount. The Palestinians do not want to see Jews visiting their holy site; they do not want to see Jews in Jerusalem, and they do not want to see any Jew at all in the land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

No one is disputing the Palestinians' right to protest Israeli policies. Yet when the protests turn into large pro-Hamas demonstrations, with calls for bombing Tel Aviv and killing Jews, they expose the true deadly intention of the protesters.

When thousands of Palestinians chant "We are all Mohammed Deif" they are saying that they see themselves as terrorists ready to attack and destroy Israel. They are saying that Deif is their role model because he managed to murder many Jews and remains at large, despite Israeli attempts to apprehend or kill him.

Hamas owes its growing popularity to the anti-Israel inflammatory campaign waged in the Palestinian media, especially social media platforms, the mosques and public rhetoric of Palestinian leaders. Hamas also owes its popularity to the ongoing corruption and incompetence of the Palestinian Authority and its autocratic president, Mahmoud Abbas.

The demonstrations in favor of Hamas should also sound alarm bells with the Biden administration and serve as an accurate indicator as to Palestinian priorities. The Biden administration is talking about reviving the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of the "two-state solution." Hamas and the thousands of Palestinians who chanted slogans in support of Hamas and Deif, however, have a different solution in mind: the annihilation of Israel and the deaths of Jews -- the more the merrier.

The project sounds like the type of assistance that Jordanian women need, especially during this difficult period of the economic and health crises in their country.

What particularly irritated the anti-normalization activists and groups in Jordan was that some of the Jordanian women appeared in a video praising the project and talking about how happy they were to join forces with their Israeli neighbors on the other side of the border.

This Jordanian writer [Mohammed Sweidan] has taken it upon himself to be the spokesman for all women in his country. He claims to have some special knowledge of their actual intentions. Notably, he did not even bother to contact the Jordanian women to ask them about their attitude toward the joint project with the Israeli women.

These [Arab] leaders and media have filled the Arab people with so much hate against Israel that participating in a positive, productive endeavor becomes a major crime.

As long as such incitement against Israel in the Arab world continues, any talk about peace will be a pipe dream with hopes going up in smoke.

Sharansky reasons that until there is a fundamental internal transformation of Palestinian Arab society that embraces democracy, there can be no realistic negotiations. He roundly condemns Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a dictator and a terrorist. He views his successor Mahmoud Abbas as a pale and equally corrupt reflection of his predecessor. Sharansky is under no illusions about Palestinian leaders. He believes that they still are wedded to the goal of Israel's elimination. Sharansky underscores his point by quoting Soviet dissident and creator of the USSR's hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov: "Never trust a government more than it trusts its own people."

Sharansky comes down hard on the Iranian regime as ideologically the most dangerous of enemies, claiming that he is in agreement with prominent Iranian analysts such as, Uri Lubrani, the last Israeli unofficial ambassador to Iran; Dr. Bernard Lewis, the most accomplished western Islamic scholar, and Ron Dermer, the long-serving Israeli ambassador to the US. Sharansky has sharp words of condemnation for Barack Obama; he accuses the former US President of having abandoned Iran's dissidents by his refusal to offer even verbal support for anti-regime demonstrators during their nationwide protests in 2009.

Sharansky... is a fierce critic of the "new" campus-based anti-Semitism, and catalogues several programs that Israeli and some American Jews have developed to lend courage to Jewish-American youths to defend, fight back, and celebrate their Jewish identity in the face of radical Jew-haters as well as self-hating American Jews who serve as a poisonous brew that eventually destroy both the institutions of democracy and the freedoms of individual liberty.

"China is taking steps to establish a commanding position in the commercial launch and satellite sectors relying in part on aggressive state-backed financing that foreign market-driven companies cannot match." — US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in its 2019 Annual Report to Congress.

"Chinese and Russian space activities present serious and growing threats to U.S. national security interests. Chinese and Russian military doctrines also indicate that they view space as critical to modern warfare and consider the use of counterspace capabilities as both a means of reducing U.S. military effectiveness and for winning future wars." — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, written testimony prior to his confirmation hearing. Space.com, March 19, 2021.

"The PRC continues to strengthen its military space capabilities, despite its public stance against the weaponization of space.... the PRC is developing electronic warfare capabilities such as satellite jammers....and China probably intends to pursue additional ASAT [Anti-Satellite] weapons capable of destroying satellites...." — Pentagon report about China's military capabilities, Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2020.

Given the chance, China will also move ahead to use space to dominate not only the US but also the rest of the planet. Any defense budget cuts or flatlines in the in the US military budget -- or any monetary transfers out of it -- should be regarded as suicidal.

The real bad news, however, is that the London conference failed to develop a coherent and mutually agreed analysis of the international situation, without which no serious policy-making is possible. The Americans came to London with a set of clichés used during their presidential campaign last year, notably the catch-all "America is back!", but were unable to say where that "back" was or whether it was necessary to go there.

They also talked a lot about "multilateralism" without making it clear what it was they wanted to be multilateral about. Multilateralism is a method of doing things, not the substance of policy. You could do both wise and foolish things multilaterally. The Libyan disaster resulted from President Barack Obama's "leading from behind" multilateralism. The latest example of foolish multilateralism is the cut-and-run policy the Biden administration is marketing on Afghanistan.

What seems clear is that both China and Russia are trying to project power in a 19th-century colonial style... Putin's strategy... copying General Paskevich's warning: "to keep the land you grabbed today, you will have to grab more land tomorrow."

Does anyone believe that, short of a shock-and-awe operation, Kim Jung-on could be leashed in without help from China? And could the G7's habitual cat-and-mouse game with the Khomeinist regime in Tehran produce positive results while Russia plays cheerleader for the mullahs?

The current G7 position could only persuade Beijing and Moscow to set their differences aside and promote a low-intensity global war against the democratic world.

If China were serious about reducing emissions, that intent would have been evident from its new five-year plan for the years 2021-2025, released in March. This plan, however, has been described as containing "little more than vague commitments to tackle carbon dioxide emissions."

As the Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial in February, initiatives like this explain why "Beijing loves Biden and Paris". They allow China, in the words of the editorial, to get "a free carbon ride" -- meaning unfettered economic growth at a time when China is looking to become the world's dominant economic and technological power.

How much will fulfilling President Biden's climate accord pledges actually cost and for what actual benefit to whom, and how much of a further edge will it actually give to China?

At a time when China is so obviously saying one thing and doing another, and clearly not fulfilling its share of the world's commitments to reducing CO2 emissions -- as the world's second-largest economy should -- increasing America's climate pledges sends all the wrong signals. What China and others see is that no matter what it does -- even if it deceives the world and continues its predatory behavior -- the US is willing to reduce its own competitiveness, leaving China a thick red carpet to become the world's dominant superpower, the very role to which it aspires.

While Israel is seeking to dissuade the Biden administration from rejoining the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran... Tehran's mullahs and their Lebanese Hezbollah terror proxy are busy drowning the Arab countries with drugs.

"Israel is far more honorable than the drug-dealers.... [The drug dealers'] ultimate goal is to destroy Saudi Arabia by every available means. They are smuggling weapons and drugs to the Gulf states, but when they are confronted, they accuse the governments of these states of siding with Israel, and they raise the slogan of liberating Jerusalem, while their missiles are only targeting Riyadh and Mecca." — Turki Al-Hamad, Saudi academic, Rai Al-Youm, April 25, 2021.

"[Hezbollah has become] a criminal organization whose danger has gone beyond the stage of terrorism and military operations.... The Hezbollah project has become the destruction of people through drugs." — Mohammed Al-Maskary, Emirati writer and journalist, Al-Ain, April 27, 2021

"Hezbollah is increasingly dependent on the revenues from terrorist activities, drug smuggling and money laundering with Colombian, Mexican and Cuban cartel networks." — Fahim Al-Hamed, Saudi writer, Okaz, April 25, 2021.

Unfortunately, neither the Obama nor Trump administrations imposed costs on Cuba or China. With such direct attacks on the U.S. going unpunished, how could American enemies not now be tempted to use their new weapons on American soil?

"If we do nothing, then China or Russia will deploy these devices for large-scale use on the eve of a major military conflict. Imagine microwave weapon trucks on the bluffs overlooking the Pentagon." — Richard Fisher, leading China military expert at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, to Gatestone Institute, May 2021.

Up to now, the CIA and State Department have been especially lax in trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious cases, but no unit in the federal government has made much progress.

Washington... should know who at least some of the culprits are. The real mystery is why the U.S. still has not done anything to protect its officials and citizens.

The Biden administration has made a deliberate decision to abandon the application and enforcement of federal law. Why?

How will the Biden administration fulfill its sworn official duty to uphold and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States by willfully ignoring and failing to carry out legal obligations?

The only rational explanation for the Biden administration's policy position is a crassly political one. Border policy decisions are all tied to the immigration question and the apparent desire to affect long-term voting demographics, skewing it in favor of the Democrat Party. This is a "long term investment strategy" at the expense of the American tax-paying citizen, for the political benefit of the current party in power.

Border communities bear the frontline brunt of Biden's policies, but the total fabric of America's healthcare, education, housing and social services are being shredded to pay for Biden's new voters.

[T]he Biden border crisis will rise to the number one position when Americans go to the polls in November 2022. Its overt criminality and reckless disregard for the law will be remembered.

The administration's sponsorship of outlaw behavior and endorsement of criminality cannot be talked away or excused. Too many communities... are already experiencing... the impact of Biden's abandonment of the enforcement of the law.

It is essential for American citizens to deprive the Biden administration of its hoped-for "benefit". An administration cannot politically distort law enforcement and compromise national security to pad their voter rolls. Justice demands equal enforcement under the law, not playing favorites and granting extraordinary benefits to non-citizens that ordinary Americans do not enjoy....

Each of us is called to demand attention and accountability on all matters pertaining to border security. This includes legal immigration enforcement, aggressive drug enforcement, and counterterrorism efforts to ensure U.S. national security.

President Biden has now moved the Mexican border to each American's hometown.

"Those who commit the same mistakes and expect different results are deceiving themselves." — Abdullah bin Bajad Al-Otibi, Saudi writer and researcher, Alarabiya.net, April 19, 2021.

After the deal expires in a few years.... Iran may build as many nuclear weapons as it wants. In that sense, the JCPOA deal was a runway to a full-blown nuclear weapons program.

"[T]he agreement did not address the Iranian regime's ambitions of hegemony and its blatant interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries through direct and semi-direct occupation in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.... Iran today is targeting Saudi oil and global energy supplies, as well as civilians, as the world is watching." — Abdullah bin Bajad Al-Otibi, Alarabiya.net, April 19, 2021.

"All the concessions that the Western powers intend to make to Tehran do not bind anyone in the Middle East, and cannot force Israel or the Arab countries to respect the outcome of the talks in Vienna, especially if these negotiations increase the danger of the Tehran regime to stability and security." — Syrian writer Bahaa Al-Alawam, Al-Ain, April 19, 2021

"The truth is that there is a political, military, security and economic Iranian occupation of four Arab countries – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen." — Former Jordanian Minister of Information and Culture Saleh Al-Kallab, Asharq Al-Awsat, April 15, 2021.

This message, directed mainly at the Biden administration, accuses the West of ignoring Iran's ongoing occupation and terrorism in the Arab countries. Evidently, there is a profound fear among Arabs that a revival of the nuclear deal will add fuel to the mullahs' fire and support their slash-and-burn policies of destabilizing Arab countries and promoting terrorism through their proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi militias in Yemen.