Western governments that are trying to block Israel’s path to victory are abandoning a fellow democracy that is fighting a common enemy according to international law. Thankfully, many are still on the right side of history.

A young and beautiful couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sara Milgrim, were murdered last week by a far-left activist who shot them in the back to supposedly free Palestine. This horrendous murder has been praised online and offline by people who essentially say that Yaron and Sara deserved being murdered because of what Israel is doing in Gaza.

Such is the circular logic of antisemites: They defame the Jews, and then kill them to stop the horrors they falsely attribute to them. This is how antisemites have always justified murdering Jews: in the name of justice. If Jews kill Chirstian children to use their blood for baking matza, if they secretly run a global cabal to instigate revolutions and wars, or if they commit a genocide and starve children for no other reason than sadistic cruelty, then you’re actually making the world a better place by getting rid of those people.

The latest defamation of Israel is that it is pursuing the war in Gaza for no reason, that this war can’t be won anyway, and that in the process Israel is starving the population.

Actually, Israel is pursuing the war for a very good reason: to win it. And winning the war means bringing back our hostages, disarming Hamas, and exiling its leaders. We’re almost there. The London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat has just revealed that Hamas is on the brink of collapse thanks to Israel’s offensive. After a year-and-a-half of war, Israel has mostly defeated Hamas. The IDF is now completing its mission. Those who say it’s taking too long should remember that it took four years for NATO forces to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

To those who say that you can’t defeat an ideology with weapons, the answer is that this was never the purpose. The purpose is to deny lethal ideologies the power they need to carry out their crimes. The allies defeated Nazi Germany, Soviet communism, and the Islamic state. It doesn’t mean there are no more Nazis, Communists, and Islamists. But they have been denied the military power and the territorial control which they once used to kill innocents in the name of their demented ideology.

So Israel is entirely justified to continue the war which can and will be won. And it is doing so by respecting humanitarian law. Last week, UN Under Secretary for Humanitarian affairs, Tom Fletcher, claimed that 14,000 babies in Gaza would die within 48 hours. The UN eventually retracted this unfounded claim. But the damage in terms of defaming Israel had been done. Since October 7, Israel has sent 92,000 aid trucks into Gaza. That includes 1,8 million tons of aid. Aid is still being distributed but no longer in a way that enables Hamas to loot it.

Western governments that are trying to block Israel’s path to victory are making a moral and a tactical mistake. A moral mistake because they are abandoning a fellow democracy that is fighting a common enemy according to international law. A tactical mistake, because Israel will fight and win no matter what, and countries that stood in the way will not participate in the normalization process that will eventually take place after the defeat of Iran and of its proxies.

The French, British, and Canadian governments made that mistake by “threatening” Israel if it doesn’t end the war now. So did the Dutch government, which submitted to an EU vote a review the EU-Israel association agreement. The nine European governments who voted against the Dutch proposal (Germany, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Lithuania) chose to be on the right side of history.

When victory comes, Israel shall remember who stood by its side.