In this mailing:

  • Daniel Greenfield: The Gentle Art of Negotiating with Terrorists
  • Lawrence Kadish: Words of Light In Dark Times

The Gentle Art of Negotiating with Terrorists

by Daniel Greenfield  •  December 2, 2024 at 5:00 am

  • Offering to negotiate with Islamic terrorists is a statement of weakness. Jihadists only offer to negotiate out of fear, weakness or to entrap us, and they assume we do the same thing. Nothing would ever convince them that we genuinely want to live in peace with them, or that we prefer alternatives to violence. So any time we offer to negotiate, they see it as weakness or a trick.

  • If our diplomats ever understood this cultural reality, they would stop being baffled when the negotiations fall apart.

  • Western liberals believe that peace will be achieved when all the wars end, but peace in the Muslim world is not a permanent state; rather it is a temporary truce in an endless war. Liberals tell us that the problem is a lack of understanding, but the lack of understanding is coming from them.

Offering to negotiate with Islamic terrorists is a statement of weakness. Jihadists only offer to negotiate out of fear, weakness or to entrap us, and they assume we do the same thing. If our diplomats ever understood this cultural reality, they would stop being baffled when the negotiations fall apart. President Barack Obama told his nuclear deal negotiators that Iran had good reason to fear us, and that it was their job to relieve the fears of the ayatollahs. Pictured: Iran's then Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has a laugh while meeting with then US Secretary of State John Kerry, at the United Nations on April 27, 2015, in New York City. (Photo by Jason DeCrow-Pool/Getty Images)

The first rule of negotiating with Islamic terrorists is don't. The second rule is if you do it, do it with heavy artillery.

Islamic terrorists don't negotiate. They make demands in hopes of securing concessions without actually giving up anything. Only the most dedicated historian could find an example of a negotiation process during which the Islamic terrorists made an actual concession, followed through on it, and did not later take it back or turn right around and go back to terrorism.

The most prominent counterexamples are the three decades of negotiations between Israel and Islamic terrorist groups, which initially won a round of Nobel Peace Prizes and then degenerated into an endless war during which the terrorists took back every concession they ever made, did not follow through on any of them, and used Israeli concessions to become a much worse threat.

Negotiating with the Taliban, Hezbollah and Iran all had the same end result.

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Words of Light In Dark Times

by Lawrence Kadish  •  December 2, 2024 at 4:00 am

(Image source: iStock)

More than 60 years ago, Rev. J.H. Traugott wrote: "Jesus Christ did not come to make life easy but rather to make men great." Now, during the holiday season for a number of religions, when many may feel as if they are going through dark times, this sermonette might offer some welcome light:

There was a man who lived nineteen hundred years ago...

This man not only spoke with an accent, he also lived with an accent. This is what really distinguished him from other...

His accent in life was not what can I get out of Life, but what can I give to life...

His accent was not how comfortable can he be, but rather how comfortable he can make others... His accent was not in helping himself, but in helping others... His accent was not on his own health but on how healthy he can make others...

His accent was on living a full and rich and loving life... His accent was on loving others...

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