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The response of the U.S. and EU leadership to Hamas’ genocidal savagery against Israel, a Western liberal democracy, has been despicable and dangerous. Blustering protestations of support and solidarity by politicians have been undercut by schoolmarmish hectoring about Israel’s “disproportionate” tactics and alleged callous disregard for Palestinian Arab lives and well-being.

This geopolitical virtue-signaling has been correctly interpreted by Hamas and Iran as a green-light to double-down on its aggression, which won’t stop with Israel.

Last week Iran showed the way by launching an unprecedent, indiscriminate attack on Israel with a 300-strong barrage of drones and missiles. Aided by the U.S., Great Britain, and Middle East Sunni states, but mostly the result of Israel’s superb anti-missile defenses, Israel suffered only one casualty.

But consistent with the kinda, sorta support the West has been showing for the last six months, this aid was followed by criticism and warnings against retaliation that once again signaled Israel’s enemies that the West really doesn’t have Israel’s back, but can be depended upon to stick a knife in it.

The Biden administration took the lead. Biden himself instructed Israel not to retaliate, but “take the win,” an egregiously stupid comment bespeaking what Biden’s track-record has repeatedly shown: that he is a Chamberlain-class appeaser. But the Europeans and the Brits were just as short-sighted, not to mention displaying the usual “preemptive cringe” that for decades has been the West’s default posture when engaging its enemies.

As World Israel News reported, “French President Emmanuel Macron said the international community should do ‘everything we can to avoid a flare-up.’ He said he would attempt to convince Israel ‘that it should not respond by escalating, but rather by isolating Iran.’

Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the United Kingdom would not take part in any military action against Iran, telling the BBC on Monday, ‘We’re saying very strongly that we don’t support a retaliatory strike. We don’t think they should make one.’”

This craven pressure on Israel reminds me of what Winston Churchill said in 1938 about France and England’s bullying Czechoslovakia into surrendering the Sudetenland to Hitler: “The British and French at this time presented a front of two over-ripe melons crushed together; whereas what was needed was a gleam of steel.” But the pressure seemed to work. Last Thursday Israel hit a few targets in Syria and Iran with a limited “de-escalatory strike,” as one Israeli analyst put it. By forcing this “almost symbolic strike,” the West once again kicks the Iran can down the road.

Why is the West “running scared of Tehran,” as Daniel Pipes put it during the Salman Rushdie fatwa affair in 1989, which many in the West met with condemnations of Rushdie? Why do nations with state-of-the-art weaponry, including nuclear arsenals, allow jihadist gangs and a failing state like Iran, viable only by dint of massive oil reserves, attack our security and interests––and those of our close ally–– with impunity?

Domestic politics, for one thing, especially in the U.S. The Biden Democrat cabal, bleeding support from traditionally reliable constituents like blacks and Latinos, can’t afford to lose the Muslim-American vote, nor the “woke” antisemitic youth vote marching and protesting on behalf of Hamas and other jihadist genocidal gangs. Team Biden thinks bullying Israel will misdirect them from Biden’s political necessity to maintain some level of support for Israel.

Also don’t forget Europe’s feckless immigration policies that have allowed 19 million Muslim into Europe. Many of them view with contempt their “infidel” hosts, refuse to assimilate to their new homes’ liberal, secular values, and frequently resort to violence to punish what they perceive are insults to Islam. Holding Israel at arm’s length, if not compromising its interests and security, are ways to appease them.

Under Biden the U.S. has gone down the same dangerous road. During his administration 7.2 million unvetted border-crossers have entered the U.S. from all over the world, including our enemies like China and people listed as terrorists on the government’s watch list.

Then, as always there’s what Middle East hand J.B. Kelly called in 1975  “the oil cringe of the West,” the chronic appeasement of Middle East oil producers like Iran, which retain powerful leverage over global oil supplies and prices. Putting “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran, as Trump did, or an Israeli retaliatory strike on Iran’s refineries, could disrupt oil supplies, provoke China, which buys nearly all of Iran’s 1.6 million barrels a day exports, and raise prices everywhere, a bad omen for the Dems’ chances in November.

In addition, the moral hazards of appeasement, such as Iran’s unprecedented strike against Israel,  are the fruit of foreign policy delusions and magical thinking about “smart diplomacy,” which promulgates empty threats that merely confirm our enemies’ contempt. But they do provide a convenient misdirection from foreign policy failures by creating the illusion of action when action is too politically costly and, as it always is, too risky.

Next, naïve and fossilized foreign policy received wisdom about “diplomatic engagement,” the “rules-based international order,” and multinational agreement remains the West’s default response, no matter how many times over the past century it has failed––as it has with Iran for 46 years.

For example, last Friday the G7 foreign ministers announced their “determination that Iran must never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon. We urge Iran to cease and reverse nuclear escalations and to stop the continuing uranium enrichment activities reported by [the International Atomic Energy Agency] that have no credible civil justification and pose significant proliferative risks. Tehran must reverse this trend and engage in serious dialogue.”

Does anyone really think that the ruthless mullahs who have nearly five decades of American blood on their hands up to their elbows will be frightened or deterred by diplomats from nations with scanty militaries, or heed their missish bravado? Or saying that the mullahs “must engage in serious dialogue” will get any response other than contempt? And what is the answer to the mullahs’ traditional riposte to such demands––“Or what?” But we know that this show of so-called  “smart diplomacy” will not be backed by mind-concentrating force, nor is intended for Iran, but for the citizens back home, most of whom will be misdirected from the West’s fear of action.

Nor can we overlook the post-Holocaust antisemitism that helps explain Israel’s pariah status among the West’s leftists and traditionalist Muslims. Both despise Israel for its global success in surviving its surrounding enemies’ serial aggression, and flourishing without communist guidance; and for its close ties to America, Iran’s “great Satan” and usurper of Islam’s rightful global power and influence.

Finally, the West’s despicable treatment of Israel––which heartens its enemies and gives them hope that they can achieve their genocidal aim to utterly destroy the only Jewish nation in the world––reflects the West’s long-developing moral corruption and civilizational failure of nerve.

Secularism has driven faith out of the town square, truth is a mere construct and an arbitrary personal preference, virtue is mocked, morality banished, patriotism demonized, the young mired in arrested development and ignorance, savage rapists and murderers celebrated in the streets and universities, political enemies are silenced or mired in specious show trials––all while our freedoms and unalienable rights are eroded, and our checked and balanced Constitutional order increasingly weakened by a technocratic tyranny relentlessly aggrandizing more and more power.

And don’t think our ruthless, autocratic enemies haven’t noticed. They see our appeasement of their aggression, especially against liberal-democratic, chronically besieged Israel––our most important ally in a critical region, which the West for decades has subjected to calumny and contempt.

Make no mistake: they’re also coming for the free West, and soon may start putting us to the test.