Now Hamas wants a truce. Here’s why Israel shouldn’t give them one.

After brutally massacring over 600 Israelis and then suffering some retaliatory strikes from Israel, the bloodthirsty jihadis of Hamas now want a truce. The Israeli government is virtually certain to get immense pressure to agree to such a truce, but this is actually the last thing that Israel should do at this point.

Even before the magnitude of what Hamas perpetrated in Israel was fully known, calls for a ceasefire became a talking point. Leftist opinion makers from the ridiculous (Antony Blinken) to the absurd (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) began calling for a ceasefire so quickly that the Babylon Bee zinged them with a riotous headline: “Emperor Hirohito Calls For Ceasefire After Bombing Of Pearl Harbor.”

Just hours after the Hamas jihad massacres began, the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs tweeted an astonishingly tone-deaf statement: “We unequivocally condemn the attack of Hamas terrorists and the loss of life that has incurred. We urge all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing.” The Office deleted this tweet after people started to point out how monstrous it was to urge that Israel not retaliate after being hit with the most devastating attack in its history.

Despite this embarrassment, Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted Sunday that he had met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan; he added, “I encouraged Türkiye’s advocacy for a cease-fire.” (Türkiye is the new official name of the country formerly known as Turkey; its proud government got tired of all the Thanksgiving bird jokes.)

Blinken later took that one down as well, but other leftists continued to call for a ceasefire at a time when that could only have meant that Hamas would hit Israel and Israel would do nothing in response. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Socialist Ditzville) released a statement on Saturday afternoon, as Israeli authorities were still tracking down all the Hamas jihadis who had managed to get inside the country and start killing indiscriminately. AOC said, “An immediate ceasefire and de-escalation is urgently needed to save lives.”

Eventually, after Israel bombed numerous Hamas sites in Gaza, Hamas top dogs began to think that a ceasefire sounded like a terrific idea. Reuters reported on Monday afternoon that “a senior Hamas official said the group is open to discussions over a possible truce with Israel, having ‘achieved its targets.’” Asked if Hamas wanted a ceasefire, a senior leader of the jihad group, Moussa Abu Marzouk (who has a doctorate in industrial engineering from Louisiana Tech), said that Hamas “was open to ‘something of that sort’ and ‘all political dialogues.’”

The establishment media and the leftist political elites will receive this with hosannas and take it as the dawning of a new era of peace — if only those dastardly warmongering Israelis will take Hamas’ olive branch. That is, however, not really what it is at all. For Hamas to be asking for a truce on Monday evening Gaza time, it must have had an extremely bad Sunday and Monday. For Islamic law only allows for a truce if Muslims are weak and need to gather strength to fight later more effectively, or if they’re fighting non-Muslims whom they think may accept Islam. “If Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud…Interests that justify making a truce are such things as Muslim weakness because of lack of numbers or materiel, or the hope of an enemy becoming Muslim…” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.16). This idea is founded on the Qur’an itself: “So do not falter and cry out for peace when you have the upper hand…” (47:35).

Western authorities never, ever demonstrate even the slightest understanding of this point, but this means that when a jihad group asks for a truce, it is admitting that it is losing and needs time to recover. The last thing that its non-Muslim foe should do at that point is actually grant it a truce. What it should do instead is press on toward final victory.

This has happened numerous times in the past: Israel makes headway against the jihadis, they ask for a truce, and the American government pressures the Israelis into accepting. The Netanyahu government should stand firm against all such pressure from the Biden regime. It should understand Hamas’ interest in a truce as a declaration of weakness, and destroy this evil organization’s power to terrorize innocent people once and for all.