Recognition Without Reality: Rewarding Terror, Abandoning the Hostages

Over the past year, a growing number of countries have taken the dramatic step of recognizing a Palestinian state. In 2024, nations including Ireland, Spain, Norway, Slovenia, and Armenia moved forward, joined by Caribbean states such as Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Trinidad & Tobago.

In 2025, the trend has accelerated into the Western world’s highest ranks: France, the United Kingdom, and Canada have announced they will recognize Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly in September. These nations will be the first G7 members to do so, breaking with decades of Western policy that insisted peace could only come through direct negotiation with Israel.

To its supporters, this recognition signals solidarity with Palestinians. But to Israel, it represents a dangerous misstep, one that undermines the chances for peace, emboldens Hamas, and makes the release of hostages less likely.

Far from advancing peace, these recognitions reward Hamas at the very moment it continues to hold Israeli hostages in Gaza. By granting legitimacy to Palestinian statehood without requiring Hamas to disarm or free its captives, Western nations send a dangerous message: violence and kidnapping pay off. Instead of creating leverage for negotiation, recognition reduces Hamas’s incentive to compromise.

Equally troubling, this wave of recognition feeds a global narrative that Israel is deliberately causing Palestinian suffering, a claim repeatedly amplified through manipulated imagery and selective reporting. As American-Israeli journalist Eitan Fischberger documented in his recent Wall Street Journal piece, “Gaza Starvation Photos Tell a Thousand Lies,” much of the world’s outrage is built on distortion. He described seeing hundreds of trucks loaded with food, water, and baby formula rotting in Gaza because the United Nations refused to distribute them under Israeli protection, insisting instead that security be provided by the “Gaza Blue Police,” a Hamas proxy.

Meanwhile, images of sick children such as Mohammed al-Mutawaaq, who suffers from cerebral palsy, and Osama al-Raqab, who has cystic fibrosis, were widely circulated to allege deliberate Israeli starvation. Yet both children’s conditions were unrelated to hunger, and in Osama’s case, Israel coordinated his evacuation for medical treatment in Italy. As Fischberger observed, “There is no historical precedent for a military providing the level of direct aid to an enemy population that Israel has provided to Gaza".

When such manipulations go viral, the effect is devastating: they fuel international anger, create pressure for symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood, and strip away the truth that Israel has facilitated nearly two million tons of humanitarian aid since October 7, 2023. In short, recognition under these conditions rewards Hamas’s propaganda strategy, not Palestinian civilians.

Israel and its allies must answer this diplomatic challenge with both clarity and resolve. First, Israel should make it unmistakably clear that recognition absent negotiations and absent the release of hostages legitimizes terrorism, not peace. Countries like France, the UK, and Canada must be pressed to tie recognition to concrete conditions: Hamas’s disarmament, the unconditional release of hostages, and verifiable reforms in Palestinian governance.

Second, the United States and other close allies should push back against the false famine narrative by publicizing the scale of Israel’s humanitarian effort and exposing the U.N.’s refusal to distribute aid without Hamas involvement. Transparency here is crucial: the more the world sees that food, water, and medicine are being blocked not by Israel but by Hamas and its enablers, the harder it becomes to justify premature recognition.

Finally, Israel must expand its diplomatic outreach beyond the G7 to rally support among nations that value facts over propaganda. By sharing evidence of aid shipments, showcasing stories like those Fischberger uncovered, and emphasizing that peace must come through negotiation, not unilateral international declarations, Israel can counter the dangerous momentum toward rewarding Hamas.

The surge of recognitions for a Palestinian state may appear, at first glance, to be a step toward peace. In reality, it is the opposite: it hands Hamas a victory while undermining Israel’s security and the chances of a negotiated settlement. If Western nations truly care about Palestinians and Israelis alike, they must resist rewarding terrorism and instead demand accountability, negotiation, and honesty.

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz wrote back in 2012, “If the U.N. now recognizes Palestine as a state without requiring its leaders to negotiate a compromise peace with Israel, it would send a clear message to other groups seeking recognition and statehood: Terrorism will earn you the sympathy of the world and get you your way.”

Lou Shapiro is a criminal defense attorney-certified specialist and legal analyst, but most importantly, makes the end-of-shul announcements at Adas Torah. He can be reached at LouisJShapiro@gmail.com.