From a global perspective, the doctrine of proportionality is the single greatest weapon in the cause of totalitarian Islam.

My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah. We will chase you everywhere! We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children's thirst with your blood . . . In the name of Allah, we will destroy you, blow you up, take revenge against you, purify the land of you pigs that have defiled our country. This operation is revenge against the sons of monkeys and pigs.

The words come from the farewell video of Adham Ahmad Hujyla Abu Jandal, a Hamas suicide bomber, circa 2006. With Israel now engaged in another round of Whack-a-mole with Hamas terrorists in Gaza, is there even the slightest reason to believe that Abu Jandal's death rant does not reflect the heartfelt sentiments of a plurality of Palestinians? It was they, after all, who awarded Hamas a lion's share of the seats in the legislative council of the Palestinian National Authority during the parliamentary elections of 2006.

If nothing else, Israel's latest incursion into Gaza provides the world with yet another glimpse of the Palestinian Way of War.

• Train women and children to become human canon fodder.
• Target women and children throughout the territory of your enemy.
• Hide behind women and children when your enemy retaliates.
• Run crying to the United Nations when women and children die in the crossfire.

Taken as a whole, the four-point methodology undoes a dozen or so millennia in the moral evolution of the human species — but, hey, there are definite cognates in reptilian behavior, and we're multicultural folk, so, really, who are we to judge?

As predictable as the current Gaza crisis is, even more predictable is the world's response. The usual suspects at the UN howl in indignation at Israeli "aggression" — as if the determination to halt rocket fire aimed at your civilian population equates with the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Indeed, the rhetorical linkage of Israel and Nazi Germany is one of the more grotesque verbal tics of Israel's detractors. So, for example, Venezuela's UN ambassador warned Israeli leaders, "The Nuremberg tribunal will be waiting for you in the future in order to judge you as war criminals." Malaysia's Deputy Foreign Secretary declared that Israel's actions were "tantamount to genocide." And the Iraqi ambassador spoke of "the Israeli regime's war crimes and crimes against humanity."

But even more sober voices have expressed qualms over Israel's actions. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for example, criticized Israel for its use of "disproportionate force" and called for an immediate cease fire on humanitarian grounds. Likewise, India's External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vishnu Prakash lamented Israel's "use of disproportionate force . . . resulting in a large number of civilian casualties." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned what he judged "excessive use of force by Israel in Gaza." Closer to home, Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, pleaded with the Israeli government "to call a halt to this wholly disproportionate escalation of violence."

Maybe, however, proportionality is part of the problem . . . both for Israel, in the case of terrorists on its borders, and for the West, led by America, in its ongoing struggle against totalitarian Islam.

The doctrine of proportionality, in the abstract, has much to recommend it. Its roots lie in the lex taliones, more commonly known as the rule of "an eye for an eye," described in Exodus 21:23-27. The law is often misconstrued as saying that the victim of a wrong must exact identical retribution — that is, if your enemy kicks you in the shins, you must retaliate by kicking him in the shins. But the point of the law is actually to limit retribution: If your enemy kicks you in the shins, you can let the incident pass, or you can kick him back, but you cannot stab him in the heart. That way, petty individual quarrels don't escalate into wider conflicts.

Once you depart the realm of individual quarrels, however, and begin to consider the realities of modern geopolitics, the doctrine of proportionality becomes a much dicier proposition. Despite the fact that the doctrine is referenced, directly or indirectly, in several international agreements — the 1907 Hague Conventions governing the rules of international wars, the 1977 Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions, and the 1980 Draft Articles on State Responsibility by the International Law Commission — even a cursory glance at history since the end of the Cold War forces us to confront the awkward question of whether the doctrine of proportionality actually encourages the sustained aggression of weaker states, especially via loosely affiliated non-state entities, against stronger states . . . and whether that, in turn, translates into more wars.

To be sure, that is the case in the present conflict between Israel, a nuclear power, and Hamas, a terrorist client of the totalitarian Islamic nation of Iran — to date, still an aspiring nuclear power. From a global perspective, the doctrine of proportionality is the single greatest weapon in the cause of totalitarian Islam, for it sustains in the ranks of potential recruits the belief that all is never lost, that setbacks are merely temporary, that the Great Satan America, and its liberal democratic minions in Europe and Israel, will eventually crumble, and with them the degenerate secular cultures of modernity, at which point the infidels will submit to Allah's will. That's a pipedream; nothing could be plainer to non-Muslims than the fact that it's never going to happen.

But "eventually" is a seductive word. It permits duped and deluded people to cling to irrational hopes for indefinite lengths of time: If I just keep banging my head against that nasty brick wall, eventually the wall will crumble to the ground. There is indeed a clear eventuality in such a scenario, but it's not the crumbling of the wall.

The wall against which totalitarian Islam has been banging its collective head for the last three decades — arguably for the last three centuries — is the Enlightenment. The outcome of the war against totalitarian Islam, on that level, is not in doubt. Totalitarian Islam will not be accommodated; by definition, it cannot be accommodated. Therefore, it will perish. The fatal literalism that justifies violent jihad will come off the devotional menu. Like Judaism and Christianity before it, Islam will incorporate the Enlightenment values of religious tolerance and rational inquiry into its worldview. There may remain constitutionally Islamic nations . . . just as England remains a constitutionally Christian nation, just as Israel remains a constitutionally Jewish nation. But equal, individual rights will be stipulated for non-Muslims. Dissent will be heard. Freedom of thought, expression and association will be guaranteed.

That much is certain.

The question, then, is how do we — and they — get there. There are two, and only two, paths to the Enlightenment for Islam: democracy or disproportionality.

The path of democracy, which is the more humane alternative, has been pursued by the Bush Administration since 9/11. The idea is to establish liberal democratic governments in the heart of Islam and hope these stir their neighbors to throw off the yolk of religious fanaticism. The more brutal alternative, which has been rigorously shunned by the Bush Administration, is the path of disproportionality. The idea, in that case, is to batter Muslim populations worldwide into submission. Jihadists like to brag that while their Jewish and Christian enemies love life, they love death. Perhaps they, and the regimes that support them, will ultimately require a much larger dose of that which they love in order to cure them. The precedent is odious but not unfamiliar. Muslims are no more implacable enemies of Enlightenment values than were Germans or Japanese prior to World War Two.

Democracy or disproportionality: Inspiration or decimation.

Down one or the other of these paths lies the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — here, as in so many ways, a perfect microcosm of the West's broader war against totalitarian Islam. Israel is not going away. Hamas, therefore, is doomed by its very charter: "The land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf [inalienable endowment] throughout the generations. Until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it."

Hamas is doomed, in other words, by the actualizing fiction of an Islamic Waqf. The organization's raison d'être lies in a pre-Enlightenment concept. There is, to put the matter bluntly, no such thing as Islamic land. Or Christian land. Or Jewish land. There is land, and there are people who happen to live on it. Those who accept that reality, and who can live in peace with their neighbors, have a future.

Those who cannot do not.