Israel always turns tough in a crisis.

Born in controversy, raised on war, steeled by terrorism, reviled by the world, the Jewish state has suffered more than its share of trials. It aches for peace, it honors its diplomats, but it turns to its warriors when war is required.

Until now.

“The Koran is our constitution, Mohammed is our prophet, jihad is our path and dying as martyrs for the sake of Allah is our biggest wish!” This chilling pronouncement tripped off the lips of a Palestinian Authority legislator after the PA’s parliament rubber-stamped the government’s new cabinet on March 28. It shouldn’t come as a shock: In January, Palestinians awarded a strong majority of parliamentary seats to the terrorist group Hamas. Hamas was founded in 1987 for the express purpose of destroying Israel, and since joining politics has staunchly, publicly clung to that goal. It denies Israel’s right to be. It considers all previously signed agreements with Israel void. The new PA prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, plans (as a first step) to drive Israel back to 1967 borders and establish an Arab state with Jerusalem as its capital. His cabinet brims with hard-line terrorists who have been jailed or targeted for assassination by Israel.

For Israel, this is a time of crisis. War is on the cards. But rather than appealing to its warriors, in its latest election Israel embraced its defeatists.

On March 28—the same day as the PA cabinet approval—Israeli voters crowned Ehud Olmert their new prime minister.

Olmert is a professional politician, not a fighter. Last June, to the Israel Policy Forum in New York, he said, “We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies” (emphasis mine throughout). It’s impossible to comprehend how Olmert could be tired of winning and defeating enemies, when 33 years have passed since Israel won anything.

Perhaps Olmert confuses the litany of losses, retreats, terrorist violence and global derision his nation has suffered during that time with winning. But by taking that stance at precisely the moment Hamas is fortifying its position, he guarantees that his people will soon learn how much quicker they grow tired of being conquered.

Olmert campaigned on a pledge to extract 15,000 Jews from West Bank settlements. In what amounted to his victory speech, he spoke directly to the Palestinian leaders: “We are ready to compromise, to give up parts of the beloved land of Israel … and evacuate, under great pain, Jews living there, in order to create the conditions that will enable you to fulfill your dream and live alongside us” (bbc News, March 29). Israelis have just elected a prime minister who wants to enable Hamas to fulfill its dreams.

This man fantasizes about Hamas terrorists dreaming of living alongside Jews—and calls that fantasy a foreign policy. By comparison, Chamberlain looks like a lion.

What drove the Jews to elect Ehud Olmert? Why did conservatives fare so poorly? Essentially, the vote reveals a battle-fatigued, deeply ambivalent, directionless people. Tired of fighting, tired of being courageous—yet acceding the unreliability of negotiation—they grasped at a thin promise of something different: a third way.

Olmert’s Kadima party is the brainchild of Ariel Sharon, who sought to break the deadlock of the Arab-Jew conflict by simply imposing a solution upon it unilaterally—defining Israel’s borders without Palestinian cooperation. He sought first to pull Israelis out of areas already heavily populated by Arabs—therefore hard to defend; then to fortify the portions of Israel that remained; then to finish the security wall and call whatever lay on the other side a Palestinian “state.”

Then Sharon suffered a devastating stroke, plunging him into a coma he has yet to emerge from, and Olmert became acting prime minister. Still, Kadima’s shift in leader from former warrior to third-rate politician didn’t substantially shrink the party ranks.

Soon after came Hamas’s shocking landslide win in Palestinian elections, which suddenly produced a terrorist-controlled Palestinian Authority. Even still, there was no Jewish response—no swing right—no outcry for strong leadership with firm policies to ensure Israel’s security.

Olmert doggedly stuck to his West Bank eviction plan—preferably, he said, with Hamas’s support, but, if necessary, without it. “We will try to achieve this [setting Israel’s final borders] in an agreement with the Palestinians,” he said. (It’s hard to see how borders of a country can be agreed upon with a negotiating partner that does not believe that country should even exist.) He even put forward a deadline for completing his plan: 2010. And still, his countrymen clung to him.

In fact, on March 28, voters handed Israel‘s conservatives their worst defeat ever. Likud—Israel’s main conservative party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu—came in fourth with just 12 seats (in 2003 elections, it won 38). Kadima won 29 seats; center-left Labor pulled in 20. These two parties can easily ally with one or two other like-minded parties to push Olmert’s plan forward. Stratfor analyst Peter Zeihan said, “Israeli voters appear to have elected the most authoritative government the country has seen since the 1973 Yom Kippur war” (March 28).

Some commentators interpreted the election result as Israelis simply turning their back on a peace process they recognize as a failure, demanding the government focus on “more pressing” domestic issues like fighting poverty and improving education. If that is so, then Israelis’ read on the peace process is correct—however, by turning to a government whose plan will embolden terrorists and endanger Jews even more, they shouldn’t expect great improvements on the domestic front.

Haaretz gave this assessment: “The people have spoken: The land will be divided. … It’s the end of the controversial legitimacy of the separation maneuver. From now on, the question is not if, but when, to where, and how. The Greater Land of Israel is over and done with” (March 30).

In the fantasy world of Olmert and those who voted for him, a smaller Israel is a more defensible Israel. Shrinking borders equal stronger borders.

In Olmert’s world, reducing Israeli military oversight in Palestinian areas makes for happier Arabs who are less likely to attack.

In Olmert’s world, “Hamas is not a strategic threat.” These were his words to the Knesset’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee in February. In Olmert’s world, the key to pressuring the Palestinians—he told the committee—is through diplomacy rather than military action (abc, February 22).

However, in the real world—within which Israel has managed to survive for the past six decades—all those utopian notions have repeatedly been proven dead wrong.

No previous Israeli leader, no matter how entangled in negotiation he became, ever embraced such erroneous thinking so wholeheartedly. Every one of them proceeded “forward” with a measure of caution, making concessions contingent upon at least a pretense of peace efforts by the Arabs.

Not so Olmert.

Israel’s new prime minister essentially promises to give Hamas what it wants—or at least a good part of it: the West Bank—regardless of how Hamas behaves. At times he speaks of this move as being defiant against terrorism. Of course, it is precisely the reverse.

Israel is tired of fighting.

Hamas is eager to fight.

The unfortunate truth is that, if your enemy is determined to fight you to the death, he denies your peaceful options. Barring intervention from God, your choices are drastically limited: fight to win, or be destroyed.

Israel is making no appeal for protection from God. And it has declared its unwillingness to fight.

Ugly truth: Terrorism works against Jews. Olmert’s victory proves it.

Like the weary man they have placed at the helm of their state, a majority of Israelis are tired of fighting, tired of being courageous. They are tired of intifada and jihad, tired of Arabs shouting their hatred to the heavens, tired of Arabs blowing themselves up on buses, in cafes and discos. As Stratfor wrote, “Militant attacks might inflame the Israeli right, but they leave most of the rest of the Israeli political spectrum weary of contact with the Palestinians” (March 10).

Israelis just want the struggle to end. They want to withdraw to safety. Build a big wall and duck behind it. Shut up any Jews who provoke Arabs. Whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes, that is, except fight. Because, you see, they tried that for years and, well, it just didn’t work.

No—the only way forward, a slight majority of Israeli voters say, is retreat.

Even clear-headed Western minds should recognize surrender when we see it. But to minds inflamed with the intoxicating Jew-hatred of Islamist extremism—minds convinced that Allah will ensure Islam’s ultimate victory over the poisonous scourge of Zionism—Israel’s commitment to retreat is more than mere surrender. It is providential justice. It is a step—yes, only a step, but a beautiful step—toward the realization of the Muslim kingdom of God. A kingdom in which the Jews are gone forever.

That is what Hamas really dreams about.

You don’t have to believe God has blessed and protected the Jewish state in the past—an idea most of its citizens once espoused—to recognize how much stronger a nation committed to defending itself based on that belief is than one unwilling to defend itself at all. But whether you believe it or not, there is a spiritual reality underpinning the transformation of Israel from the lion of Judah into the bunker state it is becoming.

That reality is that the Jews are suffering a curse from God for their lack of faith and their disobedience to His laws. “And I will break the pride of your power” God warned (Leviticus 26:19). Though Israel is by far the region’s strongest state in power, it has also become the weakest state in will. Israeli pride in its power has been supernaturally broken.

This truly is Israel’s most perilous hour. Its enemies wax strong while it grows weak. Now, the Israeli electorate has thrown its support behind a policy of recklessness and desperation unprecedented in its nation’s short history.

By all appearances, Olmert’s goal of bringing the situation to an end by 2010 may well come to fruition—though in a manner very different from the way he hopes.