War & Peace Quote by Bob Hawke

Hawke’s line lands like a policy memo sharpened into a moral ultimatum: you can’t bomb your way to “victory” over terrorism while leaving a globally televised grievance to fester. The phrasing matters. “Unless and until” is diplomatic steel, a double-lock that denies wiggle room. “Something concrete” is a rebuke to the ritual of symbolic summits and choreographed handshakes; he’s calling out the international community’s talent for managing headlines instead of outcomes. And “a real start” quietly punctures the grandiosity of the post-9/11 “war on terror” framing: what governments sell as an epochal campaign is, without political repair work, not even beginning properly.

The subtext is less about excusing violence than about understanding its supply chain. Hawke is arguing that terrorism feeds on narratives of humiliation, occupation, and double standards. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict functions as a megaphone for those narratives far beyond the region, a rhetorical recruitment tool that turns local injustice into portable rage. By tying counterterrorism to “addressing” the conflict, he’s also indicting Western strategy: security policy that treats symptoms while protecting the political conditions that produce them.

Contextually, Hawke is speaking as a pragmatic statesman from a U.S.-aligned country, not a campus polemicist. That’s what gives the quote its edge. He’s warning allies that credibility is an operational asset. If you demand law and restraint from the world while tolerating permanent exception in one of its most scrutinized disputes, you don’t just look hypocritical; you make the fight harder, longer, and uglier.