On December 6 and 7, 2015, U2 finally took the stage in Paris.

The concerts had originally been scheduled for November 14 and 15, just one day after Islamist terrorists murdered 130 people across the city in coordinated attacks, including the massacre at the Bataclan concert hall. Less than a year earlier, Paris had already endured the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attack. Fear had become the city’s soundtrack.

Standing before a grieving audience, Bono argued that the terrorists wanted more than bodies. They wanted souls. They wanted free people to surrender their openness, joy, and humanity. His message was simple: we cannot become monsters to defeat the monsters.

But that never meant the monsters should be left undefeated.

A decade later, Bono’s words resonate with renewed force. Islamist terrorists butchered hundreds at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7, 2023, turning a celebration of life into a killing field. Yet Nova has refused to surrender. The festival has returned, even as Hamas and its supporters continue to mock the victims and celebrate the massacre.

That is the challenge every free society faces.

Love is not an alternative to defeating evil. Without security, there can be no concerts, no festivals, no freedom to gather. Evil must be confronted and defeated, or it will make love, music, and joy impossible.

The West must therefore pursue twin imperatives: defeat those who seek to destroy civilization, while steadfastly embracing the values of love, creativity, and human dignity that make civilization worth defending. Terror must never be allowed to decide either who lives or how we live.