There is, it seems, a prevalent confusion in much of the discourse going on these days regarding the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections – and by extension, regarding democracy and Islamic fundamentalism as a whole.

One thing is for sure: The Hamas victory represents a genuine achievement for democratic procedure in the Arab world. Although free and orderly elections have, on rare occasions, been held in this world before, most recently in Iraq, this is the first time that they have resulted in the peaceful transfer of power from a ruling party to a challenger.

This is not something to be made light of, even if, paradoxically, the Palestinians who have just brought an extreme anti-Israel party to power owe the success of their elections as much to Israel as to anything else. Despite the undeniable suffering of the Palestinian people under the Israeli occupation, the example of Israeli democracy, with which the Palestinians have lived in close conjunction for the last four decades, has profoundly affected their thinking. They may rage at Israel, but they are also acutely aware that when Labor ousts Likud or vice versa, or when Israeli courts rule in favor of private citizens against the government, these are possibilities that they would like to have for themselves. It is a tribute to democracy’s appeal that the Palestinian public, having been exposed to some of Israel’s worst features, has nevertheless been sufficiently impressed by its best ones to wish to imitate them.

The confusion sets in at the point that the argument is made in the Western world: “Well, then, if the victory of Hamas is such an achievement for Arab democracy, it mustn’t be responded to with the wrong message. Hamas may be a radical Islamist party with the destruction of Israel on its agenda, but it would be hypocritical of America and Europe, having repeatedly called for the democratization of Arab society, to now reject it when it occurs. Like it or not, Hamas has won fair and square, and any government led by it should be accorded the same economic and diplomatic support given to previous Palestinian governments. To do less would be to tell the Palestinians, and the Arabs in general, that democracy does not pay and is only honored by the West when the West’s favorites win.”

What are being confused here are the two separate elements of recognition and support, which are not at all the same. Recognizing a government as a legitimate expression of popular will that is therefore entitled to rule is one thing. Supporting a government by extending financial or other aid to it is something else.

Suppose, for example, that Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front were democratically to come to power in France on a platform of forcibly deporting all Arab immigrants back to North Africa. Should the United States seek to bring about the violent overthrow of a Le Pen government? Certainly not. Should it deny it diplomatic recognition by withdrawing its ambassador from Paris and cutting diplomatic ties? Again, certainly not. But does this mean that it should support such a government by seeking to coordinate policies and sign agreements with it? Once more, certainly not.

A Le Pennist France might be the democratic choice of the French people, but precisely for that reason, the French should be made to live with the consequences of their choice, one of which should be the loss of American cooperation. The message sent them by such a policy would not be that democratic elections are bad, but rather that democratic elections come with democratic responsibilities.

The same holds true for a Palestinian Authority run by Hamas. It is patronizing to treat the Palestinian people as ignorant innocents who did not know what they were doing when they elected a party that calls for the destruction of Israel. Whether or not this call was their main motive for voting for Hamas (and in many cases it may not have been), they were aware of it and knew whom they were voting for. To now argue, as the government of France and some of its associates in the European Union are doing, that financial assistance to a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority should continue as before because if it doesn’t, the PA will collapse financially, leaving many Palestinians impoverished and hungry, is absurd. It is treating the Palestinians like children who are not responsible for what they do. Far from helping to inculcate democratic values in the Arab world, such an approach would only undermine these values by delivering the message that a people can elect whoever it wants with impunity and without ever having to worry about the implications of its decision.

A common “realist” critique of the assumption that the West should push for democratization in Arab society is that Arab democracy in today’s world can only mean the coming to power of Islamic fundamentalists in more and more countries. Yet this is perhaps a shortsighted realism. In the long run, just as it took decades of communist regimes in Europe to convince the world that communism is a system that never works, the only way to rid the Muslim world of the illusion that Islamic governments can cure it of its ills may be to let such governments reign and fail. But to do this, it is imperative not to save them from failure by propping them up financially or otherwise.

The Palestinians have chosen Hamas? We can agree that it was their democratic right to. But we should also agree that the sooner they realize they have made a bad choice, the better. Any Western attempt to thwart such a realization by supporting a Hamas government can only help delay the discreditization of radical Islam among the Palestinians and Arabs themselves. This would be a very foolish thing to do.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.