“Young Girl Reading”
Seymour Joseph Guy, 1877

On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization

by

Douglas Murray

Some years ago, I had a dream that appeared to be a scene from a past life. I am not claiming it was that, only that it seemed so to me, the dreamer. It took place in Nazi Germany before the death camps had been made operational. At first, Nazis had to make do with herding Jews into vans that were then sealed and filled with carbon monoxide. In my dream, that’s how I was murdered. What I remember most vividly from the dream was what I saw as I was exiting my body. The question on my mind was, How extensive is this murder program? Since I rose high enough to see the curvature of the earth, I could also perceive that it was very extensive: global in fact. In my dream I resolved that I would come back and fight it.

Anyone who wanted to do just that could have no better model than Douglas Murray. He’s a journalist, columnist and author of eight books, at least three of which have to do with the strange, sleepwalking refusal of Western civilization to rise to its own defense. This failure is found in the face of overt, multiple, clear and articulate threats to its continued survival.

Murray happened to be in New York on October 7, 2023, when the attacks on Israeli kibbutzim and the Nova music festival occurred. By the next day, while Israel Defense Force soldiers were still looking for body parts of victims, crowds gathered in Times Square, and in cities across Western Europe and Britain, Canada and Australia, to cheer and celebrate the tortures, rapes, kidnappings and massacres, Murray decided his place as journalist must be in Israel. His book is largely a report on what unimaginable scenes met him there, though relevant historical background plus interviews with lead actors are included as well.

Aside from the horror of the scenes Murray saw, which he describes as fully as he needs to, his important take-away has to do with motivation. The failures of intelligence on the Israeli side had to do with misreading motivations. As Murray tells it, “the security consensus in Israel had for many years been unified around what became known as the ‘conception.’ … By the time of the October 7 attacks it had been estimated that the group’s leadership alone had accumulated personal wealth of about 11 billion. … Crucially there was a belief that the leaders would not be willing to do anything that might jeopardize the luxury lifestyles they and their families enjoyed (pp. 49f).” 

This understandable belief, in what we might term Hamas’s motivational normality, turned out way wide of the mark. Death (inflicted or suffered) in the service of jihad is the ground-level jihadi motive. It explains unprecedented facts like these: “In the 140 square miles of Gaza, Hamas spent its years in power constructing over 350 miles of tunnels, with about 6,000 different tunnel entrances. Many of these were hidden in civilian houses, mosques, hospitals and other nonmilitary buildings … a breach of the Geneva Conventions … . Where most countries would seek to protect its civilians, Hamas always had a stated aim of using them as human shields (pp. 126f).” They put weapons under a baby’s crib, a fighter under an old lady’s wheelchair with the old lady still in it … the list of unimaginable incidents goes on and there are more than can be fitted into a review of this size. Death is no obstacle. Death is prized.

What about the widely touted claims of Israeli “genocide” in Gaza? Murray compares the recent British and American military operative ratio of three to four civilians killed for each enemy combatant. “Until the Gaza war this was regarded as a low level of civilian casualties in a heavily built-up conflict zone.” By contrast, even taking Hamas estimates at face value, “at the very least this would mean a civilian-to-terrorist death toll of one-to-one (pp. 132f).”

So what are we to make of all this? What do I make of it? To tell the truth, it has upset most of the assumptions I have made – throughout most of my life – about the human norm. About what’s ordinary, what’s normal and what background assumptions one can make about strangers, particularly if the strangers are of student age.

Ann Frank wrote in her diary, that “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” I don’t know if I believe that or ever asked myself what I believe about people in general and how they are “at heart.” But I do believe that – 

good will win over evil –

in spite of everything.