RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/09/israels-fight-for-civilisation/

“Along with spiked’s Brendan O’Neill, Douglas Murray one of the two best writers in the English language about this conflict. As Murray writes, history is constantly being rewritten and that’s why this book is so important. In writing it, Murray has done the cause of democracy, and the victims of one of our century’s most unforgivable crimes, an important service.”

Douglas Murray’s new book, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of the West is a must-read on the Israel-Hamas war.

After 7 October 2023, Murray spent the better part of 18 months in Israel and Gaza, documenting the Hamas attack on Israel and its aftermath. His account of what Hamas did is instructive, harrowing and tragic. There was indiscriminate rape and murder, including that of babies and the elderly. Families were burned alive when attackers could not breach their safe rooms and so set their houses on fire. And partygoers were gunned down at the Nova music festival.

Murray points out that, in contrast with the Nazis, who tried to hide evidence of their mass slaughter, Hamas fighters recorded and proudly broadcast their own crimes. Who could forget the notorious young terrorist who, on the day of 7 October, called his parents in Gaza and boasted:

‘Hi dad… Open my WhatsApp now and you will see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!… I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her and her husband. I killed 10! Ten with my own hands! Put mum on.’

His mother then expresses regret – only that she was not there with him to savour the moment.

Much of Murray’s focus is on the reaction in the West. He dismantles the myth that the world’s sympathy was with Israel in the immediate aftermath of 7 October, a solidarity which it supposedly forfeited with its subsequent invasion of Gaza. Nothing could be further from the truth. He reminds us of the immediate reaction on the streets of London and on Ivy League campuses in America. These protests were not entreaties for peace, but calls for the eradication of Israel. Within days of the massacre, student groups at Harvard issued a joint statement expressing solidarity with Hamas: ‘We, the undersigned student organisations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.’

On Democracies and Death Cults dedicates significant energy to clarifying the misconceptions around the founding of Israel in 1948, particularly the myth that it is a ‘settler-colonial’ state. After the Holocaust, Jews from across the world migrated to what was then Palestine under the British Mandate, joining an already significant Jewish population, before the United Nations granted them the territory that became modern Israel. Palestinians were offered an equal parcel of land, which they turned down. Over the next 25 years, there were four Arab-Israeli wars, all of which posed an existential threat to Israel.

Murray notes that at least half of Israelis today are not white – they are émigrés from North Africa and the Middle East, where Muslim countries have effectively eradicated once-strong Jewish populations.

The real colonial power in the Middle East, Murray writes in one of his most important points, is Iran:

‘[Iran] has spent recent years assiduously expanding its colonies. What has Gaza become but a colony of Iran? Or Iraq after Iran moved into the vacuum left by America after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein? Or Yemen? Or Syria, into which Iran has poured Hezbollah and other forces? Iran and its proxies and mouthpieces in the West have spent years accusing Israel of being a colonial, expansionist state while all the time expanding and colonising everywhere they can reach in the region.’

Murray also debunks other popular criticisms levelled at Israel, many of which he correctly identifies as code for anti-Semitic slurs. Dealing with the popular charge of ‘genocide’, he points out that the Arab population in Gaza and the West Bank continues to grow significantly. Regarding the non-existent ‘Israeli apartheid’, he notes that Arabs in Israel have essentially the same rights as Jews, except in unique circumstances in the West Bank, and only then on security grounds. Rather than running an apartheid state, Israel extends rights to Muslim Arabs that Jews are denied in neighbouring Arab countries.

The anti-Israel bias of the international coverage of the conflict provides Murray with another large target. He notes how the media routinely create a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel – Hamas has killed women and children in Israel, and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have killed women and children in Gaza, therefore the two are both equally reprehensible morally, the argument goes. Ignored is the fact Hamas kills its victims deliberately, while the IDF is countering fighters who use civilians as human shields. Hamas also views every civilian death as a propaganda win.

Further dismantling the myth of the ‘moral equivalence’, Murray cites the significant steps taken by the IDF to minimise civilian casualties. Israel sends texts, calls and leaflets, warning Gazans of when and where to expect military operations. But Hamas does not let those in danger flee. Murray cites respected US war scholar John Spencer, who states that the ratio of civilian-to-enemy-combatant casualties is the lowest in the history of urban warfare. To claim Israel and Hamas are somehow equal recalls William F Buckley’s famous line: ‘That is like saying that the man who pushes a little old lady into the path of a bus is morally equivalent to the man who pushes her out of its path, because they both push little old ladies around.’

Reading On Democracies and Death Cults, one gets the impression that Murray is troubled by one question more than any other: can we ever expect to defeat these Islamist death cults like Hamas? He finds hope in the bravery of the Israeli people and one of the most important commandments in Judaism – to choose life.

One criticism I have of the book is that the editing seems rushed. Often, Murray goes back and forth to make his points. Better organised chapters would have made for a tighter book that’s easier to read. It is nearly 200 pages, yet divided into only five chapters, each containing long passages lacking transition.

None of this ultimately detracts from Murray’s compelling narrative. Along with spiked’s Brendan O’Neill, he is one of the two best writers in the English language about this conflict. As Murray writes, history is constantly being rewritten and that’s why this book is so important. In writing it, Murray has done the cause of democracy, and the victims of one of our century’s most unforgivable crimes, an important service.