By John Fraser
Many will dismiss this book, rubbish its conclusions and berate its author. It is a book that provides a solid argument in favour of Israel and against Hamas, with the writer seeing Israel as a democracy and Hamas as the death cult.
Douglas Murray, a successful author and journalist, is no stranger to controversy. His previous books about the dangers of woke ideology and mass migration into Europe have won him praise from many but also made him enemies.
He has spent a lot of time in Israel since the Hamas incursions, massacre and kidnappings of October 7 2023, and he provides extensive and harrowing accounts of the barbarity that took place.
“Within hours the sheer scale of the assault started to become apparent. The terrorists had come into Israel not just by land vehicles and on foot but by boat and on hang gliders; perhaps as many as six thousand in total,” he writes.
“Wherever they arrived they brought death — with rifles, grenades, incendiary weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, and more. It would take weeks — in fact months — to identify the number of people killed that day. The final body count was not identified until ten months later. The death toll turned out to be just short of 1,200 people.”
An underlying theme of this book — and it is an unapologetically controversial one — is that in the Gaza conflict, there is a fundamental difference between the Israelis and the Hamas fighters.
The atrocities of October 7 were well documented by those who enacted them, and Murray suggests that there was delight among the Hamas fighters in participating in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Murray gives an account of one Hamas invader who joyfully contacted his family to beam them the evidence of the killings he had just carried out and notes the enthusiastic praise and blessings he received from his relatives.
In contrast, Murray suggests that it is love — not hate — that motivates the Israelis.
“From the south of Gaza to the south of Lebanon and the West Bank, none take a joy or pleasure in the task they have to do. They did it not because they loved death but exactly because they love life. They fought for life. For the survival of their families, their nation, and their people.”
Critics of this book will counter that Israel has pummelled Gaza with great force over many, many months and that the death toll has been enormous — with Palestinian victims including women and children, doctors, journalists and aid workers.
It is instructive to read of the vast wealth accumulated by Hamas leaders — Murray suggests they became billionaires by pocketing international aid — and how aid to Gaza was also diverted into building a network of underground tunnels that are longer than the London Underground. Unlike the Underground, these tunnels have a primarily military purpose — enabling the stealthy movement of fighters and the concealment of weapons and hostages.
Another important theme of this book is that the backlash against Israel began not after it had launched its retaliatory attacks on Gaza and begun its efforts to secure the return of the hostages — but on October 7th itself.
“Within a couple of months of the war starting there was a narrative that went something like this: Israel had the world’s sympathy and support in the immediate aftermath of the 7th but had squandered it by prosecuting its war against Hamas in Gaza,” Murray suggests.
“I also wondered why the citizens of Israel seemed so unique among victims. Why they seemed to be the only people on earth who, when savagely attacked, either didn’t gain the world’s sympathy or gained it only for a matter of hours — if that.
“I also feared — correctly, as it turned out — that a great wave of denial would sweep across the world, that what turned out to be the biggest massacre of Jews anywhere in the world since the Holocaust would swiftly be denied just as surely as neo-Nazis and others chose to try to deny the Nazi Holocaust after it had happened.”
He argues this is because there is a seam of anti-Semitism running through Western society.
“As the late rabbi Jonathan Sacks, among many others, pointed out, Jews were once hated because of their religion. Then sometime after the Enlightenment it became hard to hate people because of their religion. At that point, the Jews were hated because of their race. Then, after the twentieth century, it became unacceptable to hate people because of their race. So, in the twenty-first century, when civilized people cannot hate the Jews for their religion or their race, Jews can be hated for having a state — and for defending it.”There is one important question Murray poses, but is unable to answer: How did Israel’s security services not predict and prevent the incursions of October 7?
This is the same highly sophisticated state apparatus that was able to place explosives into thousands of hand-held pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies intended for use by Hezbollah — and then detonate them.
Murray recalls questioning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and receiving the lame response that what went wrong on October 7 would be determined later by an official inquiry.
He records that a watch post staffed by young female Israeli soldiers did report suspicious movements inside Gaza before the Hamas attacks, but the reports did not seem to have been taken seriously.
“From the moment the State of Israel was created there was one certainty above all: as embattled as Israel might be, and as hated as it often seemed to be from every side, at least this was a place where Jews could be safe and protect themselves. And then 7 October happened, and a doubt spread among Jews in Israel and around the world. What if we aren’t safe in Israel either,” Murray notes.
Just as opinions on the rights and wrongs of the Gaza conflict are polarised, so will opinions about On Democracies and Death Cults.
For some, it will be a naked and unconvincing exercise in pro-Israel propaganda.
For those with more open minds, it is a disturbing, distressing and thought-provoking analysis of a conflict that has brought suffering, misery and despair to so many. On both sides.
This review was first published in Business Day.
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