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ISRAEL

Israel’s fight for civilisation Douglas Murray’s On Democracies and Death Cults is a vital account of 7 October and its aftermath. Cory Franklin

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.’

Here on Island Israel, Bewilderment and Tough Questions It’s been a rough week and it’s not over yet. P. David Hornik

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?

It was reported Thursday evening that Israel’s Transportation Minister Miri Regev, Economy Minister Nir Barkat, and heads of Israeli airlines were holding an emergency meeting on what to do about thousands of Israelis who have been stranded abroad since Sunday—the day a Houthi ballistic missile from Yemen penetrated both Israeli and American air defenses and hit the perimeter of the main terminal of Ben Gurion Airport, injuring six people.

Those Israelis have now been stranded all that time because the Houthi airstrike prompted almost all foreign airlines to immediately cancel flights to Israel. Many of them now say their flights to Israel will be suspended until at least mid-May; for British Airways, at this point, it’s until June 14.

The two Israeli ministers and the airline chiefs were discussing ways to help the far-flung, stranded Israelis get home; the option of the local carriers, for the time being, reducing ticket prices; and “emergency plans in case of another wave of cancellations.”

Since October 7, 2023, the feeling of being isolated on Island Israel is not new to Israelis; many of the international airlines had suspended flights to Israel since that day and only resumed them in March or April this year.

Indeed, there was something almost bizarre about what happened on Sunday. Since March 18, when Israel resumed fighting in Gaza, the Houthis had launched 26 ballistic missiles and several drones at Israel, and all had crashed into the sea before getting here or been shot down.

Yet Sunday’s missile, aimed at the airport, managed to evade both Israel’s Arrow defense system and the US THAAD defense system, deployed to Israel amid heightening tensions with Iran.

Why Hamas Wants To Control Gaza’s Humanitarian Aid by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21598/hamas-gaza-humanitarian-aid

Palestinians… say that if anyone is stealing the humanitarian aid and food, it is Hamas.

Videos posted on social media have shown Hamas thugs brutally beating Palestinians suspected of stealing food for their families.

A day earlier, Hamas announced that three Gazans will soon be slaughtered with knives for allegedly “collaborating” with Israel. Others will have their limbs hacked off with blades for supposed “theft” of food.

“Since October 7, I’ve said it without hesitation: Hamas is ISIS – only with better PR. And that PR machine runs on Qatari money, through media outlets that spin terrorism into heroism and wash blood with propaganda.” — Hamza Howidy, Gaza-born peace and human rights advocate, X, May 4, 2025.

“There is no government, no law, no order – just fear. And as Palestinians dare to speak out, Hamas hunts them down, kidnaps them, threatens their families and silences them by force… They offer no protection, no aid, no leadership – only guns, terror, and slogans.” — Hamza Howidy, X, May 3, 2025.

“Hamas relied on criminal elements to create pandemonium that generated mass looting events which provided some cover for the terror group to commit the organized theft of what remains of food supplies in Gaza.” — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza native and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, X, May 2, 2025.

This criminality is precisely why the international community needs to back Israel’s effort to prevent Hamas from monopolizing and embezzling humanitarian supplies sent into the Gaza Strip.

The international community should support any initiative aimed at ending Hamas’s rule over the Gaza Strip and destroying its military capabilities. Both Israel and the Palestinian people, who are paying a heavy price as a result of Hamas’s decision to commit the biggest massacre against Jews since the Holocaust, will only gain from this.

The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has reconstituted its “Executive Force” as part of an effort to control humanitarian aid and “impose law and order” in the Gaza Strip.

The 5,000-strong force, originally established in 2006, has been entrusted with preventing the “theft” of food and “deterring thieves and thugs responsible for anarchy and lawlessness.”

Members of the “Executive Force” have been deployed throughout the Gaza Strip and given orders to “take all necessary measures, including the use of excessive force,” to restore security and stability to the coastal strip, according to Palestinian sources.

Greta Thunberg’s moral siege of Israel This is an armada of Israelophobic activists, not an aid mission. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/07/greta-thunbergs-moral-siege-of-israel/

Why isn’t Greta Thunberg sailing an aid ship to Sudan? Things are dire there. Two years of war have given rise to ‘catastrophic hunger levels’. The horrors dwarf ‘those in Ukraine, Gaza and Somalia combined’, reports Deutsche Welle. And yet the benighted Sudanese have failed to win the favour of the world’s best known eco-brat. Her boat is destined not for Africa but for the only strip of land that matters to the virtuous of the West: Gaza.

Sweden’s prophetess of doom is back in the news. She’s making waves with her plan to sail to Gaza. She and others from the turbo-smug keffiyeh classes had planned to sail on a boat called – wait for it – Conscience. Rumour has it they called it that because ‘Aren’t We Fucking Wonderful?’ was too long for the hull. But their moral expedition has been put on hold after a drone fired on their boat in waters off Malta, causing damage but no casualties.

Information is sparse. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) that’s organising this virtue-fest in the Med says 30 people were onboard at the time – the Maltese government says 16 were. Greta says Israel fired the drone, yet another ‘crystal-clear example’ that it doesn’t give a toss about ‘international law and human rights’; Israel is staying schtum.

Of course, no one wants to see Greta or her activist pals come to any harm. I’m glad that they haven’t. Yet it would be wholly wrong to describe this expedition as merely about delivering aid, as simply humanitarian. The aim of these seafaring Israelophobes is less to ‘help Gaza’ than to weaken Israel’s hold over the enemy territory it has seized in its bloody war with Hamas.

Democracies and Death Cults Douglas Murray emerges as Israel’s fiercest non-Jewish defender. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/democracies-and-death-cults/

As faux historians, faux conservatives, and former MMA tough guys vie with each other to be the biggest antisemitic influencers in the dank sewer known as social media, one pundit stands out as the fiercest, most visible non-Jew defender of Israel’s right to exist.

Bestselling author and journalist Douglas Murray, known for his incisive observations on the embattled West, his fearlessly pro-Israel stance, and his withering verbal takedowns of Jew-hating opponents, recently released a new book: On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization. It is both emotionally searing and intellectually rigorous, a meticulously reported deep dive into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, centered on the atrocities of October 7, 2023, and their broader implications for Western democracies. The book draws from Murray’s extensive on-the-ground reporting in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, offering a firsthand account of the horrors perpetrated by the terror group Hamas and a trenchant critique of the West’s largely sickening response to the conflict.

Arguably the book’s greatest value is that it underscores the clash between a thriving democracy that celebrates life, and a savage ideology obsessed with death and with the eradication of Jews and their tiny Middle East state. Murray’s ability to convey the shocking horror of Palestinian brutality with understated language, combined with his warning about the dangers of the West’s perverse sympathy for Hamas, makes On Democracies and Death Cults a vital contribution to the discourse on democracy, morality, and the future of civilization.

Murray’s restrained prose manages to amplify the visceral impact of his reporting. Rather than resorting to sensationalism, he lets the grim facts of October 7 speak for themselves. The massacre, which saw Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians murder, rape, and abduct over 1200 Israelis in a meticulously planned assault, is recounted through the voices of survivors, victims’ families, and even captured perpetrators. Murray’s descriptions are spare yet haunting: a mother burned alive in her home, a child witnessing unspeakable brutality, a terrorist exulting in his murderous deeds.

Biden team sought to ‘get rid’ of Netanyahu for opposing its Gaza plans The apparent willingness of the Biden administration to consider ousting a sitting prime minister once more raises questions about U.S. interference in Israel’s internal politics. David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/biden-team-sought-to-get-rid-of-netanyahu-for-opposing-its-gaza-plans/

The Biden administration considered ways to “get rid” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he wouldn’t go along with their plans for the Gaza Strip, Channel 13’s weekly investigative news show HaMakor (“The Source”) revealed on April 27.

“The White House got tired of Netanyahu and started to roll around a revolutionary idea … : how to get rid of Netanyahu,” said Raviv Drucker, who hosts the hour-long Sunday show.

The April 27 broadcast, titled “All the President’s Men,” involved in-depth interviews with nine members of former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, including former U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides, former national security advisor Jake Sullivan, former White House national security communications advisor John Kirby, former senior advisor for energy Amos Hochstein and former senior Biden aide Ilan Goldenberg.

Worth noting is that the program was an apologia for the Biden administration, and that Drucker is a long-time critic of Netanyahu. The episode criticized the prime minister throughout, portraying him as ungrateful, as torpedoing potential hostage deals for political reasons and missing a chance to sign a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, among other missteps.

According to the program, the Biden administration became aggravated by Netanyahu’s refusal to discuss the end goal of Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza, specifically, who would take charge of the Gaza Strip after Hamas had been ousted.

The Biden team proposed handing security to a foreign force, which would then turn Gaza over to Palestinian control, Goldenberg told HaMakor.

Does The European Union Actually Expect Radical Islamists to Reform Themselves? by Nils A. Haug

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21586/eu-palestinians-islamists

The European Union’s decision to grant the Palestinian Authority (PA) a sum of $2 billion to assist them to “reform themselves” can only be the result of wilful blindness, cognitive dissonance and what by now can only be ascribed to a proud European tradition of Jew-hate.

Israel’s warnings of the PA continuing to seize Israel’s land by phases — as planned by the PLO 10-Point Program of 1974 and advanced by former PA Prime Minister Salman Fayyad’s plan — to “create facts on the ground” with illegal buildings — are largely ignored by the West. So far, the PA, with the funding from the EU, has built more than 97,581 illegal structures on Israeli land that is still to be negotiated.

The Palestinian Authority also full-throatedly incites terrorism in its education system and bountifully funds terrorist acts. The total so far disbursed as remuneration for the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” program and acts of terrorism reportedly exceeds $1 billion. This transaction has been in place for decades.

The EU’s naiveté (to be kind) is already bringing disaster upon many of its member nations by allowing unlimited Muslim migration, presumably in an unconditional desire for every vote imaginable.

Israelis are understandably against an untenable two-state solution — which they accurately see as no solution at all.

The European Union’s decision to grant the Palestinian Authority (PA) a sum of $2 billion to assist them to “reform themselves” can only be the result of wilful blindness, cognitive dissonance and what by now can only be ascribed to a proud European tradition of Jew-hate.

The PA, despite claiming to be secular, is saturated with an Islamist mentality in support of jihadists. The PA plays the West by displaying a veneer of reasonableness, victimhood and the bogus claim that it would, in an ever-extending future, accept some kind of peace with the Jews. This fiction is supposedly backed by an equally bogus claim that it would be willing — under conditions which would always be suicidal for the Jews to accept — to establish a two-state solution in Israel’s ancestral homeland.

This romantic fantasy persists in the face of the Palestinian Authority’s elaborate, extremely concrete programs with the European Union to appropriate land which, according to the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, must still be negotiated, as well as a continuing jobs program that the PA offers, similar to Murder, Inc. The PA’s “Pay for Slay” program lavishly rewards Palestinians who murder Israelis. The more Israelis they murder, the greater the sum. A 2024 report notes that the PA disburses more than $16 million each month to the Palestinian murderers and their families.

British reporter who exposed BBC documentary’s Hamas links faces vandalism David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/british-reporter-who-exposed-bbc-documentarys-hamas-links-faces-vandalism/

British investigative journalist David Collier learned while in Israel last week that his car had been vandalized outside his London home.

He received a “frantic call” from his wife in the early afternoon of May 27 about the incident, in which a chemical, perhaps paint thinner, had been splashed on his vehicle in five or six places.

It’s not the first time his car has been vandalized. A few weeks ago, Collier discovered that someone had keyed the driver’s side of his car. Keying is when a sharp object is used to scratch a car’s exterior, damaging the paint.

Collier dismissed the first incident as perhaps the work of a drunk stumbling through the neighborhood. The second incident left no doubt in his mind that he had been targeted. The Metropolitan Police drew the same conclusion, “logging it as a racially aggravated attack,” he said.

Collier, still in Israel, spoke to JNS while waiting outside a store selling self-defense products in the hopes of finding something he could legally bring back with him. There are strict rules in Britain against selling such products. “No self-defense equipment is allowed in the U.K. I can’t even hold pepper spray in my own home,” he said.

The Settlers: An Incomplete Portrayal By John Aziz *****

https://quillette.com/2025/05/06/the-settlers-an-incomplete-portrayal-louis-theroux-settlers-israel-palestine/?ref=quillette-daily-newsletter

Louis Theroux’s new documentary suggests that he is unfamiliar with the complex history behind the Israeli occupation of The West Bank, and does not understand the political and ideological factors at stake there.

I watched the latest Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers with the same apprehension with which I approach most Western media output relating to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. There is nothing quite like the capacity of well-meaning Westerners to grossly misunderstand and miss crucial pieces of the puzzle in regard to the history and context of why Israelis and Palestinians are fighting one another.

While the war between Hamas and Israel has dominated most headlines over the past eighteen months, this particular documentary focuses instead on Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, and particularly on the growth in Israeli civilian settlements since 1967, when the Jewish state captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six Day War. 

Today, there are over 700,000 Jewish Israelis living there, residing in upwards of 279 settlements, which range from what are effectively modern cities like Maale Adumim and Modi’in Illit, with tens or hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, to ad hoc hilltop encampments made up of tents, sheds, and tin-roofed shacks, housing just a few families.

I’ve had some personal experience of life in the West Bank, because the Palestinian side of my family is from there, and I have visited on multiple occasions, generally staying for months at a time. On my travels, I made excursions into Palestinian cities like Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin.

Of course, I’ve only seen life from the Palestinian side of the fences. I have never been into an Israeli settlement. Palestinians and Israelis may live in the same land, but we inhabit different worlds, separated not only by fences but by language, religion, and culture—and that is part of the problem. By talking to each other and trying to understand one another, we might be able to build better relationships and forge connections that could transcend the conflict and ultimately end this tragic, horrific, nightmarish fight.

I would appreciate a documentary that gave me a window into a world that I have not been able to see in person and helped me empathise with the people on the other side. Louis Theroux’s documentary did not do that. Instead, it left me frustrated and deflated. Theroux’s settler interviewees were a selection of nasty extremists who lurched between denying the existence of Palestinians and expressing the desire to conquer more land and drive out the Arab inhabitants. Most bizarrely of all, the documentary contains a series of segments with settler leader Daniella Weiss which culminate in her physically assaulting Theroux by pushing and shoving him. Theroux tries to put this in context by interviewing Palestinian activist Issa Amro from Hebron, who explains, “They don’t see us as equal human beings who deserve the same rights as they do.”

What Are Palestinians Really Interested In? by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21589/what-are-palestinians-interested-in

“These fires put both Israelis and Palestinians at risk and are causing severe damage to the land these terrorists claim to be fighting for. These people are not pro-Palestinian, they are pro-terrorism against Jews.” — Bassem Eid, Palestinian human rights activist, X, April 30, 2025

Decades of anti-Israel propaganda by Palestinian leaders and media outlets are directly responsible for this hatred. For that reason, any talk about a peace process with the Palestinians has unfortunately become nothing but a sick joke.

Palestinians are far more interested in murdering Jews and setting Israel on fire than they are in “coexisting.” They do not want Israel “coexisting” on even one millimeter of the Jews’ own historical homeland.

The world needs to realize that the Palestinians have raised a whole generation that worships destruction and death for the Jews — and even for themselves — far more than a better and prosperous life.

As fires raged in central Israel in late April, many Palestinians celebrated, brazenly demanded more fires, and called for Israeli homes to be reduced to “ashes.”

All this happened on the day Israelis commemorated fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism and prepared to celebrate Independence Day.

“We ask God to protect our people and land. May these fires confuse the [Israeli] occupiers and their embattled settlers,” wrote Palestinian social media user Hana Barghouti.

“In the name of Allah,” another user, Umm Ibrahim, who posted images from of the blazes, wrote: “the Avenger, the Almighty.”