In the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel, Douglas Murray asks broad questions: “What can Western liberal societies do in the face of such movements? What can people who value life do in the face of those who worship death.”
On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization, by Douglas Murray (209 pages, Broadside Books, 2025)
What is Israel to do? What must Israel do? What should Israel do? These are among the many questions that preoccupied Douglas Murray in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel of October 7, 2023.
Near the end of this short book Murray recounts an interview that a “Hamas official” gave to a Lebanese television channel shortly after that attack. According to one Ghazi Hamad, “Israel is a country that has no place on our land.” Therefore, the “occupation must come to an end.”
“Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?” asked the interviewer. “Yes, of course,” was the immediate reply. “The existence of Israel is illogical…. Everything we do is justified.”
Murray’s response to that exchange is to ask even broader questions. “What can Western liberal societies do in the face of such movements? What can people who value life do in the face of those who worship death.”
For those who think that the challenge that Israel faces is Israel’s alone, Murray has a very simple and very direct response: The challenge is not Israel’s alone; hence the subtitle of this book is “Israel and the Future of Civilization” and not “The Future of Israel.”
There is no doubt in Murray’s mind that Israel faces a very real existential threat to its own continued existence. There is also no doubt in his mind that the fate of Israel and the fate of Western civilization are not just closely linked together, but are essentially one and the same. Lastly, for Murray there is little to no doubt that the source of the current threat to Israel’s future is readily traceable to the rise to power of the mullahs who have controlled Iran since the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran.
In fact, this book opens with the January 31, 1979, flight from Paris to Tehran that returned the Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran and set in motion the end of the reign of the Shah and the onset of an attempt to establish Shiite imperial rule in the region. In truth, it is Murray’s correct contention that over the course of the last four plus decades it has been Iran, not Israel, that has sought imperial power over its neighbors.
Murray also takes note of the celebratory response of many Western intellectuals and journalists to that flight and the subsequent Shiite seizure of power that led to the capture and hostage holding of fifty-two Americans in the American embassy, as well as to the murder of many of the Shiite’s domestic political opponents, including communists and trade unionists who had worked with them to overthrow the Shah. It was all a preview of coming actions (on the part of the Islamist regime) and attractions (of too many Westerners, whether intellectuals or journalists or otherwise, to the success of their cause).
At roughly the same time, the position of Israel in the collective mind of too many Westerners had shifted from that of underdog to that of, as Murray puts it, “overdog.” From the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through the six-day war of 1967 Israel was not just an underdog, but a highly sympathetic underdog at that. Not so after 1967, despite its surrender of Gaza following its 1967 victory.
Israel may never again be able to reclaim its underdog status. But does it deserve to be called the overdog? Murray presumes that at this point in its history Israel has no choice. And no doubt he is right, difficult as its choices and position must be.
Difficult, as in reading, also describes the contents of this book, the heart of which is an extended Murray travelogue of sorts throughout the state of Israel in the aftermath of October 7. He makes no bones about the multiple failures on October 7. Almost every element/leader of the state failed, whether they be politicians, the military or intelligence officers. The roots of that failure are traceable to a mistaken consensus that had emerged within the Israeli government among both those on the left and the right. The essence of that consensus was that Muslim terrorists had come to enjoy, and even luxuriate, in simply being corrupt. Forgotten was the simple fact that “some fanatics are simply fanatics.”
Failure extended to the common folk as well. While Murray is not about blaming the victim, he notes that the Israeli media did not report on those party-goers of October 7 who killed themselves or who had been sent to mental institutions. Why? Many of those who had been enjoying the music and the partying had been on drugs. Those on cocaine could at least run, but those on mind expanding drugs, as the phrase would have it, often simply collapsed, because their minds had, well, “simply collapsed.”
But Murrary also discovered many reasons to be hopeful about Israel, especially about the ordinary Israeli citizens who rose to the occasion on and after October 7th. The heart of the book dwells on their stories. And it is important for all Westerners to read such stories, if only because a) Israel is fighting for Western civilization; and b) Murray reminds us that what Israel “stared into that day is a reality that we might all stare into again at some point soon.”
To be sure, this book was written well before the “12 day” war of June, 2025. No doubt Douglas Murray would praise the apparent success of that war. Still, one doubts that he would change a word of his warning in the previous paragraph.
More than that, for much of the book his questions remain unanswered. Just what are “democracies” to do in the face of “death cults.” How do Westerners deal with fanatics who are “simply fanatics,” especially fanatics who are “worse anti-Semites than the Nazis”? After all, the Nazis hid what they were doing, while the Islamists killed with “such relish” and “intense joy.” They were–and are–to put it starkly, “proud of themselves.”
Near the end of the book Murray recounts the April, 2024, confirmation of a Hamas leader who learned that three of his four sons had been killed in an air strike in Gaza. The leader was “not upset. If anything he (was) joyful.” After all, he had often extolled the “martyrdom” of Palestinian children. In 2017 he had openly stated that “children are tools to be used against Israel. We will sacrifice them for the political support of the world.”
A bit later Murray contrasts the grief of Israelis who have lost sons and friends to a “society that is happy to hear of the deaths of their own family and other people’s family.” He then returns to a question that he had “mulled over for a quarter of a century.” For much of his adult life he had been haunted by this taunt of the jihadists: “We love death more than you love life.” It was a taunt that had appeared to him to be “almost impossible to counter.”
But his post-10/7 experiences in Israel had answered his question. At least partially so. Ordinary Israeli citizens and soldiers fought because they do “love life.” In fact, “they fought for life.” Will the West in general do the same? That question is yet to be answered.
To “choose life” is not just a commandment of the Jewish people; it is also “one of the fundamental values of the west.” In other (Murray) words, the Israelis, nay “all of us, can win in spite of the enemy loving death. Because there is nothing wrong with loving life so much. It is the basis on which civilization can win.”
And yet, the question remains: will civilization prevail. Murray himself alludes to a reason for doubt. In fact, his previous books point to such doubts. Murray cannot avoid mentioning that on his brief trips back to America or England he could not avoid noting that both societies, while “far from the front lines, seemed to have been driven mad by war.” Driven mad? How else to account for societies preoccupied with deciding “when you might kill an old person or a fetus.”
Hmmm… maybe the title of this book has a double meaning. Maybe democracies are not just facing death cults, but producing a death cult all its own. If so, perhaps Israel is both fighting for the West and offering an example to the West.
How will this all turn out? No one can know. What Douglas Murray does know is that Israel was the place that “felt least out of joint” to him in the aftermath of 10/7. It was also a place that has helped him lose “some of (his) usual pessimism. Why? Because the Israelis have chosen life.
And the West in general? “What we would do if we came to a time of trial like our forebears did?” Huh? You read that declarative non-sentence ending with a question mark correctly. It must be an uncorrected error. Or perhaps Murray had tired of asking questions that cannot yet be answered. Yes, just what will we do?
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