On Democracies and Death Cults – von Douglas Murray

Datum gelesen: 06.08.2025

Empfehlung: 9/10

Kontroverses Thema. Kein Plan was richtig ist.

Meine Notizen

• The terrorists had come into Israel not just by land vehicles and on foot but by boat and on hand gliders; perhaps as many as six thousand in total. The death toll turned out to be just short of 1,200 people.
• Israel is a country with a population of just 9 million people. America is a country of some 333 million people. To put it in perspective, the death toll on October 7 was the equivalent of some 44,400 Americans being killed by terrorists on a single day. Or around fifteen 9/11s.
• The world started to learn this, and more, because many of the terrorists recorded their acts as they did them. Using GoPro cameras and mobile phones the terrorists broadcast their acts of violence with pride.
• Terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad came first, then came citizens of Gaza intent on joining in the looting and killing.
• Throughout this period, from the moment news of the massacre in Israel emerged, one thing in particular is worth noticing: there was not a single major protest against Hamas in any Western city. Not one.
• The governments of all these countries had been funding the Palestinians in Gaza for years. They had given billions of dollars in foreign aid direct to the Hamas government there, through UN organizations among many others. This money had been used by Hamas's leaders to either enrich themselves (the group's leaders became billionaires) or to build the infrastructure of terror inside Gaza that allowed the group to carry out the October 7 attack.
• Here, in 2023, in the form of Hamas, were people who were boasting of their crimes, were proud of their crimes, and indeed wanted to broadcast their crimes for all the world to see.
• 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.
• Few armies in history have had to fight a war in such a concentrated, built-up, and booby-trapped area, in which the other side has deliberately placed its military infrastructure within and amid civilian buildings — including mosques, schools, homes, and hospitals.
• None has had to fight against an opposition whose leadership sees the loss of their own civilians as desirable because of the advantages it can bring them in the war for international public opinion.
• Evil does exist as a force in the world. Indeed, it is the only explanation for why certain people do certain things. On October 7, 2023, many Israelis stared into the face of pure evil — 1,200 of them in the last moments of their lives. People begged; people pleaded and in some cases cried for mercy. But they were murdered anyway.
• The story of the suffering and the heroism of October 7 and its aftermath is one that spells not just the divide between good and evil, peace and war, but between democracies and death cults.
• It seems to me that the right of Israel to fight and win such a war is vital not just for the sake of that country, but so Britain, America, and every other Western country will be able to fight such a war if — or when — the time comes.
• All of this was of great importance to me as somebody who cares about the one thriving democracy in the Middle East and the only Jewish state in the world. But it matters to me also because I believe that what Israel stared into that day is a reality we might all stare into again at some point soon.