Douglas Murray | How Democracies Battle Modern Terror
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We don't want sectarian conflict. We don't want medieval ideas returned to us in a new garb. We don't want it.

Douglas Murray, we are back with part two of our conversation in honor of the launch of your new book on democracies and death cults, Israel and the future of civilization. In part one, we looked at the death cult section, why Hamas is a death cult, what it means to be a death cult, why the West struggles to come to terms with the return of pure evil and what that means. And in part two here, I want to talk about

what the implications are for the West, why this matters, why the war that Israel is fighting against its enemies matters for the future of the West, because there is so much more that is at stake in the October 7th war than only the survival of the state of Israel.

Since October 7th, we've seen the rise of not only a pro-Hamas movement, I would call it a pro-war movement, really a pro-death cult movement around the West. We've seen it on the streets of London and New York, the chance for intifada, the glorification of terrorism in ways that I think most people in these countries don't quite connect the dots and understand what is really happening and what is especially happening in institutions of higher learning.

It doesn't seem to augur well for the West. And I wonder from your take, watching indeed from London and New York, what do you think is at stake in the October 7th war? Not the battle in Israel, the battle about Israel. Well, Israel has clearly become a proxy war for a lot of people to wage a kind of war on their own society. I have a pretty...

I think, useful shorthand for this, if I say so myself, which is if you look at the protests that have happened around the world against Israel in the year and a bit since October 7th, 2023, you'll see a very, very clear pattern emerge. And let's just do it by protests supporting Israel and protests opposing Israel. At the protests that have gone on,

organized by pro-Israel and mainly Jewish, sometimes also Christian organizations in cities like New York and London, and there have been some, you will see demonstrators waving the flag of the state of Israel and also waving the flag of the country they're in. They will be in London flying the Union Jack and the flag of the state of Israel.

In America, they'll be flying the stars and stripes and the flag of the state of Israel. And this is the case in each country. A little while ago, I was in Canada and I was speaking to a group of Jews and Christians. And they're all Canadians. And, you know, they had the...

At the end of the evening, everyone sang Hatikvah and then the Canadian national anthem. And I had to pretend to know the words of O Canada, which I just about managed to do. But the point is that that's how they go. And if it's a protest in support of Israel in London, it'll finish with the singing of Hatikvah, the national anthem of Israel, and it'll finish with the singing of God Save the King. Now...

anti-Israel protests in each of these cities, whether in Toronto, Ottawa, London, New York, D.C., they will fly the Palestinian flag. They will sometimes fly the flags of Hamas or Hezbollah.

But they never fly the flag of the country they're in. They fly the flag of Ireland when they're in London. Yeah, there's no sectarian conflict that the Irish do not want to be a part of. But this should tell us something. Why do the thousands of people who pour through the streets of London opposing Israel...

Why, when they finish up in Trafalgar Square or Parliament Square or wherever, do they not sing God Save the King? Why, in Washington, D.C., do they not finish their anti-Israel protest singing the Star Spangled Banner? You would think it would be...

a very basic performative gesture that they could do to try to endear themselves to the societies around them. Nothing is more unlikely. Nothing is more unlikely. Why indeed, then? I was in D.C. when the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave his speech to Congress, and the crowds outside proved much better than anything he could say what he was saying, which is that...

the anti-Netanyahu, anti-Israel protesters in Washington, D.C. that day tore down the Stars and Stripes, tore down the American flag and burned it on the streets of D.C. So one of my suggestions is that these movements are showing us very clearly who they are. They're showing us very clearly who they are for.

Yes, they're against Israel first. They see Israel as being the most evil country in the world. But they see every other Western country as being the next most evil. And that's why it's...

impossible for them to fly the flag of the country they're in. It's impossible for them to sing the national anthem of the countries they're in. Why does it matter? I mean, you can say, okay, there are people who are protesting through the streets of London who can't bring themselves to sing God Save the King, who won't carry a British flag. But at the end of the day, they're just protesting for the poor Palestinians and against a war. So why does it matter if they don't sing God Save the King? What's at stake here? It matters because they don't like us.

At all. They don't like the British. They don't like the Americans. They are the British. Well, there you deliberately... These are British people who are protesting. Here you perhaps deliberately lead me into dangerous terrain, but why not put our boots on and go there? Some of them are. Some of them are. A lot are only in name, seem to have no love for the societies they're in, seem actually to want to wage a campaign against the societies they're in.

want to use the freedoms that they get in a liberal democracy to subvert that liberal democracy. This is a big challenge. And it's evidently the case that, I mean, and again, this is a very dangerous train, but we should go there. It's clear that a lot of the driving force of these anti-Israel movements are from people who are

ideologically motivated, tend to be of the political hard left, not always, but largely. But the real driving motor in the protests has been Muslim populations in the West. And you can tell that from any of the protests in London, most of the protests in the US and elsewhere. And there's a reason for that. And perhaps we should go there, but it's...

A very, very troubling thing. What is the reason for it? Is it solidarity with people they perceive as being their own people? Other Muslims are in distress, so they rally to their aid. Well, the weird thing about it is, of course, is if it was simply about Muslims running to defend fellow Muslims, then they would have been an awful lot more active in recent years and indeed at the moment than they are about a range of other conflicts.

far more people have been killed in Yemen by Muslims, Muslims killed by Muslims in the last few years than the conflict in Gaza, the conflict in Lebanon involving Israel. Far more Muslims have been killed in Syria by other Muslims in the last decade than have been killed in the wars since October 7th. If it was simply a matter of

defending other Muslims, that would be a sectarian issue that could be troubling, but also would be understandable. But it's clearly not that. There are crickets whenever Muslims are persecuted or killed or involved in a war involving any country other than Israel.

There is a very specific sore toe, to put it mildly, in the Muslim world about the Jewish state fighting. And I believe, and I go into this a bit in the book, I believe there are a couple of reasons for this. One is a very deep theological battle, which is way deeper than I think most people realize, which is that the Jewish state...

and the survival of the Jewish state and the right of the Jewish state to defend itself hurts the self-esteem of a lot of the Muslim world. It hurts their self-esteem for reasons that most people have forgotten about, but I don't think the Muslim world has, which is that the Jews were invited to Islam by the inventor of Islam, Muhammad, and rejected the invitation. And since what Muhammad did...

was to claim to have the final revelation of God to man, the Jews and others should have realized their error in not accepting the invitation of Muhammad to Islam. And at the very least, the Jews should not be doing well. And in fact, the non-Muslim world in general shouldn't be doing well because if you have the final revelation from God, it ought to give you an advantage, a demonstrable advantage.

And Bernard Lewis and others have said this before me, but I think it requires restating. If you believe you have the final revelation from God and your societies are not good and your standard of living is not good and the opportunities for your young men and women to improve their lives are not good, that's bad in itself. But if you look nearby, next door, to another country in the same region with

Actually, fewer of the natural resources and much more that's doing well economically, socially, societally. This is a deep affront, a deep affront, because that affront is why are they succeeding where we are not? When we are the ones, we are the ones, the Muslim world, who have the revelation. We are the ones who God spoke to last. And I can see how that can motivate people.

radical Islam in the Middle East. The question is whether you don't think that this is a little bit overextension in armchair analysis and saying armchair psychologizing and saying that the same dynamic is motivating your average Muslim from Tower Hamlets to go and protest against Israel as a Saturday afternoon family fun day. Well,

First thing is I don't do armchair analysis much, but everything I've seen by not being in an armchair suggests to me, and this is the case in Tower Hamlets or anywhere else you like to look in Europe or the West...

this is the motivating thing. This is how Muslims in the West get angry and upset. It's why, and it's a very unpleasant thing, but it is the fact, and we have to look at it. It's why you can predict with uncanny certainty a Western politician's view of this conflict depending on their own religious inheritance. This is very, very unpleasant to admit, but...

In Scotland, the former first minister, Hamza Yusuf, Muslim, happens to have a wife who's Palestinian. So perhaps he has a specific issue there. But, you know, it was Gaza, Gaza, Gaza from the moment October 7th happened. First Muslim minister in Australia, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, from the moment it happened. Ilhan Omar in the U.S. And so Rashida Tlaib, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza.

Whereas, for instance, Rishi Sunak or Soheila Bravaman, also of immigrant descent, like most of the Muslim populations, of immigrant descent, but not of Muslim immigrant descent. And therefore, it seems...

not wildly head up for ideological, theological, religious reasons, sectarian reasons, about the conflicts involving Israel. You think that these Muslim politicians in the West are especially agitated about Israel because they see Israel's existence as what, some great affront to Islam? Yes, of course it is.

Of course it is. It's an extremely deep thing. And Jews fighting for their existence and winning is a very, very deep affront. And there's one other thing I would add to that, which is at an equally, almost as deep a level, which is this. And again, it's something I go into in the book. But there is only one place in the world, one community, part of the world,

in which Nazi-style anti-Semitism remains commonplace, indeed rife and commonplace, and that is the Muslim world. And as I say in... Nazi-style anti-Semitism. Nazi-style, pure Nazi-style anti-Semitism. That's a big claim you're going to have to back it up. Yeah, sure. At the end of World War II, the Nazis were either tried and hanged

Or the ones who survived scuttled off like rats to South America and a few other places in the world. Syria, of course, in some cases. But Nazi anti-Semitism was for, I think, the whole period since 1945, completely, utterly destroyed on the field of ideas as well as on the field of battle.

And there is only one part of the world where that is not the case, and it's the Muslim world. And I mentioned this very, very interesting to my mind part of intellectual history, which is worth noting, which is that after World War II, the only place in the world which welcomed a Nazi war criminal home as a hero was the Muslim world. I'm talking, of course, of the Grand Mufti, al-Husseini.

Ireland still has a statue to a Nazi supporter, doesn't it? It does indeed. I went to visit it some years ago.

But okay, with the exception of Ireland. With the exception of Ireland, which I'm very, very happy to get into. Sean Russell, yes, died on a... IRA leader died on a Nazi U-boat. And, of course, a post-war Irish government that had maintained such a strict neutrality during the war put up a statue to Sean Russell. And whenever his statue has been...

defaced has always mended the statue which is always been interesting to me. But yes, so in Dublin rather you can visit Sean Russell's statue, dead Nazi and IRA leader. The one real place in the world where a Nazi leader returned home was Al Husseini who of course famously went to Hitler and

and offered to create SS units in the Middle East to do the extermination of Jews in

in the Middle East as well as in Europe. And after the war, Al-Husseini, it's a very interesting story, but the French wanted him for war crimes for various, say, murky reasons. He ends up in Yugoslavia at one point, detained. They're going to try him there. But in 1946, he returns home to Egypt, and we have the records of

Egyptian public radio when the Grand Mufti returns from Europe. And we have the statement that was read out by Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who welcomes al-Husseini home. And what is said is that the, I'm sorry, paraphrasing the exact quotes in the book, what is said is the scourge of the Jews, the lion of the Muslims has returned to us.

It's the only place, Egypt, it's the only place where a Nazi came home and was welcomed as a victor. As a victor. And my belief is that, and my observation of my eyes in many parts of the Muslim world, in Egypt, in the Middle East, is that it's one bit of the world where Nazi anti-Semitism and Nazi texts are mainstream.

whether it's a Cairo railway station or a home in Gaza. It's the only part of the world where you will find copies of Mein Kampf being read and sold not for scholarly or historical interest, but as a how-to manual. Why is it?

that so many of the soldiers of the IDF who've been going house to house in Gaza in the last year and a half have been finding just in house after house, and always, they say, with a marked radicalization since 2014 for the ones who were involved in that conflict as well. Why do they keep finding Mein Kampf?

Why do they keep finding the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other just anti-Semitic Nazi filth? Why is it so commonplace? And the reason is it was not stamped out in the Muslim world. It was not stamped out. It was not defeated in the Muslim world. Nazi-style anti-Semitism was not defeated in the Muslim world in 1945. It has rampaged since. And...

To quote Mehdi Hassan, our mutual friend, who in a rare moment of honesty in about 2013 wrote a piece about this in the New Statesman. He said, "Every Muslim reading this will know what I'm talking about when I say," he said, "that anti-Semitism is our 'dirty little secret.'" He said, "Every Muslim reading this in Britain or the West will know what I mean," he said. He said, this is Mehdi Hassan, not me,

He said every Muslim reading this will know that the dinner with the family and friends, it will turn on. Somebody will have a thing about how the Jews, you know, weren't in the Twin Towers on 9-11. Somebody will do the thing about, you know, other anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. It's there. He described it among Muslim communities in the West as, quote, rife and commonplace. Now,

A rare moment of honesty, indeed. A rare moment of honesty. I don't know how he managed it. But this, you know, if this was any other community, if we discovered that there was a political sect, and there could be in the future, there could be such a sect in the future, or group, or political gathering, as there has been in the past. But if there was a political or religious sect in which Nazi-style anti-Semitism was rife and commonplace...

I believe we would want to root that out. We would want to challenge it. We would want to confront it. We would want to solve it. We would want to redress that problem. But going back to that thing that Ruth Wise said, not many people seem to want to do that job.

They can identify that the Jews are the victims of anti-Semitism, but they cannot identify who the culprits are. When there was that anti-Jewish pogrom, effectively, in Amsterdam some months ago, remember when the Israeli soccer team was playing? It was the Maccabees, wasn't it, I think? Maccabi Tel Aviv, I think. Yeah, it was playing in Amsterdam.

and it seemed that local Uber drivers, which is interesting, were communicating with each other and then ended up sort of, you know, helping to pile on and get people to pile on to these Israelis who were in town and beat them up and chase them through the street. It was a premeditated lynch. It was a premeditated lynch, right. So look at the coverage of that in almost all of the media. It was, you know, local Dutch people

attacked visiting Israelis. And I just don't, I think, I don't think that's at all an analysis of the granular kind we need, which is who, who is it? Is it, was it Dutch people running out of windmills in their clogs, finding a Jew and beating them? Was it? Because if it is,

Then the Dutch people have to address that and say, how the hell in the 2020s is the Dutch population so incredibly forgetting of the worst times in Dutch history? But no one thinks that is the case. But these are Dutch now. Yeah, well, some of them will be, some of them won't be, but...

This is why I say this is a question which is so, so hard for the West to address because we have this in our midst. We have people who believe, not all, but we do have people who believe evil, evil Nazi ideas.

And we don't identify it and we don't call it out and we don't challenge it. And there isn't enough challenge from within those communities. And, you know, it's like years ago there was a group in the UK called Muslims for Israel or something.

Seriously? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like a pro-Israel Muslim group that cropped up. And I remember a friend of mine who's actually a Sufi Muslim himself said to me, have you heard about this group? And I said, yeah, I know that guy. It's not that much...

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Z for the Americans, slash discount, slash Elon for a 10% discount. Right, back to Douglas Murray. It's not that much of an exaggeration to say, like, if the Muslim communities in the West were aware of the evil that exists in their midst, then they would be confronting it. And they're not. And the one thing you can tell, again, with considerable certainty is...

If a group within that community wanted to raise the alarm, they would, to the great detriment of Muslim communities, the Muslim world and the West, they would be the target of serious criticism of

to put it mildly, from within their own communities. Yet the people who lead the protests, the people who lead the pro-Hamaz protests, the people who lead the pro-Hezbollah protests, the people who have preached, and we have the videos, they're all available online, preached in mosques in Britain and across Europe in the post-October 7th period, have preached that Hamas is right and good and that these actions that Hamas did were good.

These people are not ostracized by their own community. And you might say the most generous interpretation is, OK, no religious community likes to air its dirty laundry in public. You know, the Catholic Church tried like hell to cover over the child abuse scandals within the church. Religious groups tend not to want to air their dirty laundry in public. It's embarrassing and so on. But

If you're not dealing with this problem and you're showing yourself deeply unwilling to deal with this problem, other people will have to highlight the problem. And as I say, very, very few people seem to want to do that. And it's to our long-term serious detriment. Douglas, what you're describing is...

deeply disturbing and it's deeply disturbing because as an old-fashioned liberal I want to believe that Western countries are capable of self-confident democracies are capable of integrating people from different backgrounds immigrants from around the world around a shared civic ethos sure confident in their own values and I do not want to be in a situation where the Jewish communities of these countries find themselves caught between crusaders right like the

the angry white population and between jihadists and the extremists on the other side because it's never good for Jews to be caught in the middle of a crusade. And it's definitely terrible for these countries. And that raises the question of how you confront what you've described as a growing sectarianism problem within the West. And I wonder...

You know, there's the old canard, Israel is the canary, you know, the Jews are the canary in the coal mine, what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. But I wonder what you do think it augurs, because we've seen around this war for the first time, many Muslims in the UK becoming, and let's leave for one side what the actual motivation is, if it's genuine sympathy for the Palestinians or if it's, as you interpreted, an affront to Islam, whatever the reason, essentially becoming single-issue voters, the election of...

Gaza independence to parliament. And I wonder where you see this going outside the context of Israel. Is this something where the war will go away and the sectarianism problem will go away? Or do you think that

the reaction that October 7th has elicited and triggered in the West is actually a warning sign that people, precisely the people who want their societies to be tolerant and inclusive and welcoming should be alarmed because it tells them that that experiment, like something isn't working, something isn't working. Yeah, of course. Well, yeah. I mean, something isn't working. Um,

And I've always thought that it's quite likely that Israel and perhaps even Jewish people in the diaspora will suffer for that because it's too easy for mainstream politicians, among others, to believe that if you just make the Israel problem go away in some way,

you have peace at home again. I mean... As a sacrificial... As effectively as a sacrificial offering. As a scapegoat. I mean, Mark Carney recently took over as Prime Minister-elect in Canada. Of the great state of... I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking. Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England, was in...

designated office for no more than 24 hours before he starts tweeting about how appalling it is that Israel should not be giving more electricity to the Gazans. And what's that got to do with him? I mean, what is he, an electricity supply in the Middle East expert? What...

why is he doing this? Didn't Ontario just threatened to cut off electricity to the United States? Yeah. We'll see how that goes. Um, the, uh, but you know, why, why does Mark Carney feel the need to do that? Uh,

It's because placate that movement at home and hopefully it'll move on. It'll go away. I don't think that evil not confronted goes away. I don't think it does. I think you have a moment of pain...

Of course correction, of recognition of where you are. Hang on, what does that mean, pain and course correction? Because this sounds rather dark. No, I mean, I don't know what it means, really, in a way. I mean, I know the various things it could mean, but my own belief is that you have to confront this and you have to face up to it. How? You have to say, among other things, you have to say, these are views we cannot tolerate.

We do not want people in liberal democracies approving of the murder of minorities. We do not want people in our democracies celebrating the massacre of innocent civilians. We don't want it. And we don't want sectarian conflict. We don't want...

Medieval ideas returned to us in a new garb. We don't want it. Now, as I say, and I've said this for many years, the problem of liberal democracies and the problem that self-described nostalgic liberals like yourself have is, is there anything that we can do? Is there any moment in a liberal democracy where we can say that doesn't work for us?

I would say obviously yes. I don't think that having deaf cult supporters among us is good for us. I don't want it. I think it's very unwise to coax it and to stroke it and to appease it. I think that that is the moment where liberal democracies should be able to find some civic courage and some backbone.

You know, I think that that can be done. I've always thought that can be done, but it has to be done by mainstream figures calling this out and saying, you know, if you support death cults, there are countries in the world you can live in.

But this should not be the one that you should try to work in and further your aims in because this doesn't work for us. Douglas, I also want to believe that liberal democracies are capable of integrating minorities, rallying around the sense of civic pride. Problem is, of course, that a lot of the sympathy for the anti-Israel side and all the problems that are manifest therein are coming from the elite institutions.

They're coming from the universities, coming from sections of the media,

I mean, this brings me on to what I wanted to discuss about the Hamas hostage parades, the spectacles that Hamas organized, in particular, the grotesque dead baby parades where they invited people in Gaza as if it were a family fun day to watch the coffins of Kfir and Ariel Bibas together with Oded Lifshitz, a murdered peace activist, another woman we thought was Shiri Bibas until we opened the coffin and found they'd sent some random corpse instead of this hostage they had murdered after the October 7th massacre.

And this was a stage-managed spectacle that made many people ask: Who is the intended audience? Is Hamas putting on these hostage parades as medieval entertainment for the people of Gaza? Is the intended audience the Israeli public whom Hamas is trying to psychologically terrorize?

Is the audience European and Western governments who are supposed to be shocked into understanding that Hamas is still the government of Gaza, is determined to continue, and that it is steadfast, to use the word the Palestinians like? I think there's another audience. We've seen in the West the rise of what I call jihadi sheikhs.

The kefir that's become a symbol, the upside down red triangle, the way that Sinoise was idolized. And you and I had drinks in Tel Aviv on the night that Sinoise was eliminated and raised a glass to the courage of the IDF in doing that. It was good work. Very good work. And almost by accident by a soldier who wasn't even in uniform when this war began. There is a large movement in the West today.

that is enamored with the iconography, with the aesthetics of Palestinian terrorism.

And I think they were the audience. I think that Hamas knew exactly what buttons they were pressing for their supporters in the West, not necessarily among the Muslim community. Many within the white wokes as well, who are enamored with this iconography of glorious struggle and martyrdom, maybe because their own lives are so devoid of meaning that they think that self-abnegation is the only way that they can bring meaning into the world. And I wonder what you make of that.

and Sinhua becoming cult icons in the West, not just among the Muslim community. One thing that's very important to say is that we have seen this before, many times before. A great Spanish philosopher of the 20th century who wrote the book The Tragic Sense of Life described, I think in that book or somewhere else, the pre-Francoist far-right in Spain saying,

disrupted, if I'm right, a public meeting he was speaking at with, and you'll have to excuse me, I have no reasonable Spanish, but if I remember rightly, the chant was Viva la Muerte. Long live death. By the way, this is going to be ironic because as part of our partnership with an Israeli AI firm called Linguana, all of these episodes go up, dubbed

Into Spanish as well. So anyone listening in Spanish will hear Douglas Murray in Spanish saying his mauling your fantastic Does mean ironically paradoxically long live death long live death that was the chant and 934 or so in Madrid Yeah, long live death and this is this is this this again. It's a necrophilic chant obviously and

And a chant you could put into the mouths of Hamas very easily. I believe these spectacles are for several things. One is, of course, victory parades. Again, difficult as it is for much of the Western mind to appreciate that. One is to, yes, there is a kind of radical chic in the West, the kefir-wearing people.

always with a COVID mask. It's very interesting how there seems to be such a crossover in the Venn diagram between support of Hamas and fear of COVID-19. Oh, but Douglas, that's because as we all know, COVID is a disability oppression and COVID are inextricably linked. That's right. I quote a poster I saw at Columbia saying exactly this, that all of this is interlinked somehow. What it really is, is of course, like the KKK, the supporters of Hamas in America are wise enough to cover their faces and

And that's what they really want to do. They want to say long live death, but cover their faces as they do so. Which tells us a lot about them, of course. But I really think the point of these spectacles, these atrocities, is actually it's an act of deliberate demoralization

And we have to make sure that we don't fall into it. And it is this thing that I say at one point towards the end of the book that I've thought about for some decades now, which is the jihadist taunt, which you can hear from Hamas and you could hear from Al-Qaeda, you could hear from ISIS, which is we love death more than you love life.

And this is these necrophilic spectacles that Hamas stages, these celebrations of death, these celebrations of murder, a visualization of that boast of the jihadists, which is we love death more than you love life. Yeah, they're evil scumbags. The question is why that has an audience in the West. Well, because it has an appeal to...

meaning-seeking people who are otherwise deracinated of meaning. It's a movement. It's a movement like the Frankwists were a movement. It's a movement like any number of deaf cults throughout history have been a movement because it says...

Join us and you will find this purpose and not only this purpose, but you'll be part of a movement has such extraordinary Self-belief that it it it it can even do the most grotesque things and still get loyalty Douglas what went wrong that Western societies should produce people who think they can only achieve meaning

through the idealization of jihad. Look, you discuss in the book, in your new book on democracies and death cults, the nature of the Israeli social contract. Every country has its own social contract. In Britain, maybe it's if you pay your taxes and mind your own business, then the state will give you services and mind its own business. And I'm not sure how well it's doing on that count now. But the Israeli social contract is everyone rolls up their sleeves. Everyone contributes. Not everyone does. Not everyone is fulfilling their side of the social contract.

And in exchange, no one is left behind. If you come into trouble, we will go to the ends of the earth to extract you. That is why the hostage issue has resonated so powerfully with Israelis. And by the way, I think why people around the world don't understand why Israelis and diaspora Jews are so deeply agitated by the hostage crisis, because that social contract, that sense of solidarity, the "you don't leave a man bleeding on the battlefield,"

is not part of the modern Western contract that says pay your taxes and keep your nose out of other people's business and we'll give you services and leave you alone. What went wrong with the Western contract

social contract with the structure of Western societies that they don't have that same meaning that Israelis, you've seen this yourself through your reporting here, self-evidently draw from contributing. Everyone speaks about how you can contribute to the state, what you need to give. And we get so much out in terms of meaning. There was never a more meaningful chapter of my life

Then the first few months after the October 7th war, when we were united as a society, when we were fully mobilized, when everyone was rolling up their sleeves and contributing whatever they could, we all felt so meaningful. So what went wrong in the West that people don't feel meaningful and think that by tearing down the best country's history has ever produced, that's how they get their meaning.

Well, there's lots of potential explanations, but let me just first of all say, yes, this issue of the, as it were, social contract that exists in Israel, I'd say it's not actually a social contract, I think it's a profoundly religious contract, which is that, yes, we will fight for every life. And I think that's an incredibly powerful promise in a society, yes.

to say that every life is sacred and we'll do anything, we'll do anything to get them back. Obviously, that is something which very evil people then use to their advantage. They know that if they take a 19-year-old from the Gaza border, they will be able to hold him in dungeons for years and some years later extract a thousand murderers for that person. Another society would not be vulnerable in that way.

I don't believe that if the Chinese Communist Party, if one of their citizens was abducted, would fight like anything to get them back. I don't know. I don't think so. I certainly don't think they'd fight as hard as the Israelis fight for their people to be returned home. And I know that the Chinese Communist Party would not hand over a thousand convicted murderers.

bomb makers and so on for that person but this is to do with a very very deep and important thing in the ethos of the Jewish people not just ethos of Israel and of course it's one of the abiding foundations not just of Israel and of Judaism but of the Western tradition the Western faiths and and which is the sanctity of the individual and

The man was created in the image of God. Exactly. And that this is... And that therefore to sin against, to wound a person deliberately like that is itself a sin against God. This is the terrible... I mean, when your enemies... You know, Sun Tzu, isn't it? He says, you know, if you...

If you understand yourself and do not understand your enemy, you will lose many battles. It does it in various ways. But if you understand yourself and you understand your enemy, you will win many battles. The death cults believe they can win against Israel. I quote in the book, I quote Sinoir in prison saying as much before October the 7th that...

They aren't the he sin was spent his time in prison after murdering Palestinians by what he was in prison for the butcher of con Yunus. Yeah Sinhua in prison studied the Israelis he studied the Israeli psyche and he knew this this virtue of

Israeli society. This is our weak spot. Yes. And then he sees that this is the weak spot. They care. He said at one point, he said, nothing is better news for a Palestinian in an Israeli prison than the news that an Israeli has been taken hostage. This, he said, this is what Sinoise himself said. This is this is the moment when you know you've got a lifeline out.

So they know that. He knew that. Hamas and the others, they know that. And so the challenge is, how do we make sure in the West, not just in Israel, that these virtues, and they are profound virtues, are not used to subvert us?

And this, obviously, in Israel is that it's most painful with the hostage situation because everybody knows in Israel why they're holding them. Everybody knows, we all know, that Hamas's lifeline is there as long as they're holding dead Jews or living Jews. And we have to understand them like they understand us. But the crucial one is...

And one of the things that I sort of end up with in the book is asking this question about how we answer these necrophilic death cults. How we answer them. What do we say in front of the people who would chant long live death? What do we say to the people who say and taunt us with this thing that we love death more than you love life? What do we say to them? And I try to finish the book by saying what I think my answer is to that.

Spoiler alert, what is your answer? It's complicated and simple, which is there's nothing wrong with loving life this much. It's our great virtue, and we don't have to have it used against us. Both Israel and Western countries are deeply life-loving, affirming societies.

But I grapple with the question of why people in the West really struggle to understand Israel's predicament. I think part of it is that Israel's security reality is just a world removed from anything people in the West are familiar with. Although the return of war to Europe now with Russia and Ukraine brings those security issues front of mind. But I mean, even in your book, you...

I like to make the point that Israel and the West are in the same boat. I wonder whether you overstate it, okay? Because you talk about the atrocities of October 7th and say, people ask what you would do if this happened in your country. And you say...

but it has. And you quote Bataclan and you mentioned the other terrorist atrocities, except it hasn't. Nothing like October 7th has happened in the West because it wasn't just a terror attack. Douglas, if October 7th were just a barbaric terror attack, you could not justify the scope of the destruction in Gaza. October 7th was an invasion by a barbarian horde seeking to trigger a regional war of annihilation. It was Israel's

Bataclan and 9-11 and Pearl Harbor and Bucha all rolled into one. I say as much. And the West has not experienced anything like that. This would be as if ISIS controlled Cornwall and then decided to use Cornwall as a basis for an invasion of the rest of England and took hundreds of English people hostage. And I wonder...

You know, we're dealing with hypotheticals that are just impossible to try to understand. But do you think people in the West, in England and the US, understand what you've seen in Israel, which is the bonds of social solidarity?

Or are they fundamentally frayed in these countries as well to the point where they don't understand why a whole country is in standstill because of a hostage crisis? That if, you know, in this weird hypothetical scenario that ISIS controlled Cornwall and used it as a basis for invasion to kidnap hundreds of people from Glastonbury. I mean, I don't know how England would deal with it.

It's just, it's a scenario that is so far-fetched that it's impossible to even ask how this reality would confront it. Everything is far-fetched until it happens. I say at the beginning of the book, you know, that of course, and as you know, what happened on October 7th in numbers terms is equivalent to, I think, 44,000 Americans being murdered on one day and 10,000 Americans being taken hostage. And as I say, I mean,

There is no scenario I can see in which 10,000 Americans were taken hostage in which America would not tear up the earth to get them back. No one can tell me otherwise. Yes, I mean, in sheer numbers terms, what Israel went through on the 7th was, you know, I mean, how many 9-11s would it have been like?

I hate these comparisons where you scale it up because a life is a life and there's no such thing as saying, you know, one Israeli is one of so many hundreds of Americans. It's not that. It's just in terms of the scale. In a country of eight or nine million people and a country of, you know, 320 million or whatever, it's just very important to realize that because if you were dealing with, for instance, 10,000 American hostages...

An awful lot of people in American society would have some connection with one of those hostages or some of them. And that's, again, because the scale thing is important because then it's not about other people in your country. It's about the country. It's about us.

the third person plural, the we of the country. Suddenly everyone is two degrees of separation away from someone who was at Coachella, right? If such an atrocity happened at Coachella. And that's, I mean...

When I say, I quote in the book somebody saying to me, the Nova Festival, what if that happened in your societies? And I said, I didn't say to the person, but I was thinking, but something like it has. And that's why I mention the Bataclan, the Manchester Arena bombing and others, is that something like it has, not on scale, but we have had glimpses

of the reality that Israel saw on October the 7th. We've had glimpses of it, but we've been fortunate enough to be able to push it aside for now. For now. That's a fascinating thought because...

My impression throughout the war has been... This has obviously created a huge political headache for the West, for the demographic and social reasons that you discussed. And therefore, there is a desire for this war to simply go away. Just make it disappear. We know that if you freeze it in place, with the aggressors still promising to do October 7th again and again, we're only starting the clock ticking to next time. But it's interesting because now you're saying...

Well, the West has had a glimpse of these kinds of atrocities and they sort of were able to push it away because, yes, there was the war against ISIS. There was the war against ISIS when over 70 nations came together in order to bomb the hell out of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. And I don't agree with people who say Hamas can't be defeated. Look, ISIS isn't defeated. ISIS has been reduced to a terrorist group that is plotting attacks on Iran.

concerts in Austria. It doesn't control territory the size of Austria. Now, of course, when ISIS was destroyed...

No one insisted that civilians were not allowed to leave Raqqa or Mosul and that civilians must be protected as ISIS is burned to the ground. There were no demands for UN food trucks to go into the middle of Raqqa and Mosul. And so Israel is told, well, you want to defeat Hamas, the rules of the game is civilians have to remain exactly where they are, sitting on top of Hamas facilities and there's nothing you can do to move them. That itself was rigged against Israel. But I digress.

They were able to attack ISIS and remove it from its territorial position in Syria and Iraq. But the other attacks were...

almost treated as blips, as if there were these freak moments. And you write in the book about how the response to the horrific Manchester Arena bombing at an Ariana Grande concert was to have an outdoor public concert singing Don't Look Back in anger, as if blowing up little girls at a pop concert isn't something you should be angry about. And that's a natural human emotion. But the point I'm trying to come full circle is that perhaps the West has become accustomed to thinking that there are problems that you can simply push aside.

and deal with them later. And this is a war in which Israel is saying, no, we've tried pushing it aside. We've tried sweeping it under the rug. We've tried putting Gaza under siege. We've tried flooding it with Qatari money. We've tried to push it aside and it didn't work. So now we're going to deal with it once and for all because we want this to be the Gaza war that ends all Gaza wars. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I don't think Israel has a choice on that. I think it has to, as you say, to make this the last Gaza war. But, I mean, it's just the most common human instinct to push things away until you can't. I mean, most prevarication that people suffer from, they prevaricate until they can't anymore. You push off chores until you can't push them off anymore. It's just absolutely human nature.

let alone when it's something really unpleasant you have to deal with. And perhaps... No, go on. By the way, I mean, just one other thing I wanted to say about that, because you mentioned Manchester Arena. I do say in the book, and it has been on my mind a lot, that one of the questions we have to ask ourselves in all of this as well is, there were two survivors of the Nova Festival who went to the UK in 2024,

to raise awareness of post-traumatic stress disorders and others that they and other terrorist survivors suffered from.

And these two survivors of the Nova Party, as you know, but some people watching might not, were actually detained at Manchester Airport by the airport authorities. And one of the guards said that the reason they were detaining them was they didn't want these two Israelis to, I think the exact quote was, do here what you're doing in Gaza. And I was shocked.

profoundly shocked by that and embarrassed by that as a British subject, that two terrorist survivors should be subjected to such an outrage when visiting a country. But I'd try it the other way around and say if two people who survived the Manchester Arena suicide bombing traveled to Israel or anywhere else in the West and

And were detained by the authorities in that country because they, the victims of the terrorist attack, might be trying to commit a terrorist attack. Wow, would we be outraged. Wow, would the world be outraged. Wow, that airport employee would not be long for their job. Why? Why?

Again, why do the victims have to be portrayed as the perpetrators? Why are the victims in this case so uniquely undeserving of simple human empathy? To ask that question is to begin to answer it.

Because perhaps by saying that they deserved it, they had it coming because of some original sin, a motif that fits very nicely within the Western mindset and intellectual legacy is much easier than coming to terms with the reality of evil. And if we're dealing with perhaps some of the theological underpinnings of modern discourse,

Believing in an original sin that needs to be rectified for the world to be redeemed is perhaps a story that is easier to believe than the endurance of evil as a force in the world. Douglas, you spoke earlier about the natural human tendency to push problems away until you can no longer solve them. But I wonder whether there are some problems that have been pushed back for so long that they simply can no longer be solved. And in particular, I'm talking about the problem of Cutter.

Qatar has played, to my mind, a nefarious role in this conflict. To my mind as well. It positions itself as a neutral mediator between Israel and the Hamas regime.

While Qatar condemned Israel for the October 7th massacre, as the October 7th massacre was still ongoing, it's never condemned Hamas for anything. It has been funding Western elite institutions to the tune of billions of dollars. That's what you can do when you have a population of 300,000 people supported effectively by Asian slave labor and huge gas reserves with nothing to spend them on.

And the Qataris have brought up huge swathes of real estate, physical and intellectual, around the West. Qatar is one of Hamas's state sponsors, and Qatar is telling Hamas to keep the hostages until they get a ransom deal that allows them to stay in power. Now, it was Mandy Damari, the mother of the last British hostage, Emily Damari, thank God, has already been released in the ransom.

who went to Britain at the end of November, I think it was. She published a column in The Times calling for Britain to use its power to lead an international initiative to get aid to the hostages. We here called it the Emily Damari Humanitarian Aid Corridor, and we encourage people to write letters to their MPs demanding that. She said, "...aid must reach the hostages to keep them alive until they can be released."

Qatar, Turkey, other countries backing Hamas should use their leverage and if they don't there should be sanctions against them. That was what the mother of the last British hostage in Gaza was demanding. The following week the Emir of Qatar visited Britain.

And the poor king was forced to grin and smile as he held a state banquet for the Emir of Qatar in the UK just days after Mandy Damari begged for Qatar to be pressured. As if nothing had happened, as if he wasn't sponsoring a regime that was holding a British citizen hostage. I would have liked to see Britain use its leverage over Qatar and say, no hostages, no Harrods. We have weight. We're going to throw it around. Yes.

But I've sort of come to the conclusion, it's not that Britain doesn't want to do it. It can't. It just can't anymore because Qatar has too much over it already. Not just Britain. I think it might be the same situation in America that Qatar has bought up so many things, so many people to divest from Qatari money would make divesting from Russia look extremely easy.

Yes, they've been very clever with their buying up of people, institutions, entities. And they, I mean, of course, the game they've been playing has been to pretend that, you know, after burning down your neighbor's house, if you turn up 15 months later with a fire extinguisher, that you should be rewarded as some kind of hero. And I don't take that view.

I believe that the Qatari question is one of the most important. I say this to you, I put it on the record, I believe that at some point in the future, Qatari-sponsored terrorism will, somewhere else in the West other than Israel, will be responsible for something which will lead us then to regard the acceptance of Qatari money in this era in as poor a light as possible.

as the acceptance of Saudi money throughout the 1990s and up until 9/11. I think that Qatar is now what Saudi Arabia was for many years. It's a funder of terrorism, a sponsor of terrorism, a hoster of terrorism, and at some point down the line people will wake up to that. They seem not to have done yet, but I think that they will.

And look, the Emir is not the first embarrassing guest to have to be invited to Buckingham Palace. The late queen, of course, memorably had to host the Ceausescus on Malacca. She hid in the flowers, didn't she? She hid in the flower beds of Buckingham Palace to hide from Ceausescus. Yes, I think she wasn't all that keen on them as guests. But, you know, why when the Emir of Qatar turns up in London...

Do people not ask him about these things? Why is he not on the back foot? And lots of reasons. Main one is money. And I think they should be on the back foot. I don't see any reason why this small, horrible little slave-owning statelet

should be regarded as owning us in the West. I don't think they should. I don't think they do. And I think we should show that they don't. And if that means threatening them, seizing assets, removing the American base. I said this at the beginning of Trump's return to office. I said that one of the 10 things you should do is to remove or even just to threaten to remove

the US base and maybe give it to the Emiratis who've really been pretty amazing in the last couple of years. And then, you know, leave the Qataris to the winds that blow across the region. And, you know, in the meantime, I mean, you know, it can't be said often enough. You know this. Many of your viewers know this. But Sheikha Musa, the mother of the Emir, of course, mourned Sinwar on his death.

And one American friend said to me, well, perhaps she felt she had to do that. And I replied, well, what does it tell you if she felt she had to do that? What does that tell you about the Qatari population and others? I know I wrote a fairly strong column, if I say so myself, about this when the Qataris visited London. And I said then that, you know, all the perfumes of Knightsbridge or Arabia shouldn't,

be able to wash out the stench of blood from those bloody little hands. We've been discussing here why the October 7th war and the October 7th massacre really matters for the West. We've spoken about the warning lights that it has shone, the nefarious role of Qatar suddenly shining a spotlight on what Qatar has been doing in the West. We've been talking about the problems of extremism and radicalism and the dirty little secret of anti-Semitism.

But I wonder why you think ultimately that this war, that you've decided to dedicate your first book in the last few years to this war, matters so much for the future of civilization. Beyond the questions of sectarianism and Qatar. And you write in the book that the right of Israel to fight and win such a war is vital not just for Israel.

But so for Britain, America, and every other Western country can fight such a war. And I think you're wrong. I think that the war matters because if Israel were to fall to the Iranian regime, it would expose...

to attack from this radical regime that has its eyes on the rest of the world. I think it matters because an Israeli defeat would excite jihadists all over the world who would interpret it in apocalyptic millenarian terms.

I'm not sure that Israel's right to fight this war matters for the West because I think the West has actually been perfectly capable of being entirely hypocritical and saying, do as I say, not as I do. And that's the Israeli impression that for people sitting in ivory towers, maybe cuttary funded ivory towers,

In the West, in Britain and America, they can, from the comfort of a distance, say, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do this. It doesn't matter that we did this. It doesn't matter that if we were in your condition, we might do the same. Do as I say, not as I do. And therefore, you know, whether the West throws Israel under the bus, I don't think there's a point of principle here that that would undermine the West's ability to fight a similar war in future.

Because if the West needs to defend itself, it simply will do whatever it needs to. Criticism of Israelis in 2023 be damned. It's possible. I rather admire the French on this for their ability to constantly preach one thing and do another whenever France feels the need to intervene anywhere, particularly in its former or existing colonies. It does so without Security Council approval.

whilst all the time advising Israel and America and others to make sure they always have Security Council approval for everything. So yes, I mean, there was a considerable degree of double standards, triple standards, quadruple standards. I simply say what I mean by that when I said is the bit you quoted was that I believe that if things are going the way I think they are going...

then it is imperative that the West realizes there's a lot to learn from Israel because we could all be yet in a similar situation. And I pray God that's not the case, but it could well be the case, particularly if we don't face up to some of the problems that I address in this book. Do you think that the West could find itself in the same situation

because of a homegrown Islamism problem? For sure. Among other things, yes. Of course. I just pray it doesn't happen. But I think the more you put off the addressing of the problem, the more likely you're going to have a problem. But yes, I mean, you know, you quoted the actions in Mosul and so on the other year, 10 years ago almost now,

You're right. I mean, I'd like to think that if Britain or France or America faced an enemy that was trying to wipe it out like

Israel's enemies we now know were trying to do on the 7th not just from the south but simultaneously they hoped from the north right it's shocking to think that October 7th was meant to be so much more destructive than it was and if that had happened you know a pincer movement between Hamas from the south and Hezbollah from the north it's an unimaginable

But I just think if other countries in the West faced something similar, I'd like to think that we would be able to rouse ourselves. I'd like to think we'd be able to do whatever was necessary to defend our people. And I think that that is possible. I think that a very unwise thing for the West to do is to use Israel as this scapegoat, as a whipping boy for the

put off problems that we need to address ourselves, I think that we should see Israel, as you say, as a warning and an inspiration. A warning of what is possible and an inspiration of what we might do ourselves if faced with such a time of trial. And that is, to my mind, one of the most important things I've learned in the last year and a half is that

even in the most injudicious times, even at times when you think, and older generations think the young have become weak and so on, you can still stand up when you're called. And I think that the younger generation in Israel and others in this country have done that and have been remarkable. And I think that they should be seen as an inspiration

to their counterparts in the rest of the West. And as I think I say at one point in the book, you know, it's how that sort of internet meme, with a Western man. A couple of choices in the road in front of you. To put it at its simplest, down one road, you get to venerate death cults. You get to venerate people like Sinhua and Nasrallah and Dania and so on. And down the other,

is the path of heroism. And you should take the heroic path, as so many Israelis have. You quote in the book an entertaining exchange over a Shabbat dinner with a 19-year-old girl. You ask her, what do you do? And she says, I'm an intelligence expert on Yemen. And I think that's also not a bad path for a Western man. But Douglas, this problem is not actually as hypothetical as we would like to think, and perhaps not so far-fetched. Because war has returned to Europe.

War returned to Europe three years ago with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this war of aggression that is forcing Europeans to rethink the entirety of their security architecture, rethink nuclear weapons, rethink conscription, rethink armaments, rethink their basic social contract.

Rethink them in a way that I think ultimately as a side effect will probably make the West more sympathetic to Israel because their their long break from history has ended the ability to nurture generous welfare states under the umbrella of American security protection and then to sneer at the Israelis who have to make difficult decisions about life and death That's over because Europeans are returning having a very rude awakening back to history and I wonder from your coverage of

of Ukraine and sort of flitting between Ukraine, Israel, back in, you know, the safety of the West, Ukraine, Israel, back in the safety of the West. How you think that that discourse about security, about civic responsibility, about survival, about war is changing? What's shifting in the zeitgeist? Only one thing is the closer your country is to Ukraine, the more you feel it in Europe. Yeah, I just returned from Ukraine a few days ago and...

The Baltic states, Poland and others, are suitably worried and are increasing their defence spending as a result. The more west you go away from there, the more lax people, populations, governments are. But even Britain is now slashing its international aid budget in order to fund defence spending.

By the way, if Britain ends up taking money away from UNRWA in order to put it in the army, I think it would be the best. That would be fantastic. It would be the best possible twist. Very good. That's a win-win. I think that probably, well, this is just a hunch, but I think that, I don't actually think that the peoples of Europe, the further west you go, are actually much aware of any of this and will live in a state of denial for as long as possible. Yeah.

everything in history suggests again you put off realizing things until the last moment uh if european leaders mean what they say then they shouldn't be piddling around with 0.25 percent increases in defense spending uh they would be uh spending at uh significantly higher levels in in

As I say, it's just always, always historically the question. We look back and we say, why did they not see that coming? Why did they not prepare? Why did they not? And it's just always the same thing, which is human beings don't until they have to. And it's probably the same. And if Europe can avoid and America can avoid ever having to stare into the face of evil and into the face of war again, then good for them.

If they can't, they will have to draw on what reserves they have. But I just say those reserves are not just financial. They're not just military. They're moral. The question is what moral reserves you draw on, what you are fighting for, not just fighting against.

That is one of the lessons this country has learned and I think has taught much of the rest of the world. It's not just about what happens when the time of trial occurs. It's about what people you've been preparing for that moment of trial. Douglas, let me flip the question that you just posed back at you. You said that throughout history...

People are always late to make difficult realizations. It's only at the moment of truth. And then you wonder in hindsight, why didn't they see it? Why couldn't they see this coming? October 7th has changed everything for us in Israel, for us personally, for our region. We've all been on an intellectual journey in which we've been reevaluating what we got wrong, our basic assumptions about the region, about our enemies, about ourselves, about everything. And I wonder...

What do you think you didn't realize until it was too late? What do you see now, staring into the heart of darkness, as a social critic of this region, of the West? What do you see now that maybe you didn't see before October 7th that gave you a slap in the face and now you see it that it's too late and maybe you wish you'd shone a spotlight on it five or ten years ago? I wish I had an answer for that question.

I suppose there's plenty of things like all of us I don't see coming, but I don't know. I think I've used my time well. I think I've tried to use my voice as well as I can to warn and to prepare and also to encourage where I can. What would I do if I knew then what I knew now? I don't know. I think pretty much the same thing. I was very moved when I...

when my book, A Strange Death of Europe, came out eight years ago or so now. I wrote it about ten years ago. And I was very moved by my late friend, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, who sent me a message about it.

And he quoted, this sounds like a brag, but I say it with all humility. He quoted scripture to me and he said, whether they listen or fail to listen, they shall know that a prophet stood among them. And I was very moved by that and humbled by it and worried by it as well. Quite a burden. A mutual friend of Rabbi Sachs and mine said to me, you know,

You do know, Douglas, that being a prophet is an awful job because the best thing that can happen is that everything goes wrong as you said it was, and that's no joy.

And the other option is you have to be totally wrong, in which case you're not a prophet and you're unemployed. Or you were so prophetic that you warned people and got them to change their course. But indeed, little comfort sometimes in saying I told you so. It's a horrible job. Douglas Murray, author of On Democracies and Death Cults, Israel and the Future of Civilization, on sale now. Douglas, what do you think?

When are you going to write the next book so I can have you back on the podcast? Soon as possible. Promise. Soon as possible. You already thinking of an idea for what the book will be about? Couldn't possibly say. Never stop talking, never stop writing. Douglas Murray, thank you for coming on the show. It's a great pleasure.

And that brings us to the end of this blockbuster double episode of State of a Nation with Douglas Murray, author of On Democracies and Death Cults, Israel and the Future of Civilization. Out now. I do encourage you to buy it. I read it, of course, in preparation for these episodes, and it was a fascinating read. Good to be able to unpack it with Douglas Murray in our studio at Mindspace LaGuardia Tel Aviv.

As always, if you enjoy these episodes, and I hope you do if you've reached the end of two back-to-back episodes, please subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a like on social media and share the link with friends you think will be enlightened and entertained to learn more with us beyond the headlines and between the lines. I'm Elon Levy, and thanks for joining us.