“As the late rabbi Jonathan Sacks, among many others, pointed out, Jews were once hated because of their religion. Then sometime after the Enlightenment it became hard to hate people because of their religion. At that point Jews were hated because of their race. So in the twenty-first century, when civilized people cannot hate the Jews for their religion or their race, Jew can can be hated for having a state – and for defending it,” Murray writes.
There was a time when war correspondents helped readers understand the complexities and contradictions of war-ravaged areas by reporting from the overseas sites of hostilities. Journalists like Michael Kelly, Daniel Pearl and P.J. O’Rourke had such courage and honesty. That time seemed lost in recent years, but perhaps it’s reappeared.
He tells one particular story about an atrocity video shot by a terrorist. It best describes the brutality of that awful day. An excited Hamas youth calls his parents in the midst of the attack to share his experiences. “Dad, I’m talking to you from a dead Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her and I killed her husband. I killed ten with my own hands,” he boasts. The father replies, “May God protect you.”
“In the past many evils have been permitted because people have allowed them to go on or covered them up. I was determined not to let that happen. And so I followed the facts wherever they led me,” Murray wrote.
Israel Yesterday and Today
Israel lost 1,200 citizens on Oct.7, 2023. Based on Israeli-United States population numbers, that was the equivalent proportion of 44,400 Americans or roughly 15 9/11 attacks.
In the first chapter, Murray provides a helpful backstory of Israel’s modern-day history, including earlier attempts by Israel’s neighbors to snuff it out: its inception in 1948, again, in the Six Day War of 1967, and 1973’s Yom Kippur War.
What He Saw
Murray helps readers experience the harrowing horrors of that awful day. He recounts the accounts of victims, survivors, and even the terrorist perpetrators of countless atrocities. He viewed hours of video footage the terrorists shot on GoPro cameras and mobile phones that they uploaded to the internet during the carnage. He also viewed victims’ last moments in footage retrieved from their own phones.The author met with families whose loved ones were either killed or taken hostage, as well as the soldiers and medical examiners responsible for searching for survivors and identifying the fallen, many of whom could only be identified by their DNA. Murray also visited Hamas prisoners held in Israeli prisons to look them in the eye, trying to discern why they were motivated by such hate.
He went on raids with Israel Defense Forces (IDF), soldiers tasked with hunting Hamas members and those searching for hostages. The author detailed how Hamas members, dressed as civilians, hid in miles of underground tunnels; how they booby-trapped buildings, and how they hid weaponry in mosques, hospitals, schools, and children’s bedrooms in private homes.
Murray wrote that Hamas chose to attack the music festival for the element of surprise and to avoid confronting Israel directly. “It is a very long way from hitting an enemy at their center of strategic gravity. But the targets were well chosen, in their eyes,” he wrote. “Again, these were places where the Israelis were not expecting to be attacked and … seemed they did not know how to respond when it did happen.”
When World Opinion Changed
Murray spends much of his book outlining how quickly world opinion turned against Israel, especially in the United States. “But one of the most curious things about the response in America was that the focal point for the anti-Israel protests turned out to be not among Islamist rabble-rousers on the streets, but at nearly every elite educational institution in the country.” He also dourly notes that that there were no universal condemnations or protests against Hamas in any major Western city.Anti-Semitism has been around for millennia, but Murray theorizes that world opinion soured on Israel after the Israelis soundly defeated their geographic neighbors in 1967 and 1973. The country formerly in the world’s eyes as David was now viewed by many on the left as Goliath. “The fact that Israel was still a tiny country with a tiny population in comparison with its neighbors was not the point. It now came to be seen by many as the overdog.”
The Disconnect
Things should have been much different for Gaza and those living there, the author points out. Hamas collected billions in funding between 2014 and 2020 from the United States and the international community. Unfortunately for the Palestinians, their leaders used those funds for their own purposes. Murray wrote that three Hamas leaders are estimated to have a combined worth of $11 billion while living in luxury hotels and penthouses in Qatar.“Instead of buying weapons, building tunnels for terrorists, and living the high life in Doha they might have actually created the Singapore on the Mediterranean that so many people hoped for when Gaza was handed to the Palestinians in 2005,” the book states.
As the war against Hamas and Hezbollah intensified, Israeli ingenuity prevailed in planting explosive devices in Hezbollah pagers that detonated simultaneously. When Hezbollah operatives later switched to using walkie-talkies, those detonated too. He also details the final hours of Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the Oct. 7 attacks. Ironically, the young Israeli who killed Sinwar was a 19-year-old, first-year soldier who wasn’t in the military when the infamous attack happened.
Murray concludes his critique on a positive note, citing examples of the heroism exhibited by everyday Israelis on that fateful day and the courage and resilience many have demonstrated since. He shares that the Israelis he interviewed gave him hope—hope that other democracies will follow the Jewish example of bravely fighting for their families and their nations against those who glorify death and martyrdom.
Douglas Murray’s book is an important reminder that democracies that wish to remain free must exhibit the will to be the home of the brave.
