Normandale College history professor emeritus Chuck Chalberg reviews Douglas Murray’s On Democracies and Death Cults for the Imaginative Conservative in “Israel and the Future of Civilization.” Professor Chalberg writes toward the end of his review:
* * * * *
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….
Whole thing here.
