On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization

by Douglas Murray

As far as the eye could see were the consequences of the war that Sinwar and Hamas had started. I found the last chair that he had sat in and took a seat. There were bloodstains on the side. From here you could see nothing but destruction. As I sat there I wondered whether, on this rare, maybe single, trip aboveground, Sinwar had recognized how much destruction he had wrought. Not just on the people of Israel—he would have been proud of having done that—but on the Palestinians of Gaza. As he was bleeding out—isolated, abandoned, and defeated—did he spend any of his final moments wondering whether this whole bloody, unnecessary war that he started had been worth it? Perhaps he had decided on this last trip aboveground to abandon the Palestinian people and flee to Egypt. The cash, passports, and IDs (including UN IDs) found on his body certainly suggested as much. Perhaps he thought he could bribe his way out and become free on the other side of the nearby border? Either way it didn’t work, and this wasteland he had created was where his life ended. What did work was the IDF, its commanders, and the politicians who had directed them. Every expert who had kept telling Israel not to go deeper into Gaza, not to enter Rafah or to reach a cease-fire at the earliest opportunity had been proved wrong. Only military pressure had achieved the release of those hostages who had been freed, and only remorseless military pressure had now led to the death of the enemy. If Israel had follo...