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

by Douglas Murray

As the weeks went on the need for some kind of care for these young people became increasingly obvious. At any time there are stories that the press in any liberal country can barely cover—not because they are ordered not to cover them, but because to reveal certain things (particularly in wartime) could be so terrible for public morale. When it came to the survivors of the Nova party, there was one story in particular that the Israeli media barely mentioned: in the aftermath of the party a number of the young people who had survived had been sectioned into mental institutions. A number had killed themselves. Others had tried to kill themselves in the hospitals. There was one particular reason why again the media did not like to discuss this. Obviously many of the young people at the Nova party had been on drugs. Obviously most of those drugs are illegal in Israel. But nobody wanted to be seen to be either condoning their use or blaming the victims for having been on them. Health care professionals and therapists I spoke with circled this question often. In time, they said, studies would be made of the drugs that people were on, the effects they had on them, and the way in which some drugs may have helped people to survive while others clearly hampered their chances of survival. A number of those who survived had been on cocaine, which is a stimulant. Some of them were among those who ran many miles to escape the terrorists. A number of survivors told me that they could no...