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

by Douglas Murray

In December 2023, just two months after the Hamas massacres, a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll asked Americans about their support of Israel. Overall the survey found that 81 percent of respondents backed Israel in its fight against Hamas. The only age demographic in America in which this was not the case was the youngest one. Among eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds polled, an extraordinary 51 percent said they agreed with the statement that Israel “should be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.” Fully 60 percent of people in the same age bracket agreed that the attacks of October 7 were justified. When the questions came closer to home, the poll showed that 53 percent of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds believed students should be able to advocate the genocide of the Jews without sanction.34 It is bewildering that these opinions come from the exact same generation of students who were brought up to believe that words are violence and that silence is violence. Yet calls for genocide appear to be just about the only thing that is not violent.