In the final part of the Mail’s exclusive serialisation of On Democracies And Death Cults, renowned author Douglas Murray explains why Israel is seen as the ‘bad guy’ the world over and details how pervasive anti-Semitism still is.

It always puzzles me why the citizens of Israel seem so unique among victims. Why they seem to be the only people on Earth who, when savagely attacked, either don’t gain the world’s sympathy or gain it only for a matter of hours, if that.

Almost a year went by after the vicious terrorist raid from Gaza and the cold-blooded slaughter of more than a thousand innocent civilians on October 7, 2023 before a point was made that was so searing nobody else had dared raise it.

The massacres, said Ruth Wisse, a professor at Harvard University, had been the worst atrocity carried out against Jews since the Holocaust – yet almost nobody had the courage to address who the people who had carried it out were.

Why did no one want to dwell on just who the anti-Semites and Nazis were this time? Why was there so little concentration on the ideology that drives Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic government in Iran, and on the fanaticism and the willingness to die and kill mercilessly in its pursuit? Were people not interested?

Or was there some sort of collective anti-Semitism going on – overt or underlying – that meant Israel had to be the bad guy whatever?

You have to see casual anti-Semitism in action to understand how entrenched it can be and how deep it can go, especially in the Middle East. Whenever I travel in the Arab and Muslim worlds I am struck by this obsession with Israel and the Jews. I remember being in Egypt and searching the bookshops to see what the locals were offered for reading material.

The book selections were always the same – Mein Kampf, The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion and a range of other conspiracy tracts focusing on Israel and the Jews.

The October 7 attacks had been the worst atrocity carried out against Jews since the Holocaust – yet almost nobody had the courage to address who the people who had carried it out were

It always puzzles me why the citizens of Israel seem so unique among victims, Douglas Murray asks 

You have to see casual anti-Semitism in action to understand how entrenched it can be and how deep it can go, especially in the Middle East, Murray (pictured) says 

If you wanted a mystery novel to read on the train, there were slim pickings in English or Arabic. But if you wanted a pile of anti-Semitic reading material for the journey your needs could always be met.

Why is it so prevalent? Why is it that the Jews have been singled out and hated by so many people throughout history? Why are they still hated by so many people today? It is an eternal question and the answer is elusive.

But anti-Semitism, it seems, can pop up anywhere at any time. There is an old line that all Jews know: wherever you are, keep a bag packed in case you have to leave in a hurry. History showed them why.

The expulsions of Jews from England in the 13th century and from Spain in the 15th century left a long memory, as did the countless persecutions and pogroms ever since.

This was supposed to change when, in 1948, as a response to the millions of Jews slaughtered in the genocidal Nazi Holocaust, the State of Israel was created, re-establishing the Jewish people in their ancestral Middle Eastern homeland.

As embattled as this new country might have been, and as hated as it often seemed to be from every side, at least this was a place where Jews could be safe and protect themselves. But when October 7 happened, a doubt spread among Jews in Israel and around the world. ‘What if we aren’t safe in Israel either?’

Their fears seemed even more justified when much of the outside world seemed to turn its wrath not on the Hamas perpetrators of the atrocity, but on the victim, Israel – and Jewish people in general. Anti-Semitism, it seemed, was back with a vengeance. Not that it had ever really gone away.

But when October 7 happened, a doubt spread among Jews in Israel and around the world. ‘What if we aren’t safe in Israel either?’ 

Israeli civilians in the street following damage caused by a rocket launched into Ashkelon

Palestinian protesters wave flags and wear yellow stars at the annual Holocaust remembrance event, the ‘March of the Living’ in memory of the victims of the Holocaust

For anti-Semites the history of anti-Semitism is itself a justification for anti-Semitism. Their rationale is that the fact that the Jewish people have been so hated and so persecuted so often is proof that there is something wrong with them.

Among all bigotries and prejudices, one especially distinctive feature of anti-Semitism is that it is a shapeshifter.

It was the late rabbi Jonathan Sacks who pointed out that Jews were once hated because of their religion. Both Christian anti-Semitism and Islamic anti-Semitism originated in hostility to the Jews for rejecting their new faiths; for sticking with Moses rather than Jesus or Mohammed.

Then, sometime after the 18th-century Enlightenment, it became unacceptable to hate people on religious grounds, so non-Jews chose to hate Jews because of their race.

But after the 20th century it became unacceptable to hate people because of their race. So, in the 21st century, when civilised people cannot hate the Jews for their religion or their race, they can hate them for having a state and for defending it. This seems now to have become an acceptable form of anti-Semitism.

For Jews, anti-Semitism locks them into an unresolvable set of challenges. They are condemned if they try to integrate into society and equally condemned if they don’t integrate. They are hated for being rich and also for being poor. Jews could be hated for being religious and for being atheistic.

And, though they were the victims who were made to flee to different countries, they were hated for being stateless and rootless and therefore likely to destabilise any country they were in.

But if anti-Semitism is a perpetual conundrum for Jews, it is also a challenge for non-Jews for what it says about a society that indulges in it. In his masterpiece Life And Fate, the Soviet writer Vasily Grossman writes perceptively: ‘Anti-Semitism can take many forms, from a mocking, contemptuous ill-will to murderous pogroms.’

Even a genius like Dostoyevsky could fall prey to this virus-like hatred. Grossman went on: ‘It is always a means rather than an end; it is a measure of contradictions yet to be resolved. It is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and state systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of and I’ll tell you what you yourself are guilty of.’

It was the late rabbi Jonathan Sacks (pictured) who pointed out that Jews were once hated because of their religion

When the October 7 attack happened Hamza Yousaf condemned it – and then spent the succeeding months campaigning against Israel

Today the government most responsible for making these accusations against Israel is the Islamic government in Iran, which has spent years assiduously expanding and colonising everywhere they can reach in the region (pictured: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei)

Thus when the Nazis accused the Jews of being racist and of having a desire for world domination, they were simply describing their own features.

As Grossman writes: ‘States look to the imaginary intrigues of World Jewry for explanations of their own failure.’ His analysis of anti-Semitism – his ‘mirror’ theory – gives us a powerful insight into everything that is happening in the Middle East.

The Arab countries that repeatedly invaded Israel and sought to steal its land accuse Israel of stealing land. Muslim countries accuse Israel of ‘colonialism’, yet the whole history of Islam has been one of colonialism.

Today the government most responsible for making these accusations against Israel is the Islamic government in Iran, which has spent years assiduously expanding and colonising everywhere they can reach in the region. What was Gaza but a colony of Iran? Or Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein? Or Yemen? Or Syria? Or Lebanon, where Hezbollah rule by terror?

Everywhere the same ‘mirror’ rule holds. Groups like Hamas that delight in their bloodlust accuse the Israelis of being insatiable killers.

Palestinian groups and their supporters claim that the Jews are bloodthirsty child-killers while they encourage their own youth to view death through ‘martyrdom’ as the highest form of valour. People who use rape as a weapon of war accuse the Israelis of raping prisoners.

The same goes for the critics of Israel in the West. The people who march down the streets in protest are the same generation who, according to polls, seem to think Britain was founded on racism and remains structurally racist today.

A generation has been taught that, by dint of being born into the West, they have been born into countries built on ethnic cleansing and genocide, and founded by people who are settler-colonialist racists. They believe their societies perpetuate these evils right to this very day.

 Hamas terrorists killed around 1,200 people as they invaded Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023

The aftermath of the attack on the music festival near Re’im, southern Israel, on October 8 – a day after the massacre

Perhaps the vast rise in antagonism toward Israel is a manifestation of what psychologists would call ‘projection’. These protesters rant against Israel’s supposed racism and see it as the oppressor because they feel guilty about what they perceive – wrongly – to be their own heritage.

They see Hamas and the people of Gaza as the victims and, in this mindset, the victims are always, always in the right.

Yet no one was actually raising, let alone analysing in depth, the question of exactly why there was such large-scale support in the West not for the people who had suffered the massacre, but for those who had perpetrated it.

What did it really mean that, on the streets of every major Western city, people who must have known what had been done on October 7 publicly took the side of the aggressors?

Perhaps the question wasn’t raised because nobody wanted to face the fact that this time the Nazis were among us.

To even notice why a pro-death cult movement had emerged and spread was to notice a fact that remains unmentionable in most Western democracies. There were patterns, to be sure. But nobody was meant to notice them, because they opened up questions too difficult to even ask.

As a result, often the response was deliberately ambiguous as leaders tried to have it both ways. This was demonstrated in Britain’s Labour Party, then in opposition, which was in a quandary in the aftermath of October 7. Having been racked by years of scandal over anti-Semitism in the party, the new leadership had to tread carefully.

Show no support for Israel and the party’s anti-Semitism scandal risked being reignited, with Labour regaining its reputation for pandering to Islamic extremism. But show too much – or perhaps any – support for Israel, and the party risked losing the support of many members.

On the streets of every major Western city, people who must have known what had been done on October 7 publicly took the side of the aggressors

The party’s internal debate resulted in an argument on whether it should call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza – which had been demanded just moments after Hamas had finished its massacre.

But so intense was the internal party pressure that Labour representatives started to resign on the grounds that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was not being sufficiently condemnatory of Israel.

In Scotland the first minister seemed to divert all his attention from independence fights, or tackling poverty and drug overdoses in the East End of Glasgow, to campaigning against the war in Gaza.

Humza Yousaf had been much praised when he became the country’s first Muslim first minister. In the campaign to become Scottish National Party leader, his main rival was Kate Forbes. The fact that she was a believing Christian and a member of the Free Church of Scotland was widely used against her.

The Free Church of Scotland holds some socially conservative views, and Forbes was hounded repeatedly by the media over whether these were really compatible with being first minister of a ‘progressive’, ‘tolerant’ and ‘diverse’ Scotland.

But when Yousaf won the election he immediately led an Islamic prayer ceremony at the first minister’s residence and this was praised by the media as yet another demonstration of diversity in Scotland.

When the October 7 attack happened he condemned it – and then spent the succeeding months campaigning against Israel.

It pains me that when 250 Israeli hostages were taken there was no organised campaign to pressure Hamas to release the hostages, Murray writes 

He even held an off-the-record private meeting with Turkish president Recep Erdogan, receiving a rebuke from the then British foreign secretary David Cameron, who reminded him that Scotland is not meant to have a separate foreign policy from the rest of the UK.

But nothing seemed to deter Yousaf – perhaps because he is married to a Scottish-Palestinian and his in-laws were in Gaza at the start of the war.

He also held private meetings with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that was handling aid for Gaza, and gave them a £250,000 donation from Scottish government funds.

When asked about this, and whether it had anything to do with his in-laws getting out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing, he attacked the questions as a ‘smear’ and ‘Islamophobic’.

It pains me that when 250 Israeli hostages were taken there was no organised campaign to pressure Hamas to release the hostages.

The abductees included American, British, French and German citizens. Yet in each of these countries there was minimal political, diplomatic or social pressure for their release. ‘Why the silence?’ asked a distraught Moran Aloni, whose sister and her twin girls, aged three, had been kidnapped. ‘It makes me feel that there’s something very wrong in the world today.’

Adapted from On Democracies And Death Cults by Douglas Murray (HarperCollins, £25), to be published April 10. © Douglas Murray 2025. To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 12/4/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.