DOUGLAS MURRAY (credit: FLASH90)<\/p>\n
Another eminent author represented is Douglas Murray,<\/a> with his On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas, and the Future of the West \u2013 his direct, detailed, and personal account of the unspeakably barbarous Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023. I describe it as \u201can in-depth examination of both the irrationality and the deep-rooted persistence of the oldest prejudice \u2013 antisemitism. He finds that hatred of Jews, and the desire to exterminate them, is integral to the very purpose of terrorist organizations such as Hamas. He also uncovers it in the blocs of public opinion that condone acts of barbarism by Hamas that almost defy description.\u201d<\/p>\n I reviewed the highly acclaimed biography of Winston Churchill by leading historian Lord Andrew Roberts<\/a>: Churchill \u2013 Walking with Destiny. I was able to write: \u201cRoberts, himself a founder member of the international Friends of Israel Initiative, is perhaps more alive to Churchill\u2019s \u2018philo-semitism,\u2019 as he puts it, than other biographers have been. As a young man on the brink of his parliamentary career, Churchill refused to subscribe to the well-nigh universal antisemitism of his peers. On the contrary, says Roberts, backing his assertion with facts and figures, he was an active Zionist then, and remained so throughout his life.\u201d<\/p>\n I describe Guardian Angel by leading political journalist Melanie Phillips<\/a> as \u201ca book for the times.\u201d It is a powerful account of her personal and professional voyage through stormy seas. \u201cWe accompany her,\u201d I write, \u201cas she resolves for herself some of the political and moral inconsistencies that she sees all around her.\u201d She sees hatred of Israel as a failure by the public to perceive where their true interests lie \u2013 to combat those who hate Western civilization and aim to destroy it. In that battle, Israel is the first line of defense.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Israel were ever to go down,\u201d writes Phillips, \u201cBritain and the West would be next in line, and with no defender in the Middle East.\u201d A sentiment with which Alan Dershowitz, in his book War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism, also reviewed, would concur.<\/p>\n