“Life Has to Be Fought For.” Douglas Murray on Israel’s Example for the West

[Applause] well thank you so much Ayan um it's such a pleasure being friends with aan and a great honor and it's a great honor to me that you've introduced me here tonight I'm sly nervous because I'm not used to Friendly crowds and um I think it's a first so please bear with me if I stutter or lose my train of thought uh I'd like to thank Paul singer the chairman of the Manhattan Institute rahan Salam the president and also the great pleasure of being a coonor with Ross Pro Jr it's my view that that none of us come into the world fully formed by any means and I wanted also to take a moment to mention the fact that there are many people in this room here tonight who've helped to form me and uh you all know who you are and I'm not going to name names or hold anyone personally responsible but um I'm also very deeply honored to receive this award because looking at the list of previous honores they include so many other people who I credit with part of my intellectual evolution not least Daniel Patrick moan William F barckley and Tom Wolf but I'd also like I open my remarks to cite a fellow emigra writer to this city who's no longer with us but made a huge impression on me and I know Ayan had the enormous honor of meeting that's the great Italian journalist Ariana fi I mention her because she wrote a great book about the war in Vietnam called nothing and are men and it starts with one of the best lines that I know in any book it opens with her niece her young child niece asking her a question the question is life what is it Oriana and the next sentence is she says the next morning I went to Vietnam to find out now it seems to me the nature of being a writer is to get to the essence of things to get to the nature of things to try to work out life in its totality whether that's as I've done recently writing about the fenel epidemic in this country and all of the Monstrous things that come from it or from the many War zones I've reported from the purpose I suppose propos is to try to get to the truth and the truth is not just a abstract thing but specifically a truth about ourselves as human beings and I suppose in that case it's inevitable that a writer would be drawn to war because war is in some ways the ultimate subject because it shows us human beings at our very worst and also at our very best A couple of years ago I was reporting from Ukraine with the uh Ukrainian Armed Forces as they were taking territory back briefly all too briefly from the Russian advance I always think of the woman I wrote about her in my column in the New York Post I always think of the woman of 28 beautiful blonde woman who I met at the very front line it was in the cold of November and she had given birth to her first child the month before the Russians invaded and she told me when I said what did you do she said I gave my child to my mother in Kiev and I haven't seen her since there's no rotation there's no rotation we don't have the luxury of rotation in the Army at the moment I think of all the people I've seen in Iraq Ukraine Northern Nigeria where the Christians are under such terrible and almost ignored persecution and for many other places but I've never seen as much of the best and the worst of humankind as I have in the past six months in Israel and Gaza I was here in New York on the 7th of October and on the 8th of October I went down to Times Square and uh there were were these men and women waving signs celebrating the massacre of the previous day they weren't calling for two-state solution they weren't saying uh we we'd awfully like to do some borderline territory swaps in the West Bank no no it was all celebrating the massacre and some of them were doing it and they were holding these signs in Time Square by any means necessary at a time when we already knew what those memes included and in fact when the massacre was still going on and I thought then when I said this in the post I thought then that a couple of things were obvious the first is I had to get to Israel as soon as I could the second was that we were going to see a kind of Holocaust denialism in real time and therefore I thought I should see with my own eyes everything that had happened everything I could see and the third was that I noticed already what I said a couple of days after the 7th I said there are sometimes in your life when a flare goes up and everybody can be seen precisely where they're standing and that seemed to me to be exactly what happened I went straight to the sites of the massacres to the hospitals where the uh the wounded were recovering I won't give you all of the even any of the terrible stories you can hear from there I joined the experts in the more as in the uh I joined the uh Pathologists in the morgs of Tel Aviv as they were trying to identify the Dead uh an unbelievable task which they do with extraordinary delicacy and religiosity actually I spent a lot of time with the families of the kidnapped and with the survivors of the Nova party but I also had the great opportunity to witness firsthand Israel's response because unlike some countries today Israel doesn't just sit back with equinity when it's attacked much as some of the world would like it to do so one of the fences that the terrorists broke into on the 7th and I I thought immediately as well after the 7th people aren't going to realize the scale of this this was a 4,000 person Battalion sized terrorist attack that aimed to go all the way up the center of the country I felt rather proud actually to go back through that fence with the IDF when they were going into Gaza in search of the hostages I saw the uh tunnel n NW works that toaz has spent all these years building with your money and mine uh I have a friend from the British army colonel Richard Kemp and one day we were standing underneath one of the tunnels that sinir had built and which he's videoed going through this is The Mastermind of the 7th and I said to Richard who like me is a fan of dark humor I said uh I said this is about the uh size and width of the London Underground and he said and I uh I hear it's even longer than the London Underground I had the opportunity to say and I I think it's rather better run but it was uh I suppose I can say as much as any person could that I saw it all and on the day I left Israel a few days ago I was the first person allowed in to see the hamaz terrorists who'd committed the atrocities of the 7th in the prison cells in which they're held I mention all of this really to say what do I make of all this I'd like to say the first thing I would like to do is something even more heretical than what Paul singer did earlier um I'm going to quote scripture I think often of the line from Deuteronomy When God says I've set before you life and death blessing and cursing therefore choose life that you and your descendants might live and I think also of the psalmist who said I shall not die but I shall live because when I think of the seventh now I don't only think of the victims I think of the extraordinary Heroes and I want to mention them to you above all as a young man who's a friend of mind in his 30s on the morning of the 7th he woke up in Jerusalem realized the seriousness of what was going on got into his car drove South collected some guns left a farewell message to his children and his wife on his phone got a call from his company commander on the road saying you have to come back to base in Jerusalem and he said no we're needed South now and his Battalion command said are you defying an order he said yes I'm defying an order we're needed in the South and he fought for the next 48 hours and he survived I think of my friend mosha who I've had the great Good Fortune of being with for many months he's now my cameraman or was from the beginning and the first day we were together we dawned our uh battle armor and helmets and uh on the Gaza border and I noted that mosha had bullet mark down the top of his helmet and I said and he hadn't mentioned anything about it I said what where's that from and he explained that it was from the seventh he every Saturday would go down to see a friend of his in kafar AA also in the media and he drove right into the middle of the firefight on the highway he got out and he fought and he killed three terrorists with his own gun that he carries with him thank goodness and he fought for the next two days and uh he's doesn't expect any Applause from it or anything like that just did what he had to do I think of the extraordinary Drew Men Who provided the food at the party at the Nova party and who I met a few months ago some weeks after the atrocities and who described to me not just what they'd seen at the party which the world was already trying to deny but what they'd done and they didn't see themselves as Heroes at all but because they could understand Arabic they saved so many young Jews that morning and when I said to them why among other things did you do it they're proud is raes said Drews they said the Hamas hate us even more than they hate the Jews I think of the Muslim Doctor Who Hamas held as a uh as a human shield at one point in the morning and even after being wounded saved the lives of other Israelis I think of the extraordinary people of the United had Salah sort of First Responders unit they all get an alert on their phone and they all go off and address a car crash and I spoke to the head of that organization in Jerusalem he said in 30 years of doing this job the Whole 30 years alt together wasn't like one minute that morning the lights just went off everywhere and I think of a young woman called Addie book she was 23 and I was with her family in uh December in uh Judea and Samaria she she a beautiful girl photographer and she decided she had to go and reinlist after the seventh and she did her parents begged her not to but she said she had to and uh she was killed on her first day by a rocket that landed on her in stot but her parents shared with me the note that she'd left for them in case she didn't make it and in it she said among other things how sorry she was but she said I wanted to live life and now I want you to live it for me I think finally of the uh extraordinary evening in November last year I was at the Schneider Children's Hospital when the helicopters came returning the first hostages the first children who hamaz had stolen them from their homes in the South and uh we'd been waiting for them for 2 days two days of thwarted exchanges where hamaz deliberately eak it out and Eed it out more and more torture for the families but when the uh helicopters emerged there were two of them they emerged in the night sky and the people of Tel Aviv realized what was happening and every car stopped I was standing right on the top of the hospital every single car in Tel Aviv stopped and uh suddenly I noticed that there was Applause from the citizens the tel avians and then there was singing singing all the way through the streets of Tel Aviv and I said to my camera man what what are they singing and they were singing a song heu Shalom Alim we brought you peace and I learned afterwards that speaking to the helicopter Commander that there was such intense competition among the helicopter Pilots to have the The Good Fortune the honor of returning these children home now there's millions of stories like this across Israel absolutely Millions the country rings with them it resounds with them and it makes me think a lot about home my home here in America my home in the UK there' have been polls over the last couple of years asking Americans and British people what what would you do if your country was invaded and uh a couple of years ago when Ukraine was invaded there was a poll here in the US and it found that a I don't want to make a partisan point but let me risk it you might guess the turned out that a minority of democrat voters said they would stay and fight for their country light majority of Republican voters said they would but it ended up with only 52% of the American public saying that they would stay and fight um I assume the rest would hot foot it to Canada uh assuming that Canada wasn't the one invading which is one of the very few things in geopolitics I'm I like to hold um but when I looked at those Po in the UK there was an even worse one a few months ago go the the pollsters asked young British people and the defense secretary said that there's a possibility we might have to have enlistment in the UK for young people a mere 27% of young people said they would be willing to be enlisted to fight for their country these I don't need to tell you are not good results and they bring a whole set of questions behind them beneath them some of which I wrote about in my last book I mean it doesn't surprise me at any rate that a lot of Young Americans wouldn't be willing to fight for their country if they've been told from the cradle that their country was rotten from birth and had nothing going for it other than slavery colonialism and everything else you've really got to miseducate Americans into this kind of self-loathing [Music] but I compare this I compare this to what I've seen in the last six months and actually a number of my uh readers and viewers have said to me in the last six months you you actually Lo you've changed Douglas and I I sometimes ask them what it is they think and they said you've lost some of your pessimism um and I've said to them you know that there's a reason for that and the reason is what I've seen in the Israeli public because actually this wasn't theoretical it wasn't a poll question it wasn't some adults on an American campus cosplaying being terrorists for the day the pathetic attempts to I mean what's the latest one they they they're now in La they're doing call to prayers there's a guy in New York who's got a belly button and a crop top and the be at the beginning of this Academic Year he was on camera calling for climate emergency and now he's for hamaz I suppose he's quiz for Palestine and chickens for KFC and all that and uh I would love to drop him into Gaza although as I've occasionally said I'm not sure there are very many tall buildings to throw them off but once they rebuild them uh once they rebuild them uh that guy will have about uh a day uh he'll be introduced to the elevator fast I reckon um one of the great things about Israel at the moment is my friend Barry we said when she arrived in February she said isn't it wonderful to be in a country where nobody gives a damn about woke I said it's so true nobody bothers about pronouns life is too serious reality it's right in front of you now it seems to me that there's a lesson for this and it's not a lesson for Israel it's a lesson for us for you and me for us if we were going to restore countries like Great Britain and the United States of America you know I spoke some months ago with a older guy in Tel Aviv who said to me he'd fought in the 1967 the 1973 Wars and he said I owe the younger generation in Israel an apology he said I used to say they don't have it in them they they they've become they like partying they like being on Instagram and Tik Tok and he said I owe them an apology they've been magnificent and the thing is is that perhaps it does require life to become serious again perhaps the students that we see at these destroyed universities perhaps they just need a dose of reality someday I always pray that that day in some ways never comes to them because it'll be the biggest wakeup call anyone has ever had but all I would say is that this country and Great Britain should be so lucky as to have a Young Generation like that in Israel they were weighed in the balance since October the 7th and they've been found to be magnificent [Music] and and so what I wanted to say was really in closing is that question I suppose of Ariana fi's I wonder what I've learned about life I'm going to give you I'm afraid a circular definition that life has to be fought for and it has to be cherished and that what Israel has been up against is not just a people of death but a cult of death a cult which wishes to annihilate an entire race and which after dealing with that race has made very clear what it wants to do with Christians everyone in Britain everyone in America and everyone else next they don't hide it at all and we're merely stupid in not believing them and I suppose for those people in America who don't believe them might say Slumber on as long as you can I wanted therefore just to say I want to thank the Manhattan Institute and you for this deep honor but I want to dedicate it to the people of Israel of all ages who in the face of life of the in the face of absolute death Cults in the face of people who most people in this country have no idea of can't imagine what these people are capable of I want to dedicate my acceptance of of this award to the people of Israel who in the face of death choose life thank you

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Length: 23min 27sec (1407 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2024