British journalist Douglas Murray strongly supports Israel in their current war with the Hamas terror group. But unlike armchair warriors in the media and pro-Hamas protesters in the streets, Murray has been to the war zone. He knows how Hamas operates: with a doctrine of all our civilians belong to us. In other words, Palestinians are tools of Hamas to use as they please.

In a New York Post opinion piece published Thursday, Murray wrote:

Every time a home is destroyed in Gaza, or a civilian building is targeted much of the world seems bewildered and outraged.

In the process the worst libels against the Jewish state get repeated.

Claims that the Israelis deliberately target civilians.

Claims that Israel is committing war crimes, and more …

Of course these online, armchair warriors seem to presume that they themselves are experts in counter-terror techniques.

As a result, media have circled the wagons to defend Hamas and condemn Israel.

Douglas Murray On the Ground in Israel

In his piece, Murray described how Hamas hides explosive devices in children’s toy boxes. That’s a shocking claim, so in Israel he interviewed an American who has been fighting with a special forces group of the IDF. The American, whom Murray dubbed “Major Y,” said that it’s routine for Hamas to store weapons in civilian homes.

What’s even more diabolical is that Hamas prefers to utilize children’s bedrooms to stash weapons and build tunnel entrances. In fact, as Murray noted:

Indeed one member of the IDF I spoke with this week says that this is such a pattern that when they search a house they now go straight to the children’s bedrooms to uncover weapons caches and entrances to the tunnels.

They recently found an RPG underneath a baby’s crib.

Moreover, the IDF forces with whom he spoke, including Major Y, estimate that in one of every one or two homes they find military weaponry, such as AK47s, grenades and rocket launchers. And, of course, tunnel entrances.

IDF Facebook page; 12/29/2023.

And then there are the schools. As Major Y told Murray: “every school and kindergarten we go into we find guns in the basement. In each one we found more than ten AK47s, machine guns and grenades.”

Major Y also related this harrowing account:

On one occasion recently his unit spotted an old lady in a wheelchair alone on a street corner in the south of Gaza.

They approached the elderly lady “who looked like my grandmother” according to the major.

And as they approached her they were suddenly fired on by a Hamas terrorist.

Then there was the 13-year-old boy whom Hamas recruited to drop an IED near a school, which detonated and severely wounded an IDF soldier. The group of elderly adults approaching the soldiers while waving a white flag — while concealing a terrorist firing at the troops. (Amazingly, the soldiers didn’t fire back at the civilians).

All these are violations of the rules of war, including those of the Geneva Conventions. Yet keyboard warriors and armchair gladiators condemn Israel as genocidal brutes who are committing war crimes.

How Hamas Has Fooled the West

Douglas Murray has been an outspoken voice in defense of Israel and in condemnation of Hamas atrocities. As I noted above, he speaks from experience in the field, both in Israel and in Palestine.

Yet Hamas has successfully bamboozled the media into thinking that they’re the innocent victims of the genocidal Israelis. As journalist Matti Friedman wrote in The Free Press:

Some aspects of Hamas’s success are easy to see, like the behavior of the Western press. After dealing with reporters through many rounds of violence since coming to power in Gaza in 2007, Hamas understood that most can be co-opted or coerced, and that coverage of Gaza would reliably focus on civilian casualties, obscuring the cause of the war, portraying Israel’s military operations as atrocities, and thus pressuring Israel to stop fighting.

(I can personally attest to the success of Hamas influence in the UK. My husband and I traveled to Britain two weeks after the October 7 massacre. Not only was the BBC already wailing about the civilian casualties in Gaza, but Sky News was chiming in as well. Sky News in Australia, which is conservative, is a very different cat from Sky News in the UK.)

And … it’s because of progressive influence. Friedman continued:

In Europe and North America, as we’ve now seen on the streets and on campuses, many on the progressive left have arrived at an ideology positing that one of the world’s most pressing problems is the State of Israel—a country that has come to be seen as the embodiment of the evils of the racist, capitalist West, if not as the world’s only “apartheid” state, that being a modern synonym for evil. 

So now the media and the progressive left are crying out for a “ceasefire,” which means of course that Israel would be hit again by Hamas. And again. And again.

Douglas Murray Defending Israel in Media

To be fair, there are other voices in the wilderness speaking in defense of Israel. Most recently, in fact, the New York Times (yes, that NYT!) published a gut-wrenching essay on how Hamas tortured, mutilated, raped, and murdered Israeli women on October 7. It was one of the most stomach-churning articles I have ever read, and it is the work of three writers who actually went to Israel and interviewed over 150 people. Sometimes the NYT does itself proud.

Yet it’s been Douglas Murray who has appeared on many networks to speak out about what he has seen. He has appeared with Piers Morgan, John Anderson, and on Sky News Australia, taking on pro-Palestinians such as Norman Finkelstein, who called Gaza a “concentration camp.”

But perhaps the most lively exchange was earlier in December when Piers Morgan hosted Douglas Murray and bombastic progressive Cenk Uygur of “Young Turks” fame. Neither were in the same studio; Murray was, in fact, in Israel during the debate.

While Uygur ranted about Israel committing “genocide,” Murray came at his opponent with facts as well as his own observations in the war zone. It did not go well for Uygur.

At the end of the debate Uygur melted down into a harangue of name-calling against Murray:

All you want is some sort of warmongering Israeli state, U.S. state, etc.! Neocon, warhawk, Nazi, racist!

It’s good to recall what the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said about people who resort to ad hominem attacks:

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

However, the media are still calling for ceasefire. Progressive know-nothings close airports, disrupt Christmas celebrations, and block the entrance to the World Trade Center in New York City. Some idiot restaurateur in Brooklyn even printed “down with the occupation” and “from the river to the sea” on their menus, as well as on the walls of the establishment.

Yet the difference between how Israel and Hamas conduct themselves couldn’t be more stark. Douglas Murray wrote:

One side uses civilians as human shields.

The other tries to locate terrorists.

So how strange it is that so many Americans — especially young Americans — condemn the Israelis.

It is Hamas that started this.

And Hamas that is the real enemy not just of Israel but of the Palestinian people.

Thank you, Mr. Murray, for boldly speaking the truth.

Featured image: AndyCNgo/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped.