The Failure of Western Democracy in the East

On October 7, 2023, the Sabbath of the Joy of the Torah, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust took place. It took place not in the Diaspora, but in the Jewish state, in the south of the country, in the areas bordering Gaza. In an independent, strong Jewish state founded to protect Jews from pogroms, there was a very real pogrom. Why did it happen?

October 7 was a holiday, and the soldiers and officers wanted to be at home with their families, not on military bases in the Israeli south. They wished to keif and enjoy themselves. Hedonism had taken hold of the Israeli youth. There were very few soldiers on the Gaza border. Military intelligence was apparently on vacation as well. It was obvious that Israelis were possessed by a sense of people of the West who do not understand the East and who live in the belief that the desire for peace and life and respect for family and community interests is also shared by Hamas militants.

Westerners cannot comprehend the cult of death and are unable to understand the importance and value of the “holy war,” “Jihad,” against the “infidels.” The Israelis were blinded and by the inertia of Westerners perceived the conflict with the militants as a conflict with people who, like them, are all about life, building and development. They allowed themselves to relax and be undisciplined. Freedom turned to promiscuity.

They have allowed themselves to ignore the fact that they are surrounded by people of a different civilization. They probably lack the sensors to pick up the insidious and cunning thoughts and actions of their opponents who are the spawn of Islamic extremism.

They prioritized democracy, for which they fought each other for nine months, not wanting to see that the main danger to their country comes not from a different understanding of democracy, but from enemies who want neither democracy nor life, not only other people’s but their own. The sudden insidious attacks on American democracy at Pearl Harbor and on the Twin Towers are repeated on Oct. 7, 2023 in Israel.

The hedonism and arrogance of fed and free societies overshadowed the threats. The hedonistic relaxation of the spirit of Western man and Western culture reveals the vulnerability of modern democratic societies.

Those who want to establish peace in the Middle East, who want to sign peace treaties that will mean the end of the state of enmity, fantasize. No Islamic extremist will honor a peace treaty drawn up and signed by Westerners, even if he has signed it. The holy war against the West, the “Jihad,” is his “peace.” 

The famous American expert on Islam Daniel Pipes wrote: “In order to avoid anomie, Muslims are left with the only choice, because modernization requires Westernization […]. Islam offers no alternative path to modernization. Secularization cannot be avoided.”

In “Autobiography,” Agatha Christie wrote: “In the Middle East, appearances and substance never coincide. Here the usual ideas, rules of behavior, worldly wisdom must be completely reconsidered and everything must be learned anew.”

Even prominent scholars see Islam as a religion that must be secularized for the sake of progress. Islam cannot be secularized nor exclude the barbaric extremism of its supporters. Western politicians in suits and ties want a businesslike and quick solution to Middle East conflicts that have lasted tens and hundreds of years. They want to behave beautifully and ethically in an area where beauty and ethics are treated very differently. They act in the East as if they were in the West.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is one of the conflicts of the East, preventing the West from living comfortably without the complications of oil production and supply. That is why they demanded concessions from Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state next to it, where murderous terror would reign.

Israel’s retreat from Lebanon and Gaza turned not into peace, but into a rocket attack on the north and south of the country. The retreat from Gaza, the expulsion of Jewish settlers and the loss of control over the Gaza strip led to escalation and rocket attacks on “uncontested” Israeli territory. The hand extended by Israel as a sign of goodwill to the Arab side bifurcated and appeared to be two hands raised upward. In 2005, the Israelis left the “territories” – Gaza was given to its Arab inhabitants. They did not make it an island of peace, but a hotbed of danger for peaceful Jews and Arabs. As a result of the Palestinian Authority elections, power in Gaza went to Muslim terrorists from Hamas. For withdrawing from Gaza, the Israelis received not a laurel wreath but bunches of anger in the form of rockets, not a peace prize but an expansion of the insecurity zone.

Instead of sanctifying life, the militants of Gaza sanctify death.

In the way wars are fought, the level of civilization of the opponents is revealed. Militants are killing strangers and their own, deliberately putting their own civilians under foreign fire, sacrificing their lives to protect themselves from Israeli shelling. But Western mentality prevailed over Eastern mentality in the minds of Israelis: they believed that militants could be bribed and that they were incapable of cunning tactics. They thought the militants were hedonists like themselves, and this put their attention to sleep on October 7, 2023. Hamas’ sudden attack on Israel is the result of a misunderstanding of the inapplicability of Western thinking to the problems of the Middle East. Even Israel’s years of bloody experience did not save the Jewish state from failing to understand the designs and actions of the eastern Islamic extremists.

Image: Dan / Twiga Swala, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0