Book of the year!

2025 isn't half over, but I doubt it will bring us another book as compelling as On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization. It was written in haste, so we have the terrorists coming in on "hand gliders", monsters that "pray" upon their victims, several sentences repeated, and some that seem to make no sense on first reading. No matter. It will be a best-seller, and it should be.

Douglas Murray was English-born and -educated, and he published his first book in his second year at Oxford. (However, he identifies himself as a New Yorker in this one.) He flew to Israel on October 8, 2023, the day after the atrocities in kibbutzim on Israel's border with Gaza, when some two thousand people were shot, stabbed, raped, and burned alive by Hamas soldiers and Gazan civilians who gleefully posted the videos online, using the victims' phones and social media accounts. The glee of the assassins was too often echoed by college professors and students in the US and Europe, even before Israel retaliated on Gaza, a war that Murray (and I) believe is perfectly justified. I downloaded the Kindle edition at ten o'clock in the morning and finished the book before I went to bed. It's hypnotic. Read it!