This is hard to write. I feel mute. But it’s important to write something.
Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of the worst terror attack of our lives. Some will say that 9/11 was the darkest day of modern times, but 7 October was more immediate and visceral. It wasn’t a skyline on fire across an ocean. It was homes, families, children. It was the nightmare of a marauding horde made real. Watching Bearing Witness, I saw what can’t be unseen — proof of evil.
The images belong to an older story. They recall the archetype of the raiders: the Vikings descending on a sleeping village to burn, rape and take. It is the ancient horror of civilisation overrun by chaos. 7 October wasn’t only political or territorial. It was archetypal — the return of the barbarian, the eruption of the shadow. What we witnessed was not simply a dispute over land, but what happens when the moral order collapses. The collective psyche recognised this in the deepest most visceral parts of ourselves. It was what happens when darkness takes human form.
Two years later, hatred still marches in our streets. Blood libels circulate freely. Media bias festers. At Glastonbury, Bob Vylan chanted ‘Death, death to the IDF’. Labour has rewarded terrorism by recognising a State of Palestine. And in Manchester, a radical Islamist, Jihad Al-Shamie, attacked a synagogue, killing Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby and injuring others. And speaking of media bias, the BBC referred to the synagogue as a mosque on more than one occasion — as if incapable of imagining Jews as victims, inverting reality itself.
According to the Campaign Against Antisemitism, 80% of British Jews feel that recent political events have increased hostility towards them, and 42% have considered leaving the UK in the past two years. The Community Security Trust reports sustained levels of antisemitism, including violent assaults, vandalism, threats, abuse and intimidation. This isn’t a spike, it’s a new normal.
Even good friends have said terrible things about Israel and about Jews. I’ve been stunned by the success of Hamas propaganda — how lies, once repeated, can take hold even among intelligent people.
I’m tired of manipulation. I threw my hat in the ring as far as I could with A State of Fear and Free Your Mind, exploring how fear and persuasion shape behaviour. The lessons still apply. How could they not? Human psychology isn’t going anywhere. People are vulnerable to malign influence and easily cowed by groupthink and peer pressure. Once a falsehood takes hold, truth struggles to catch up and it’s then very hard to undo the damage.
To those who say, ‘It didn’t begin with 7 October — it began with Israel’s occupation of Gaza,’ I say: no. Just no. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Hamas and the PLO have rejected peace repeatedly. Bill Clinton said Yasser Arafat turned down “the best deal they were ever going to get”. And Israel is a tiny sliver of land amidst nations that were all once conquered and occupied by Arabs and Muslims.
No, this didn’t begin with occupation, it began with the evil that humans are capable of.
Israel is fighting for survival against Hamas, but this struggle reaches far beyond Israel. The West itself is at war — not only with radical Islamism, but for its own soul. We have lost confidence in our civilisation. We equivocate, apologise and avert our eyes. But this is not a time for cowardice, confusion and wilful stupidity. It’s a time to choose which side of history — and humanity — we are on, before it’s too late.
I am a Jewish ally and a Zionist. I believe the Jewish people have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. To deny that right is to side with annihilation.
And yet, I feel mute. I knew my instincts were right from the first moment, and I’m proud to have co-founded The October Declaration in the days after that heinous morning. But now I don’t know what else to do.
On 7 October there’s a vigil organised by my former colleagues at British Friends of Israel along with Our Fight — October 7: A Time to Speak — an evening of talks and remembrance to keep alive the stories of courage, loss, violence and survival. It’s where I should be, but I have another commitment.
I’m currently undertaking the Roman Catholic Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, and am committed to attending each week as I discern if this is my path. I won’t say more for now — it’s a private process — but choosing to be there on 7 October of all days is also a way to stand for something, not just against evil. It’s not enough to oppose destruction. We must choose creation. We can’t — for example — lament the churches converted to mosques if churches are empty. That emptiness is the truest symbol of what’s happening to the soul of the West. I’m standing for truth, my soul and the soul of our civilisation.
Today and tomorrow, I pray for everyone, but especially for Israel and for all our Jewish brothers and sisters.
Beautifully written. Yes, Oct 7 was the worst thing to happen in my lifetime; and I witnessed the Balkan wars of the 1990s first hand. Hamas‘s pogrom was evil of another kind.
I have written so much about it over at Café Américain mag, and especially the reaction to it (which you and Brandon and others have emphasized as well), a reaction which made the pogrom so much harder to process, so much more difficult to digest, even for an outsider. „The reaction to Oct 7 on University campuses and in the media was about torturing the victims - the Jews - with their own pain.“
I find it often difficult to believe in people, but you are among those who shine a light into the darkness.
Standing with you, Laura, on Team Israel. I would go to church but the recent appointment at the head of the C of E is symptomatic of why the churches are empty.