Imagine if a handsome British man fell out of the sky and could defeat anyone in a debate defending Israel, while making it look as simple as making a cup of tea.
For many Jews, that reality is Douglas Murray, who only became well known to them after the Hamas attacks of October 7, when he began appearing on news shows, calling out Jew-haters or those who held Israel to a double-standard.
On Sunday night, September 29, Murray sold out The Beacon Theater, during the Manhattan leg of his nation-wide tour. This crowd of mostly Jews gave him standing ovations and cheered for many of his comments. The theater on the Upper West Side usually hosts major bands and comedians, but in terms of a speaker on behalf of Israel, Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire, would likely be the only other person in the world who could sell it out. The only other name that comes to mind is tech and marketing guru Hillel Fuld, who has built a huge following online defending Israel and may also be able to do so.
Many Jews recognize that for all its military power, Israel’s official ambassadors by in large have not been the most eloquent of people who could make great arguments in English.
Murray, who is not Jewish, has become known as a fearless and masterful debater who has a penchant for slicing through nonsense and leaving oratory opponents sitting in a pound of their own flesh.
A Skilled Debater
Murray went to Isreal to see firsthand what had taken place, and on camera in a segment for “Piers Morgan Uncensored” was seen ducking as a rocket from Gaza was fired overhead.
He debated Cenk Uyghur of The Young Turks on another episode of the same show about nine months ago, and it was clearly not a fair match. Looking like a child who climbs on a chair and stumbles reaching for a glass on a high cabinet, Uyghur was humiliated by Murray, who made it clear that Hamas had an opportunity to build prosperity and instead built terror tunnels to wage war and didn’t care about its own people.
Uygur, like many, leveled false claims of genocide against Israel and made the absurd claim that bombs dropped by Israel was terrorism, just as Hamas’s attacks on October 7 was.
“You clearly know nothing about this particular conflict,” Murray said to Uygur, adding that no statistics supported genocide.
“If you put up a poster to a missing dog in any western city, that poster stays up,” Murray continued. “In city after city in America, posters of abducted Jewish children… were put up and were ripped down by people who have been indoctrinated into hate of Jews. Nobody would take down the poster of a missing dog but from Dublin to Berkely, [but] they ripped down posters of abducted Jewish children.”
Uygur, exposed, could muster little more than telling Murray to shut up. Murray told him: “You are so out of date; you should really leave your bedroom.”
The video got 2.3 million views.
In these and other debates and interviews, Murray has far surpassed what any official Israeli spokesperson could have ever hoped to accomplish. As in the debate against Uygur, he does not allow himself to be framed as one insensitive to the plight of Palestinian civilians who have been killed, but rather says he wished it would not happen and has only taken place due to Hamas, which wanted international support as it had no hope to defeat Israel militarily.
Clips of Carnage
At The Beacon Theater, Oxford University graduate and best-selling author warned that some of the slides he would show were upsetting. They included video clips of what he saw in the kibbutzim. Blood was visible on the floor and the ceilings of some of the rooms he was in. Then he saw a shelter where 11 of 16 Thai workers were killed and five were taken hostage. He remarked that there was a smell of death. He then showed clips from the remnants of the Nova Music Festival. He noted that there were murders at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, London, but he was “always appalled by the way in which the world seemed to have so much less pity for these young Israelis just gunned down, massacred where they were dancing.” Men went through the burnt cars to make sure there were no human remains in them.
Murray also said that in on Oct. 7, Israeli officer told him, in an effort to try to prevent child hostages being snuck away when civilians were ushered into safer area, in Hebrew soldiers called out, “If you are a child and speak Hebrew and understand this: jump!”
Murray said he’s been troubled by college protestors who “think they’re on the right side of history when they chase Jewish students across campus saying ‘go back to Poland.’”
Murray has also done impressive interviews on Sky News Australia and has written powerful articles in the New York Post showing that there was no moral equivalence between terrorists deliberately targeting civilians and an army waging a war. He received many calls praising him.
“My first question was, ‘How did you get my number?’” Murray recalled to the crowd. “Then I remembered, I’d given it to someone in Isreal…To give it to one is to give it to all.”
In what is known as the Munk debates, Murray and attorney Natasha Hausdorff argued the affirmative and, according to many, defeated former MNBC host Medhi Hassan and Haaretz’s Gideon Levy on the question: “Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?”
Influenced by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Hausdorff said the blood libels of the Middle Ages latched on to eugenics in the time of World War II – and added that Sacks predicted that international courts would single out Israel above all others and the new mechanism would be false claims of apartheid, colonialism and genocide. Murray noted that when American senators sent question to the International Criminal Court, the response of the ICC was that such questions could be a war crime.
Murray noted that America and Israel did not sign up for the international courts, knowing they would be corrupt. He said the courts are “bogus institutions” and “the enemy of democracy.”
He then said that he was greatly influenced by Rabbi Sacks.
“He was one of a small number of people who made a huge impact on me,” Murray said. “He was a wonderful man filled with insight. There were many things he taught me. I miss him so much. I used to go see him when I was thinking of a book. He would always spare time. I always find at least half of the idea from the book came from half an hour with Rabbi Sacks. Of course, he was brilliant on the subject of antisemitism. He was the one who made it clearest that Jews were hated for having a religion and then, when you couldn’t hate people for having a religion, they were hated for having a race, and when you couldn’t hate people for having a race, they were hated for having a state. He was the one who said about it being a shape-shifting virus…”
Murray said he was also influenced by Jewish writer Vasily Grossman’s novel based on true things he saw. He said that Grossman had a very telling line: “Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, I will tell you what you’re guilty of.”
But now there is twist; American college students have been taught that America is terrible.
The World Is Going to Move Past the 7th
Haussdorff sat with Murray on stage Sunday night, called him a hero and discussed different topics. Murray said the second Intifada and the attacks of 9/11 made a large impression on him.
He said people ask him if he is afraid to lose friends by telling his real opinion.
“Lose them,” he said.
Murray said he recalled a Cambridge professor saying of 9/11 that “America had it coming” and that those who were against American were also against England and against Israel.
Of Hezbollah, he said it should not have taken so long to take out those who killed more than 420 American Marines in 1983.
“My view is the American administration should send a very big thank you to Jerusalem,” he said.
A Journalist Who Takes on Journalists
While Murray in known for speaking out against mass illegal immigration and the alarming deaths from fentanyl use, he’s become most famous for calling out what he believes to be unfair criticism of Israel.
He said author and journalist Bari Weiss told him the world would move past the 7th and he said the international media has “muddied the waters” and reported in a manner that is biased against Israel.
“I sent my condolences to BBC and Sky News,” Murray said.
He said it was absurd that the BBC claimed Hezbollah was provoked into fire missiles at Israel.
He added that the Al-Shifa Hospital was known to be a terrorist hub and a BBC reporter, shown huge amounts of grenades and other weapons at the hospital, said “it’s not impossible” that the weapons belonged to the security team.
Murray said he is encouraged by videos of people in Syria and Lebanon cheering the death of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
“It’s entirely possible Benjamin Netanyahu will be more popular in Tehran than in Tel Aviv,” he said.
Iran
Iran is the regional problem that people have been trying to ignore for years, Murray said, adding that nobody had heard of a Houthi until a few months ago.
“All of this is being done by Iran,” he said. “It is bewildering what Iran has been allowed to get away with.”
He said Iranians attempted to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as well as a national security advisor, and there is information of a team having been sent to try to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
“Everyone else in the region apart from Qatar, which is a disgusting little slave state…, has the opportunity to boom, in the good sense you might say,” he said.
He said it is absurd that some American officials say they are waiting for Iran to become more moderate which is like waiting for a regime that instead of wanting to kill all of the Jews, only wants to kill some of the Jews.
The Nature of War
Murray said the idea that most wars end around the negotiating table is wrong.
“Wars end because one side wins and one side loses,” he said. “The side that’s won needs to know it’s won and the side that’s lost really needs to know it lost. Imperial Japan only came to sign the end of the war because they had lost completely and this country made sure of that and that’s how it should be.”
Murray said Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian government need to lose and lose big, and Israel needs to assert its deterrence.
He said Gaza was the opportunity for a Palestinian state and instead in 18 years they produced a generation of sociopaths teaching martyrdom.
Murray said the Hamas attackers had been indoctrinated against Jews since they were young, and to move forward eventually the educational system there must change.
American Universities – And A Weak Generation?
Murray said the colleges are corrupt and he watched with horror what took place with protests at Columbia, with some on campus supporting Hamas. Hausdorff said teaching at NYU in 2018, she could see professors were anti-Israel. Murray noted that The Spectator, the Columbia University newspaper, has verbatim quotes from students at the encampments. One said he learned about the rich history of protest and wanted to be at the center of it when it started up again. He said it was interesting to read the student was happy with the milk provisions, including that soy milk was available.
Murray said that a poll showed a small majority of Americans ages 18 – 40 would fight in the army to defend America, but the number was lower in England.
“For the average Brit or American, the idea we’re going to be invaded seems just impossible, but in Isreal, it happened and can happen again. The same thing was going on in Israel for the young generation. Are they weak? Have they become soft? Do they just want to spend all their time on Instagram and TikTok? Do they just want to party in Tel Aviv? They’ve answered it. The time of trial came. They were weighed in the balance. They were found to be magnificent.”
Is There Reason for Optimism?
Murray noted that he has been pessimistic in seeing the spread of terrorism and the normalization of antisemitism, as well as a younger generation not thinking critically and being susceptible to misinformation. But he said in recent days there was reason to look at the brighter side of things.
“There’s been a lot of bad news in the last year,” Murray said. “There’s been a lot of depression and solitude that has come to many people…I think we can say, as we approach the first anniversary of October 7, that victory is close, and when it comes, it will mean not just the victory of the Israelis, but it will be the victory for America and we are getting there. The young men and women of the IDF are fighting and they are winning, and they are going to win.”
Thousands cheered for Murray and outside were talking about how his moral clarity has been impressive since October 7, while some wondered whether he could train people to be like him.
Beth Simon of Manhattan said he is part of a rare breed. “He’s not afraid to speak up, no matter what,” Simon said.
