As the sun crosses the sky that was defaced by rockets and paragliders on October 7, it is worth reflecting upon the lessons of the last two disturbing years. They boil down to a single truth: Israel has emerged stronger than it had ever imagined, but the West has been exposed as woefully weak. Indeed, for us it may already be too late.
Call me pessimistic, but they say that you only find out who you are when you’re put to the test. If that is the case, then what is the true character of the Jewish state?
On the day of the atrocities itself, when nobody knew whether Hezbollah and Iran were about to join the fray, ordinary Israelis grabbed whatever weapons they could find and threw themselves into the defence of their neighbours.
This week, on The Brink, a podcast I present with former Parachute Regiment officer Andrew Fox, we interviewed Yoav Gallant, the Israeli minister of defence who was in office on October 7 and for the first year of the war.
“A lot of things are more important than your life: your people, your nation, your country, your family and your unit,” he said. “In those dramatic days [after October 7], you saw the unity, the willingness to sacrifice of Israeli society. People walked empty-handed into the fire.”
Reliving the experience, he added: “You woke up in the morning, you drunk coffee, or you went to play sport at six o’clock, and by six thirty, you heard the news. By seven thirty, these people, reservists and civilians, were on the battlefield fighting for their lives and others’ lives.”
Which other country in the West thinks like that? This morning, I looked back at a message I received from an old friend in Jerusalem just a few days after the pogroms. I had asked how she was bearing up.
“We are fine, thank God,” she replied. “Bit busy. Work, home schooling and arming ourselves, alongside our neighbours, in case we have to defend ourselves.”
She added: “The kids are helping people who survived and are nearby, or women whose husbands have been called up. At night, it’s hard to sleep because I have nothing to distract my mind from going back to the horrific events that started it all. But we are an adaptable lot.”
Fast-forward to the present, and what has this “adaptable lot” achieved? Hezbollah, which for years was Israel’s most fearsome foe, has been defeated. Iran has been humiliated. Hamas is on its uppers, with layer upon layer of its leadership lying dead in the rubble.
Militarily, Israel has probably not been in such a powerful position since 1967. Culturally, it is a nation that understands how to hold a strong sense of peoplehood within the norms and freedoms of a secular democracy.
Economically, it is robust. Its birth rate is one of the highest in the developed world. Its crime rate is remarkably low. Its people are unified and doughty. OK, so the politics and international reputation aren’t so great, but an election will take place within the year. With a fair wind, this could be Israel’s century.
The same cannot be said of the West. After the Second World War, the vow taken by the civilised world could be summed up in two words: never again. But the meaning of this pledge was evidently profoundly different for Jews and others in the democracies.
In Britain and across Europe, a consensus developed that the nation-state was the source of fascism and had to be downplayed or dismantled. For Jews, however, “never again” meant that the nation-state was crucial and had to be defended.
From this single fork in the road, our fates developed differently. While Israel advanced along the path of strength and confidence, meeting challenge after challenge with resilience, the West slipped down the route of self-undoing.
No longer trusting our governments, we set up governments to govern our governments. No longer trusting our citizens to care for the elderly, have more babies, manage their own mental health, train as doctors or work in low-paid jobs, we opened our borders to tens of millions of outsiders.
No longer trusting our servicemen, we wrecked our armed forces. No longer trusting our morality, we tried to legislate our way to being just societies and began policing thought crimes.
No longer trusting our moderate patriotism, we taught our children a damning version of our history and derided our own flag as “racist”. No longer trusting our national religion and traditions, we installed a 55-foot helter-skelter in the nave of Norwich cathedral.
Only now are we waking up to what we have done to ourselves, or what the elites have done to us.
All over the West, this decline could be no clearer than it is today. At universities in Britain, across the Continent and in America, students marked the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust by chanting the slogans of the jihadi butchers.
Fresh from having recognised a Palestinian state regardless of the hostages, Sir Keir Starmer was reduced to begging the Gaza mobs not to march, rather than demanding they stay at home or else. This was emblematic of the country’s abject failure to face down the sectarian forces that are tearing us apart.
In New York, where Jews are targeted more than any other group, the likely next mayor, the socialist Zohran Mamdani, has said that he entered politics because of the Palestinian issue. Unsurprisingly, he is seen as anti-Semitic by more than half of Jewish voters in the city, according to a July poll.
On the Continent, the approach to October 7 saw a spike in Israelophobic marches. In Barcelona, mobs have attacked shops in the name of Gaza. In Amsterdam, hundreds of thousands paraded in red, demanding that the Netherlands turns more viciously on Israel.
Do these people realise that Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is deeply embedded in the West, striving to subvert our societies from within? Do they not realise they are embracing their enemies? Do they care?
Meanwhile, our economies are tanking, levels of immigration remain stubbornly high, integration is appalling, welfare bills are spiralling, taxes are at historic highs, defence is a joke and the worst offence of all seems to be pointing it out. Where is all this leading?
With a Gaza ceasefire in the air, Israel’s war may soon be over. The West, by contrast, hasn’t even started to acknowledge the need to fight one. People think that the Jewish state is the one in trouble. In truth, it is in far better shape than us.
‘Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself’, by Jake Wallis Simons, is out now
Jake Wallace Simons - Telegraph Media Group