It is now twelve months since Hamas terrorists perpetrated a huge atrocity against the people of Israel. The scale and the barbarity of this incursion is beyond the imagination of most civilised people.

The abhorrent nature of the Islamist extremist perpetrators is highlighted at the joy they expressed at the killing of innocent citizens in this appalling assault that included rape, beheadings and the senseless slaughter of children and even, indeed, babies. It serves to underline how evil are the beliefs of the Islamists.

Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East.

It has constantly had to defend itself from assaults from Syria. Iraq and most importantly Iran. Iran has served as the puppet master for aggression against the Jews emanating from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Now in this essay I will contend that the existential dilemma that Israel finds itself in arises from the confluence of two erroneous diabolical influences.

The first of these is probably the most obvious – it is the increasingly pervasive rise of militant Islamism as we have observed in such atrocities as the Charlie Hebdo massacre and then even more spectacularly in the assault on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. This left us in no doubt that fundamentalist Islamists were prepared to commit the grossest atrocities in support of their barbaric medieval beliefs.

In many fundamentalist Muslim communities there is an inherent sense of victimhood. To understand this we need to examine the history of Islam.

According to tradition Muhammad whilst living in Mecca around 610AD received a series of revelations purportedly from the Archangel Gabriel acting as an intermediary for Allah. These were subsequently recorded some considerable time after Muhammad’s death (leading to considerable speculation about their authenticity) in the Koran. Although Muhammad originally struggled to have an impact, eventually he consolidated a following of supporters and succeeded in uniting the Arab tribes. He then began a successful military campaign designed to evangelise the religion he had created.

Spurred on by the initial success of military expansionism under Muhammad, by the eleventh century Islam had expanded beyond its birthplace in the Arabian Peninsula to conquer North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and large parts of Asia Minor. Muhammad was succeeded by a series of Caliphs and the consolidated territories of Islam were referred to as the Caliphate.

Whilst this Islamic expansionism was going on, the Christian West was suffering under the so-called “Dark Ages”. Scientific, economic and cultural progress was being held back by fundamentalist Christian ideals. During this period, the Arabs, on the other hand, flourished. Arabian science, art and culture continued to progress whilst the Christians languished. What’s more the Arabs at this time preserved the classical knowledge acquired by the Greeks and others when it was spurned by the Christian West. This was indeed the Islamic Golden Age.

Today, Islam is the predominant religion in the Middle East, in sub-Saharan Sahel, in the Horn of Africa and northern Africa, and in some parts of Asia. Large communities of Muslims are also found in China, the Balkans, and Russia. Other parts of the world host large Muslim immigrant communities; in Western Europe, for instance, Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity, where it represents 6% of the total population.

The problem that we are now facing from militant Islam is that most of the Muslim countries are relatively poor and suffer depressed standards of living. Muslims from such areas look back at the Islamic Golden Age and wonder what has changed that has seen their status diminish so much on the international scene. The fundamentalists point to the watering down of the observance of the faith. They maintain that if the Islamic faith could only be restored to the strict observance practiced in Muhammad’s day then surely their status in the world would be resurrected.

Now this is surely one of the biggest delusions ever suffered by mankind! It seems to me almost like suggesting to the Italians that if they only went back to wearing togas and speaking Latin they could restore the Roman Empire! It is in fact a medieval solution to a modern day problem.

The lot of those who suffer economic deprivation in Muslim communities will never be advanced by resorting to medieval thinking. What’s more their commitment to devoting inordinate resources to revenge and terrorism all detract from advancing their economic welfare.

(In this respect it is instructive to look at Palestine in comparison to its neighbor, Israel. Israel is a modern democratic prosperous society. The Palestinian state, that has devoted its resources to promoting fundamentalist Islam, is poor, undemocratic and struggling under the burden of Hamas.)

But compounding the problem is a pervasive sense of victimhood. There is a ubiquitous ethos that the poverty of such Islamic communities has been a deliberate ploy of the West to shame, humiliate and deprive Muslims from their rightful benefits. Polling by the US based Pew Centre in 2006 of Muslim countries found that s solid majority believed that the West was fundamentally hostile to Muslims with some countries registering 70% or more supporting such a view. What’s more recent polling shows the numbers increasing particularly among younger people.

(There is a depressing similarity between the victimhood experienced by fundamentalist Islamists and some cohorts of Australia’s indigenous activists.)

Now overlaying this sense of humiliation and deprivation are two other significant factors, viz:

• The internal schism within Islam, and
• The dangerous idea of martyrdom.

Because of the complex and checquered history of Islam there has evolved many different schools. However the main division is that between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims. This division was over who had the right to assume leadership over Muslims after the death of Muhammad. Because Muhammad had made it clear that he was the last of all the prophets (a good way to perpetuate your fame in perpetuity!) the new leader could not have that status but was instead nominated as the Caliph. There are various interpretations of what the term “Caliph” means but it is mostly accepted that, in general terms, the Caliph is Allah’s worldly representative.

The Sunni branch of Islam stipulates that, as a head of state, a Caliph should be elected by Muslims or their representatives Followers of Shia Islam however, believe a Caliph should be an Imam chosen from direct descendants of Muhammad.

This schism which developed in the decades following the death of Muhammad is in many ways more dysfunctional than the antagonism between Islam and the West and has resulted in many more deaths and atrocities. In this respect, Muslims themselves have been the greatest victims of the dysfunction in their religious beliefs. It seems to me that whilst this prevails they have little chance of improving their collective lot.

In previous essays I have titled the notions of martyrdom that underpin the motives of the jihadists as a dangerous idea. If one believes that sacrificing yourself in promoting the cause of Allah leads to automatic entry to paradise. then many will be tempted to commit horrific acts without concern for their own physical welfare. Such people are fearless, believing that there is little use in pursuing well-being in their current existence but relying on their perverted ideas about faith to be rewarded in the afterlife. As a result they present a significant challenge to the majority of people who believe there is merit in trying to live out their lives minimising their pain and suffering and maximising their opportunities for material progress.

Analyses of the terrorist events occurring in recent time in Europe indicate that the perpetrators had no intention of surviving. This fanatical fatalism seems also to be shared by the fundamentalist fighters in the Middle East. During the siege of Kobane the defenders remarked on the conspicuous daring of the ISIS attackers who in their zeal to win the city seemed to almost casually to expose themselves to danger. (Mind you some recent reports suggest that the courage of the ISIS fighters is also bolstered by the widespread use of drugs.) Nevertheless if you are convinced of your ticket to paradise from your terrorist activities, you certainly become a formidable foe!

Now the problem of militant Islamism is underpinned by demographic as well as cultural factors. As we saw earlier, many Muslim communities are characterised by their relative poverty compared to most Western societies, which is the cause of some considerable resentment. Consequently they are characterised by high levels of unemployment. As well fertility levels in these communities are high resulting in a much younger demographic than is found in typical Western communities. Consequently these communities (both in their homelands and in immigrant communities) are characterised by the fact that there are many young men who are living meaningless lives, resentful, misogynistic and sexually repressed.

For these young men the opportunity to become a Jihadist meets many of their needs. It provides excitement, a sense of purpose and sexual opportunities missing from their traditional communities.

It is a cause for great concern that those now fleeing the Middle East for Europe are predominantly such young men. Whilst it is in many ways admirable that Europe has opened its humanitarian arms so generously, one can’t help but feel concerned for the impact these dysfunctional young men will have on European society. This foolish generosity is now having undesirable impacts on European culture.

Unfortunately via these generous opportunities that the West has provided, it has put its own underlying values at risk. The invasion of Europe by fundamentalists Islamists has severely compromised traditional cultures in Western Europe.

But in the Middle East, Israel has come under attack by these militants. After a decade or two of uneasy peace, Hamas launched its barbaric attack on Israel unleashing the atrocities that I described at the beginning of this essay.

The other diabolical, erroneous belief that is impinging on Israel’s fight for survival is the increasing sense of illegitimacy that is overcoming Western democracies. For decades now the West has been enduring escalating self-doubt. In the 1960’s there was a surfeit of books proclaiming the triumph of the West and celebrating the achievements of the West. Subsequently this has been gradually eroded by the political left. They have recast Western history to portray Western societies as racist, exploitative colonisers, champions of slavery, bastions of white privilege and so on. The left’s so-called march through the institutions has ensured that these erroneous ideas are well ensconced in our government bureaucracies, our schools and universities and other major institutions.

The left’s counter to Western progress has been to elevate identity politics with all its attendant layers of victimhood and the bowing to minorities at the expense of the majority. They have attempted to reinterpret our history exaggerating all the human failures of our ancestors and discounting all their triumphs.

In pursuing identity politics, paradoxically, we as Australians have lost our identity! We are no longer sure who we are and what we stand for. We have allowed our sense of nationhood and patriotism to be dissipated. Celebrating Australia Day is no longer approved of. When the Prime Minister stands at the podium to speak on national issues behind him are usually three flags, not the one Australian flag. Routinely we have statues of Captain Cook, the European discoverer of Australia’s east coast, being defiled as though instead of being the brave, decent sea captain, scientist and explorer that he certainly was, he was a racist exploitative coloniser, which he certainly wasn’t. And on too many occasions we have Aunty Nancy or Uncle Fred welcoming us to country as though we weren’t real Australians.

All these are symptoms of a great malaise that I suspect is near fatal for our liberal democracy.

Now I think it is edifying if we took a step back and compared ourselves with Israel.

Unlike Australia, whose last existential threat expired more than seventy years ago, Israel, established in 1948, has been continuously under threat from its Muslim (mainly Shi’ite) neighbours. It would seem to me that this continual effort to secure its ongoing existence provides Israelis with a more heightened sense of value for their long defended democracy than it does for other Western democracies.

It is easy to oversimplify Israel’s existential threat as being an ongoing struggle between fundamentalist Islamic regimes and the Jewish state. We could easily downplay this conflict, as significant enough as it is, as being a clash based on historical religious differences. But that ignores a far more significant issue. Whilst Israel might be the immediate target of these fundamentalist Islamic, theocratic states we should also acknowledge they are anti-Western and anti-democratic. Their underlying goal is to convert the world to Islam and establish an international caliphate.

So to be perfectly frank I don’t think Israel is only fighting to preserve Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, but it is fighting to preserve democracy and Western values. We should be grateful for Israel’s courage and tenacity in opposing fundamentalist Islam. What then can we make of the Albanese governments response to the conflict in the Middle East?

I believe Australia’s welfare is advanced by unequivocally aligning with Israel. This presents great difficulty for the Prime Minister who even from his student days supported a pro-Palestine, anti- Israel stance. Supporting Israel is, as I have explained, pro-democracy and pro-Western values.

Albanese and his Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, are equivocal in their support of Israel. They can’t bring themselves to condemn anti-Semitism without at the same time condemning Islamophobia. Yet whilst anti-Semitism is now rampant in Australia they fail to provide any evidence that Islamophobia constitutes a real problem.

And then, of course, we are concerned that the Labor government isn’t so interested in advancing Australia’s welfare but shoring up support in seats with sizable Muslim populations.

Making a call on the situation in the Middle East shouldn’t be such a dilemma if you objectively examine the facts. There was a ceasefire in place between Hamas and Israel up until October 7 last year when Hamas, with the urging of Iran, launched its barbarous attack. Israel logically and legitimately had to defend itself. I am always reluctant to use the epithets “good” and “bad” but I can’t see how anyone logically can deny there was a “bad” actor in the ensuing conflict – and it is quite obvious that it wasn’t Israel.

Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong have consistently called for a ceasefire and promoted the so-called “two state” solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Surely they know a ceasefire merely enables Iran to reinforce and re-arm the Hamas militants thus prolonging the struggle. And how is it possible to have a two state solution that in anyway involves Hamas whose sole purpose is to eliminate Israel from the map? The only viable way for this ideal to be achieved is if Hamas has no further influence in Palestine. Seemingly the only country capable of achieving this outcome is Israel.

So going back to my original proposition, we now have a democratic Israel besieged by an anti-Semitic and anti-Western radical Islamist force paradoxically supported by left wing activists that have come to hate the West, decry its achievements and magnify the historic wrongs that they conjure up to demean Western civilisation.

Israel is not only fighting for its own existence, it is fighting for the ideals of Western democracy. In this sense Israel is fighting for those of us that value our Western heritage. Unfortunately that does not seem to include the Albanese government.

As Bob Hawke once said, “If the bell tolls for Israel, it won’t just toll for Israel, it will toll for all mankind.”