On November 20, President Donald Trump hosted 17 of the 20 Israeli hostages recently released by Hamas at the White House. He campaigned on promises to end the war in Palestine and bring the hostages home, and he has worked tirelessly to do so. The Israel-Palestine conflict has splintered the world, but there should never have been controversy about rescuing the hostages abducted by terrorists on October 7, 2023. Yet there was.
Death Cults vs Life
It has been a strange phenomenon to watch haters of Israel praise the terrorist actions of October 7, in which mostly civilians (many attending a concert) were raped, murdered, or abducted in a premeditated raid. This atrocious campaign was promptly justified by far-left agitators whose callousness included US university professors claiming that Israel’s occupation of Gaza merited the rape of innocent civilians.
In his 2025 book, On Democracies and Death Cults, journalist Douglas Murray analyzed the October 7 attacks and the world’s macabre response, noting the appalling lack of compassion for these hostages and other victims immediately following the Palestinian raid:
“Yet even this attack on the weakest possible target – young people dancing at a music festival – was something that seemed not to get the world’s sympathies. Within hours of the news getting out, journalists and social media accounts around the world suggested that the young people at the Nova festival were in some way legitimate targets. They were said to have been dancing in the proximity of a ‘concentration camp.’ Or they were said to be citizens of an ‘apartheid’ or ‘racist’ state. All these claims, and more, were not just inaccurate but also demonstrably untrue.” [p. 9]
President Trump's November 20 meeting marked his third recognition of freed hostages. The 17 are the last known to be alive, while the bodies of three remaining deceased hostages have yet to be recovered. Israel traded nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the White House visitors, itself a display of the imbalance between what Murray calls a death cult and the celebration of life by Israel and Western societies.
Hostages Honored at White House
At the hostage reception, President Trump declared: “You’re not a hostage anymore, today you’re heroes…. We love you all, and our country loves you all. You’re amazing people." Singling out Matan Angrest, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier subjected to particular brutality, the president noted: "But Matan never broke, and today he's a living testimony to the toughness, heart, and faith of the Jewish people. Great knowing you, you're a great inspiration to everybody, whether you're Jewish or not."
Both Democrats and Republicans celebrated the liberation of the hostages at the White House event. It used to be that even opponents would agree that civilians should not be raped and murdered as part of a cause – the Geneva Convention embraced such principles. Yet these fundamental humanitarian values have come under fire in recent years.
The murder of Charlie Kirk exposed a cult of hate that declared he deserved to die for his words. This showed little insight: By that standard, many would say those saying so deserved to be killed for their words. Where are the boundaries that distinguish civilized from barbaric societies in such proclamations?
The political movement that declared climate change the most pressing existential threat to the planet quickly devolved into Molotov-cocktail-flinging Tesla vandals over Elon Musk’s politics. Concern over the planet was flung to the wind as soon as an opportunity to vent rage and have an excuse to commit violence against others was available. Ditto with George Floyd and rampant violence and destruction in American cities.
Dystopia vs Utopia
Aldous Huxley famously summarized this human frailty:
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
In the name of justice, Democratic congresspeople urged military personnel to commit treason against the President. Hateful speech calling for imminent, actual violence and assassinations has become commonplace – in the name of opposing so-called “hate speech” that does not call for violence.
This crowd does not want to give Donald Trump credit for negotiating peace to end wars – they push for genocide “from the river to the sea.” They do not celebrate the hostages visiting the US Capitol, seeing their release not as a victory for life but a loss for their hateful cause. The same day as the president praised the hostages, protesters outside a New York synagogue reportedly chanted “Death to the IDF” and “Resistance is Glorious.”
Once Elon left the Trump administration, the attacks on Tesla vanished as Antifa hoodlums and their criminal cadre sought new targets. Wishing death on a political opponent’s children was forgiven in Virginia’s race for attorney general, while Bernie Sanders endorses a candidate with a Nazi death’s head tattoo. The far left has become a hateful death cult. Donald Trump’s celebration of life by inviting hostages to the White House represents the only answer to such darkness.
Conquering Darkness With Light
As Murray concluded in his study of the October 7 attacks:
“All my adult life I had heard the taunt of the jihadists. ‘We love death more than you love life.’ … And it had always seemed to me not just a necrophiliac utterance but one that appeared almost impossible to counter. How could anyone overcome a movement – a people – who welcomed death, who gloried in death, who worshiped death?...
Yet this year I saw an answer to it…. ‘Choose life’ is one of the most important commandments of the Jewish people. It is also one of the fundamental values of the West. They, and all of us, can win in spite of the enemy loving death. Because there is nothing wrong with loving life so much. It is the basis on which civilization can win.” [pp. 196-7]
At the White House reception, twin hostages Gali and Ziv Berman gifted a parchment inscribed with texts from the Torah, called a mezuzah, to the president as a sacred reminder of survival. The mezuzah was removed from the door of Gali’s room in his family’s home at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where it has “miraculously survived” the Hamas terrorist attacks. Danny Martin, father of recently released hostage Omri Miran, thanked the American people who worked to bring his daughter and the other hostages home, reminding attendees that “In less than a month, we will be celebrating Hanukkah – the Festival of Lights – thank you very much for all these lights you have lit for us.”
The world cannot over-celebrate the release of Israel’s hostages. The White House event acknowledges that the love of life and what is good surmounts death cults, terrorists, malicious criminals, and hatred itself. May the ceasefire in Israel endure, and the light of love and peace prevail over those who embrace hatred and violence.
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