Why October 7 Is An Attack Against The Collective West – October 7 Was Part II Of 9/11

The October 7 massacre was an attack not just against Israel but against the collective West. Israel, the heart of the West's Judeo-Christian roots and values, is the last standing outpost of the collapsing liberal West, as much a state of mind as an actual physical location. To be clear, when talking about the "liberal West", I am referring to the concept of "liberal democracy" as understood by Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan and not the “progressive liberalism” that has nothing to do with classical liberalism and has more to do with a new totalitarian Marxist-inspired ideology.

In the wake of the Six Days War of 1967, Italian liberal politician Ugo La Malfa said: "The freedom of the West is defended under the walls of Jerusalem."[1] Indeed, this sentence is even truer today. The battle in Gaza is not just between Israel and Hamas, as what is at stake is not only the existence of Israel but of the whole collective West, of which Israel is part.

Image from October 7 and from 9/11

Hamas Is Not Interested In Palestine But In The Caliphate

Hamas is not fighting merely to create a Palestinian State (which the majority of Israelis would accept if the existence of Israel would not be threatened) but to build an "Islamist pole" that would defy the Western-led unipolar world. As explained by Egyptian author, poet and journalist Dr. Mouna Al-Hilmi, daughter of the renowned Egyptian feminist writer Nawal Al-Sa'dawi, Hamas is not interested in liberating the Palestinian homeland, because, ultimately, it does not recognize the idea of the nation state and regards Islam as the homeland. "Ever since it won the elections to the legislature [in 2006], the power of the terrorist Hamas has grown, and since it is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, it takes part in the [Brotherhood's] jihad to establish a global Islamic caliphate," Al-Hilmi wrote.[2]

A caliphate would be the Islamist pole that both Qatar (Muslim Brotherhood's principal patron) and Iran (the Axis of Resistance's patron) are sponsoring in the Muslim and Arab world through their proxies. The formation of this Islamist pole is being supported by other anti-liberal powers, such as the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Putin's Russia that want the shaping of a multipolar world, in which the liberal West (and their local allies) will be defeated.[3]

If Israel Falters, The Whole Liberal Collective West Will Be Wounded

October 7 was Part II of 9/11. Before the September 11 attacks, the West thought that “the end of history,” Francis Fukuyama's idea that predicted that liberal democracy and free markets would prevail as a permanent global order, would be achieved. Yet, American political thinker Charles Krauthammer spoke about the "unipolar moment," since he was not quite sure whether it would be permanent or not. According to anti-liberal Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, the "unipolar moment," which began in 1991 (with the collapse of the Soviet Union), ended in 2001. He maintained that this unipolar system began to erode with the 9/11 attacks by Islamic terrorists on the World Trade Center and with the rise to power of President Putin (in 2000).[4]

Meanwhile, since 9/11, progressive liberalism started to erode the West from within. Progressive liberalism, or woke culture, has been sponsored also by China and Qatar with the goal of bringing about the collapse of the collective West. Woke-ism is in fact one of the worst enemies of liberal democracy and it is for this reason that it became the best ally of other anti-liberal forces, such as Islamist groups. They have succeeded in adding anti-Zionism as part of a witch's brew of intersectional causes involving gender, racial, anti-capitalist and other radical issues. Even more worrying is that this toxic combination has now been mainstreamed in the West, in leftist-ruled cities and in elite liberal institutions.

On October 7, Hamas launched a long-prepared attack against Israel with the goal of defeating the strongest component of the weakening West. Like their allies in the West, the Islamists want to see permanent ferment and revolt until ultimate victory is achieved. If Israel falters, the whole liberal collective "West" (which is composed also by South Korea, Taiwan and Japan) will be deeply wounded. China will feel confident to invade Taiwan and occupy the South China Sea, North Korea will try to unify the peninsula from Baekdusan to Hallasan,[5] Russia will take over the whole of Ukraine and may use tactical nuclear weapons, Iran and Qatar will bring back the Muslim world to the 7th century by further radicalizing it. This is a battle launched by the opponents of the Western liberal dominance: Russia, China, the Islamist world (led by Qatar and Iran) and their fifth columnist allies embedded like ticks in Western society. "After all, this is a struggle between the multipolar world and the unipolar world," Dugin wrote, adding that the time for the final battle against the West has come.[6]

Time For The Collective West To Unite

The anti-liberal forces are organizing themselves and are uniting to defeat the collective West that still does not understand what is at stake. The conspiracy against the West is being waged from within and on the frontlines in Gaza and Lebanon. If the liberal West does not unite to defend its values and the truth its demise is doomed to happen. The struggle approaches its climax and the night approaches. Recently, Argentinian President Javier Milei said: "Truth has never gone down to defeat as a result of opposition, it has done so only when its friends are too weak to defend it."[7] Seemingly, liberalism will be defeated not because it was opposed, but because the West allowed itself to become too weak to defend its own liberty.

*Anna Mahjar-Barducci is a MEMRI Senior Research Fellow.