Book review – Awakening to Radical Islamist Evil

In my review of If It Takes a Thousand Years: From Al-Qaeda to Hamas, How the Jihadists Think & How to Defeat Them, I noted that former US Army Captain Jesse Petrilla I someone who truly understands how terrorists think.

Another person who understands that is Dr. Monty Naom Penkower, Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History at the Machon Lander Graduate School of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

In Awakening to Radical Islamist Evil: The Hamas War Against Israel and The Jews (Touro University Press), he provides a daily account of the war that started with the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

In the book,  he focuses on the first six months of that war and details in brutal depth the trauma that the attack and the required war have brought to our nation.

Some men, you just can’t reach – and one of them is former United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. As he was forcing a one-sided cease-fire on Israel, Penkower perceptively asks if Blinken heard any Palestinian leader saying they were willing to live in peace with a Jewish state.

Even deep into the fighting, when the extent of the Hamas atrocities of October 7 was known, officials of the Fatah party, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, continued to refer to the slaughter as the heroic operation. A point Blinken and everyone in the State Department were oblivious to.

This is a tough yet required book, with death and carnage on every page. One can read a few pages at a time and then must take a break. Here, Penkower captures the trauma that Israelis are going through. Sadly, this continues after an agonizing 18 months.

For those who want to truly understand the origins of the October 7 catastrophe, Penkower is one who genuinely get it, as one can read in this excellent book.