October 7 and the Ideology That Excuses Murder
October 7 and the Ideology That Excuses Murder
By Mario Duarte
Three years after October 7, I remain troubled by how much of the world has learned to excuse what should have horrified it. Hamas terrorists murdered innocent people, tore families apart, and dragged hostages into Gaza. We have since watched the victims put on trial in public opinion while their killers are given a political defense.
May the memory of those murdered be a blessing. Their right to live was never conditional on anyone’s approval of Israel.
During the 12-day war in 2025, I was back in Israel with Project DYNAMO, helping evacuate Americans and allies as we have every year since 2023, the only American rescue organization to do so in Israel and the region. That was when I had the somber, humbling, and heartbreaking opportunity to greet Mr. Yarden Bibas, whose wife, Shiri, and little boys, Ariel and Kfir, had been murdered in captivity. No words could undo what had been taken from him.
My heart broke for him, but also for society. The unforgivable murder of his wife and babies should have humbled the world into confronting the atrocities of Islamic terrorists. Instead, the hate-blinded left and Islamic extremism doubled down. What followed was, in my judgment, the most dehumanizing global information campaign in history: an effort to erase the victims’ humanity and turn their people’s defense into a crime.
What does it say about a society when the murder of children cannot break through its political hatred?
In 2017, while serving as Guatemala’s chief of strategic intelligence, I helped advance the decision to return Guatemala’s embassy to Jerusalem. President Jimmy Morales announced it that December, following President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Guatemala’s embassy returned in May 2018. I was honored to contribute to a decision that recognized a historical reality and stood by a friend.
The coordinated, sustained media attacks and diplomatic pressure against the United States and Guatemala carried a clear message: Israel and its friends had to be punished, somehow “taught a lesson.” In my opinion, that campaign helped an unholy alliance take shape between the global left, Islamic terrorists, and multinational bodies willing to indulge their hostility. October 7 became the most horrific expression of the ambition to terrorize Israel into submission.
In 2020, I publicly warned that Israel could face ideological campaigns extending to terrorist attacks. I take no satisfaction in recalling that warning. The consequences are measured in murdered people and destroyed families.
What holds this alliance together is neither religion nor patriotism. It is purely ideological. Secular leftists and Islamist terrorists need not agree on theology or how to govern. Their hostility toward Israel and America gives them common cause. The rights they claim to defend become expendable when Jews exercise them.
Israel represents an ideal its enemies cannot tolerate: a historically persecuted people reclaiming their homeland, governing themselves, and refusing to entrust their survival to those who have repeatedly sought their destruction. October 7 attacked that ideal through the murder and abduction of the people who lived it.
Documented employment and publishing relationships involving individuals implicated in terrorism demand institutional accountability. Employing or credentialing terrorists can give them a voice, access, legitimacy, and cover. A press affiliation must never become a terrorist’s shield, nor a humanitarian flag cover for kidnapping or murder.
In my judgment, Israel faces an ideological, extremist, globally corporatized enemy, sustained by terrorist violence, political activism, corporate media influence, and multinational pressure. The persecution of Jews has become acceptable to people who loudly profess their commitment to human rights.
Commemorating October 7 demands that we honor the dead, stand beside survivors, and confront the ideology that excuses their suffering. Americans cannot surrender an ally’s right to survive and assume our own freedom will remain secure.
Greeting Mr. Bibas brought me face to face with the human cost of the hatred I had spent years confronting. As an American and a Catholic, I believe honoring his wife and children requires us to defend the freedom and dignity their killers denied them. We cannot claim to stand on the right side of history while excusing their murder, or profess faith in God while abandoning those still facing the same hatred.
Mario Duarte is Guatemala’s former chief of strategic intelligence, a U.S. Army veteran, and President and CEO of Project DYNAMO.