In early September 2025, as part of a delegation organized by the Europe-Israel Press Association (EIPA), I traveled to Israel with a group of European and American journalists. The first destination in our schedule was the Nir Oz kibbutz on the Gaza border. Hamas killed or abducted one-quarter of Nir Oz’s residents and set ablaze many homes and farms. A large part of the population still has not returned.
The human tragedy of what happened there was not the only thing that struck me, but the irony that the very people murdered or kidnapped in Nir Oz were, in many cases, lifelong left-wing, liberal, and pro-Palestinian activists—yet much of the Western left has refused to stand with them, choosing instead to march in solidarity with the reactionary forces that carried out the massacre.
Kibbutzim represent the only successful model of socialism—perhaps precisely because they are voluntary communities. People join not out of compulsion but out of idealism, and they are free to leave if they choose. Nir Oz embodied that tradition.
Kibbutzim represent the only successful model of socialism—perhaps precisely because they are voluntary communities.
Irit Lahav, one of the few survivors who has come back after the Hamas attack, greeted us. She and a few others are rebuilding the kibbutz. On the day of the attack, she managed to get in the safe room shelter with her daughter. The safe room shelters were built to protect the residents from rocket attacks. The doors did not have locks so that others seeking protection from rockets could enter, too.
On October 7, 2023, Irit and her daughter managed to improvise and secure the heavy metal door, which saved them from Hamas entering. They experienced sheer terror, thinking that any minute Hamas might break through. Although Irit and her daughter survived, many of their friends, neighbors, and the children of their friends did not. Yet she radiates no hatred. She is kind, soft-spoken.
For anyone raised on the Western media stereotype of a “Zionist” as a right-wing settler-colonialist, meeting Irit may be a shock. She and her neighbors are as left-wing and liberal as they come. A third-generation member of Nir Oz, she chose to live there not to seize Palestinian land but to live alongside Palestinians, become their friends, and find ways to coexist. She has personally driven Gazans needing medical care to Israeli hospitals and created jobs for Gazans. Jewish by birth, she practices Buddhism and has even met the Dalai Lama.
Despite losing friends and neighbors in the October 7 massacre, Irit says she still feels no hatred toward the attackers and does not want any Palestinians killed or hurt. In her own words, “I don’t hate them, but I am disappointed.”
She simply cannot understand how those she helped could commit such atrocities, and why parts of the Western left and liberal circles support those who committed the massacre.
“I don’t hate them, but I am disappointed.”
She asks: “The attack on our kibbutz and the slaughter of my friends and neighbors—from babies to the elderly—happened on October 7. Yet the demonstrations in Europe supporting this massacre started on October 8th. Israel’s assault on Gaza, however, started three weeks later. How could those who call themselves ‘progressive’ and ‘forward-thinking’ not condemn this brutal massacre? Are we not human? Did we not want peace and coexistence? Why did our children have to suffer this?”
When Irit showed us the burned-out dining hall, I noticed a poster on the communal notice board. Although written in Hebrew, the date was clear for me: October 7, 2023. It was a call for a protest gathering against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government scheduled for that tragic day—and it was still pinned to the notice board. Many other victims of Nir Oz, such as Oded Lifshitz, the 80-year-old journalist and peace activist whom Hamas abducted and killed, had long campaigned for Palestinian rights. The Bibas infants and their mother, whom terrorists kidnapped and murdered, were also from this kibbutz.
Political and moral boundaries in this conflict are more confused than the simplified narratives the mainstream media and the Western activist class present. Most of the Israelis attacked on October 7 were working for peace and coexistence with the Palestinians. This reality raises a serious question for Western public opinion: Does the Western left’s blind support for an extremist Islamist movement, without understanding the facts on the ground, really help peace or a ceasefire?
Many residents of kibbutzim like Nir Oz lived by the very values they preached—collective ownership, equality, fraternity, peace, co-existence. Yet the Western activist class shows a striking double standard: proclaiming social justice and human rights but not living by those principles themselves and turning a blind eye to the suffering of their own comrades.
The Western activist class shows a striking double standard: proclaiming social justice and human rights but not living by those principles themselves.
Just as they remained silent over the summary mass executions of mostly left-wing political prisoners in Iran in 1988, today they side with far-right extremist Islamists instead of defending the victims of a terrorist attack. They align themselves with Islamists who would first and foremost suppress and kill these same “champagne socialists” in the West—the proverbial “turkeys voting for Christmas.”
History has shown that such blind choices and unstable alliances place the Western left on the wrong side of history—a position where, instead of supporting universal human values and confronting reactionary extremism, it effectively serves the darkest forces. This unholy alliance of the left and the Islamists is exactly what occurred in Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The end result was the complete annihilation of the left in Iran.
