This long article argues that the 7 October Hamas attack and ensuing Gaza war exposed deep societal vulnerabilities across the West, particularly the consequences of failed immigrant integration, foreign ideological influence, and the rise of antisemitism. It highlights how Islamist and far-left radicalism have exploited Western freedoms, particularly in academia, media, and protest culture, to propagate extremism and undermine liberal democracy. I call for a renewed defence of Western values, stricter policies on foreign influence, and firm opposition to antisemitism as a barometer of societal health.

The 7 October 2023 Hamas onslaught against Israel and the ensuing Gaza war have proven to be a watershed moment for Western societies as well as the Middle East. Beyond the immediate geopolitical crisis, the conflict has exposed deep-rooted vulnerabilities within Europe and the United States. In its wake, long-standing failures to integrate immigrant communities have come into stark relief, as mass street protests and antisemitic incidents surged across Western cities.

Simultaneously, foreign influence networks, notably with Qatari and Muslim Brotherhood-linked funding, have been revealed as significant drivers of the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel narrative permeating Western media, universities, and politics. Jews, once again, find themselves the canary in the coal mine; the spike in antisemitism is a warning sign of broader extremist currents threatening liberal democracy.

This article explores how the Gaza war triggered a reckoning on these fronts, from radicalised campus protests and “Free Palestine” street demonstrations to outright terror on American soil, and how malign actors exploit Western freedoms and disinformation to subvert the West from within.

For decades, many European states pursued mass immigration without effective integration, leaving parallel societies where extremism and antisemitism could fester. The aftermath of the Gaza war has laid bare the consequences of these failures. Cities across Europe saw massive pro-Palestinian rallies, often marred by violence and open Jew-hatred. These marches underscore how imported Middle Eastern conflicts and prejudices have taken root in Western immigrant communities.

In France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and beyond, authorities were alarmed to find crowds chanting Islamist slogans and even “gas the Jews” at protests, scenes reminiscent of Europe’s darkest eras. “Education has failed, integration [of minorities] has failed. Respect for us Jews has disappeared and will never come back,” lamented one Dutch Jewish resident after an antisemitic pogrom in Amsterdam. Her despair reflects a broader sentiment that decades of multiculturalism without assimilation have allowed a strain of militant anti-Western, anti-Jewish sentiment to grow within Europe’s cities.

European leaders, belatedly recognising the threat, have responded with tactics unthinkable in America. France’s interior minister attempted to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations entirely in the name of public order, after hundreds of antisemitic incidents erupted following Hamas’s attack. Germany moved to outlaw Hamas symbols and organisations outright. The government banned public Hamas celebrations, dissolved a group accused of glorifying the 7 October massacre, and vowed that anyone displaying support for the terror group would be “prosecuted with the full force of the law”. A proposed German law would even deny citizenship to immigrants who commit antisemitic acts. While courts partly overturned France’s blanket protest ban on free expression grounds, the overall approach in Europe has been straightforward: militant Islamism and its fellow travellers are to be aggressively policed, even at some cost to civil liberties. This has not worked.

These measures underscore a significant transatlantic contrast. Unlike the United States, European democracies do not regard free speech as sacrosanct when it crosses into hate speech or endorses terrorism. Europe’s hard-won historical memory of fascism has led many countries to be more inclined to limit extremist speech to protect public order and the safety of minorities. In contrast, the United States has encountered profound difficulties in addressing similar Hamas-inspired extremism within the confines of the First Amendment.

Nowhere have the last 21 months been felt more acutely than on American college campuses. In the weeks and months following 7 October, many US universities became hotbeds of pro-Hamas rallies and virulent anti-Israel agitation, catching administrators unprepared. Students at some of the nation’s top schools openly celebrated or excused Hamas’s atrocities, from Harvard groups penning a letter blaming Israel for the massacres, to Columbia and Cornell students chanting “From the river to the sea” and glorifying “martyrs”. University leaders, steeped in a culture of relativism and fearful of offending activist sensibilities, often responded tepidly or not at all. This administrative failure to establish moral red lines fostered an atmosphere in which public support for a US-designated terrorist organisation (Hamas) and the vilification of Jewish students became distressingly normalised on campus.

Radical campus outbreaks did not emerge from a vacuum. Investigations are illuminating the foreign and ideological funding streams that have, for years, seeded academia with extreme anti-Israel sentiment. In particular, Qatari money has flowed into American higher education, funding Middle East studies centres, endowed chairs, student groups, and even entire branch campuses. Doha’s government-linked Qatar Foundation donated an astonishing $1.8 billion to Cornell (to establish a medical campus in Qatar), $750 million to Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, and $600 million to Northwestern’s journalism school, among other gifts.

Ostensibly aimed at educational collaboration, these partnerships often came with ideological strings attached. Universities entering Qatar’s “Education City” have quietly adjusted their curricula, dropping certain liberal materials, and even signed agreements with Qatari state media, such as Al Jazeera (widely criticised as a mouthpiece for Hamas), to train journalists. In effect, Gulf petrodollars helped incubate a new generation of Western opinion-shapers sympathetic to the Islamist narrative.

A striking finding by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) revealed just how direct this influence might be. Its 2020 study found a “direct connection” between the volume of Qatar and other Gulf donations and the presence of militant pro-Palestinian groups on US campuses, specifically, the agitators of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Tellingly, at universities awash in such funding, SJP chapters coordinated “Day of Rage” protests in support of Hamas on 8 October 2023, literally one day after the massacres, even before Israel had launched major operations in Gaza.

The speed and scale of these campus mobilisations, complete with professionally printed signs and chants glorifying a terrorist onslaught, suggested an organisational sophistication and resourcing that was anything but spontaneous student outrage. As one observer noted, “the speed at which protests are being organized and the resources made available for them raise concerns” that something beyond organic campus activism is at work.

The backlash has been severe. Donors and the public watched in shock as Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, and other Ivy League leaders appeared unable to unequivocally condemn calls for intifada or the harassment of Jewish students. Under mounting pressure, Dr. Gay eventually admitted, “…for far too long, Harvard has done too little to address the ongoing presence of antisemitism… which has a long and shameful history in the university.”

However, these mea culpas came only after an “overwhelming wave of hate” engulfed campuses, causing deep reputational damage. Prominent alumni and financiers announced they would halt donations and even cease hiring graduates from universities that permitted blatant pro-Hamas rallies and intimidation of Jews. In Washington, policymakers have also taken note. By May 2025, the US federal government moved to terminate grants to universities like Harvard for “failure to address antisemitic harassment”, an unprecedented rebuke fueled by outrage over campus scenes of Hamas support.

All of this underscores the real-world consequences of foreign-funded ideological infrastructure within academia. It has helped to legitimise extremist discourse under the guise of scholarly debate or “social justice” activism, leaving universities as unknowing incubators of radicalisation.

The Gaza war simply flipped the switch.