Douglas Murray: Trump will bring ‘seismic change’ to the world

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will bring about a “seismic change” to a world in need of urgent reforms, the British conservative political thinker and journalist Douglas Murray said in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

British journalist Douglas Murray and NGO Monitor Vice President Olga Deutsch and President Gerald Steinberg discuss groups that drive anti-Israel and antisemitic agendas, during an event at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem on Nov. 27, 2024. Photo by Yehoshua Halevi.

“There is, and I say this carefully, there is a rather large, orange-colored hammer that has just landed, or is about to land, on this whole sea and I think this will change things seismically,” Murray said during an event at the Menachem Begin Heritage Centre organized by the NGO Monitor research institute, speaking during a discussion on stopping groups that drive anti-Israel and antisemitic agendas.

“And I think that what America does in this moment will really matter because so much of this is so rotten,” he added.

Murray, who has emerged as a top supporter of Israel over the past year of war, said that Trump usually does what he says he will do, and that the declarations of members of his Cabinet speak for themselves.

He cited the proposed removal of U.S. federal funding from universities “which don’t teach their students anything other than how to become radical activists and waste their lives,” as well as cutting funding to the U.N.

“And we all know this, and you all know this, but something has to be done about it at a seismic level, at a level that will shake everything in this in this rotten tree.”

The event focused on the critical role played by international organizations over the last quarter-century in promoting anti-Israel activities that have now gone mainstream.

“Many of these NGOs which have nice sounding names have gone rotten,” Murray said. “They all have this sort of smoke screen facade of decency and morality and under that smoke screen, they could get away with doing absolutely evil things.”

He cited as case in point the U.N.’s Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, which has been repeatedly connected to terrorism during the war against Hamas in Gaza but continues to receive funding from much of the world, including the U.S.

“There is nothing that UNRWA can do that will not prevent Europeans and other Western governments from funding them,” Murray said. “There can be UNRWA employees carrying out massacre and you’ll say, well, who else is there to fund? Which you would say, ‘Lots of people. Non-massacre people.’”

He noted that one of the late Hamas leader Yihya Sinwar’s bodyguards killed by Israel in Gaza was found dead with UNRWA identification on his body.

“Again, you would think that must be a count against UNRWA,” Murray said. “How many bad apples do you have in an organization before you discover the whole thing is vinegar?”

The bestselling author whose new book, “On Democracy and Death Cults: Israel and the Future Of Civilization,” is due out in April, also lampooned the U.N.’s Human Rights Council in Geneva, calling it “one of the true clown shows” of the world.

“There’s nothing you can invent about the U.N. Human Rights Council that is too disgraceful,” he said. “Iran is in charge of women’s rights committees. North Korea is now in charge of, you know, nonnuclear proliferation.”

“If you were a satirist wanting to write a novel in Geneva, you would realize after a few weeks, satire is not possible, they’ve already gotten there, they’re a step ahead of you,” he said.

Murray says that while some in the international community have come to acknowledge that Jews were the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and the antisemitic violence around the world it triggered, “few have the ability have the guts to say who the Nazis are in the equation,” while some openly support them.

Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, said, “There is no ceasefire in this war of values and principles we are fighting.”

Murray said he has become optimistic than he used to be by being based in Israel for his reporting over much of the last year.

“It’s because of being here. It’s because of these remarkable young men and women all the time here. And they are extraordinary,” he said. “The soldiers of this country are the ones on the real front lines, and they have distinguished themselves and their people and the civilized world in a way that will go down in history.”