This week marks one year since the launch of Jerusalem Journal.

In that time, we’ve grown into a community of more than 10,000 subscribers, among them cabinet members, legislators, diplomats, journalists, scholars, public intellectuals, and Jewish communal leaders.

Our readers span 46 U.S. states and 83 countries, including several that have no diplomatic relations with Israel.

We’ve published some of the most incisive voices on the defining issues facing Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish world, and our work has been featured in leading media outlets around the globe.

As Israel and the United States approach consequential elections amid dramatic developments across the Middle East and rising challenges confronting Jewish communities around the world, we look forward to continuing to foster serious, substantive, and wide-ranging conversation about the issues that matter most.

But more than anything, Jerusalem Journal exists because of readers like you.

As we enter our second year, I want to thank you for being part of this journey — by reading and reflecting on our articles, listening to the podcast, sharing our work with others, and engaging thoughtfully in the conversations it sparks. Your engagement, feedback, and willingness to be part of a serious and substantive dialogue are what make Jerusalem Journal possible and worthwhile, and I’m deeply grateful for your support.

To celebrate our first anniversary, we’re offering a 25% discount on annual subscriptions. Your support allows us to continue producing the kind of clear, independent, hard-hitting analysis that has become our hallmark — from sharp essays on the political and strategic challenges facing Israel to in-depth conversations with journalists, policymakers, and thought leaders — and gives you access to subscriber-only articles, podcast episodes, and occasional live events.

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Thank you again for being part of this community. I’m excited for what lies ahead.

Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem,

Avi

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To mark our first year, here are five of our most-read and most-discussed pieces and conversations from the past twelve months:

“It has been approved for publication.”

They are the most dreaded words in the modern Hebrew language, familiar to every Israeli. They cause listeners to pause and hold their breath as they await what they know is coming. They are the words with which television anchors, radio broadcasters, and news websites announce that another soldier has been killed in action.

Each year, just before Yom HaZikaron — Israel’s Memorial Day, which takes place today — the Defense Ministry and the National Insurance Institute release a macabre tally of soldiers killed in the line of duty and civilians killed in terror attacks over the past year, since the previous Yom HaZikaron.

According to this year’s announcement, 170 soldiers and 79 civilians have been killed over the past year and 54 former service members died of wounds sustained during their military service. In total, 25,644 individuals have been killed fighting for Israel’s establishment and in its defense since 1860. The circle of bereavement consists of 59,583 family members of the fallen, including 31,814 siblings, 14,430 orphaned children, 8,420 parents, 4,872 widows and widowers, 35 legal guardians, and 12 fiancées. 4,587 individuals, including 810 children and teenagers, have been killed in acts of terror since Israel’s establishment in 1948; nearly a quarter of them — 1,017 — were killed on or since October 7, 2023. Today there are 99,156 victims of terror living in Israel and 14,815 bereaved family members, including 4,932 orphaned children.

The numbers are too enormous, too overwhelming, and too horrific to comprehend. They are also incomplete.

Since the announcement was issued on Thursday, two more soldiers have lost their lives, both in southern Lebanon.

Warrant Officer Barak Kalfon, 48, was killed when a boobytrapped building exploded in the town of Tibnin. He left behind a wife and two teenage daughters. His mother said he insisted on continuing to perform reserve duty as a paratrooper despite his age. “Mom, you have to understand — there aren’t enough soldiers,” he told her. “I have to keep serving. There’s no choice.”

Sergeant First Class Lidor Porat, 31, was killed on Saturday when a military vehicle was blown up by a Hezbollah IED. He left behind a father and two siblings, including a twin sister; his mother passed away several years ago. “Lidor was the best friend you could ask for,” a friend recalled. “He was always smiling; all he wanted to do was live, to learn and laugh.”

Walking through the streets of Israel, it is impossible to miss the human cost of maintaining our existence in this land. Bus stops, lampposts, street signs, and train stations are plastered with bumper stickers bearing the smiling young faces of fallen soldiers and quotes by or reminiscent of them. From time to time, I will see the face of a soldier I knew personally and send a photo to his parents.

Israel is a tiny country, smaller than some metropolitan areas in the United States; there are few, if any, Israelis who have not experienced the death of a loved one, a friend, a classmate, a neighbor, or some other acquaintance in war or an act of terror. The sense of loss, the painful awareness of young lives cut short in their prime, is both pervasive and deeply personal.

Yom HaZikaron is a day to remember those who gave their lives so we could live. As others have put it, if Yom HaShoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day, which we marked last week — commemorates the price of not having a Jewish state, Yom HaZikaron memorializes the price of having one.

As the sun hangs low in the sky, the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who spent the day visiting the gravesites of loved ones in military cemeteries across the country are making their way home to prepare for Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israel’s 78th Independence Day, which begins at nightfall.

The transition from solemn remembrance to exuberant celebration is sharp and disorienting, but the message is unmistakable: it is the sacrifice of Israel’s fallen soldiers that brought the country into being and enables its continued existence.

And it is in this twilight moment, in these quiet hours of suspended existence, that we have to ask how we can ensure that this country continues to be worthy of that sacrifice.

Israel’s Declaration of Independence, adopted in Tel Aviv on a Friday afternoon 78 years ago tomorrow, sets out a vision of a state that is at once proudly Jewish and robustly democratic, that ensures fundamental rights for all its citizens and pursues peace with its neighbors, that joins hands with Jewish communities around the world and takes its place among the family of nations, a state “based on freedom, justice, and peace, as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”

We must ask, today and every day, whether we are living up to that vision.

The Israel of today is a marvel that, in many ways, surpasses what its founders may ever have imagined. Its population has grown more than tenfold since 1948, fueled by aliyah (immigration) from more than 150 countries and by the highest birthrate in the developed world. It is a regional superpower, with one of the most capable militaries on earth, its planes flying deep into hostile territory to eliminate distant threats. It is an economic powerhouse, its tech sector celebrated by the world’s leading corporations, its stock exchange hitting record highs even in the midst of war. It is a vibrant, diverse society whose citizens are consistently ranked among the happiest in the world.

But the Israel of today is also a country beset by profound internal challenges.

Deep divisions in Israeli society are being widened and exploited by those who should be working to heal them. Basic norms are breaking down, corruption and unaccountability are becoming normalized, and the democratic foundations of the state are under sustained pressure. Public discourse has grown more hateful. Inequality persists between those with access to power and those without. There is a strain of racist, violent extremism that is being tolerated, and at times encouraged, by senior figures in government. It increasingly feels as though the country is made up of parallel societies that are resentful of one another, have little common ground, and are growing further apart.

These societal ills are serious and corrosive, but they can be healed. A country that rose from the ashes to become an example to the world, that defied the odds to secure its sovereign existence, and that continues to produce young men and women willing to lay down their lives in its defense is equal to the task of national repair.

But it is a choice we must make.

We are in a period of national reckoning, a time in which we must decide what kind of country we wish to be. In the months ahead, there will be many who will seek to further inflame internal tensions, who will conjure up dark visions of a country defined by hatred and fear, and who will prey on our basest instincts for political gain.

We must not permit them to succeed.

Instead, we should lend our voices and our votes to those who will do the difficult but necessary work of mending divides, strengthening governance and civility, promoting dignity and equality, and making this country more Jewish and more democratic.

It is perhaps notable that this week’s Torah portion is Acharei Mot, which translates as “After the Death,” referring to the killing of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, by a divine flame. When Aaron, the High Priest, is informed of his sons’ death, he responds stoically — “And Aaron was silent” (Leviticus 10:3) — offering an example that we echo today in the moments of silence observed on Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron.

But the portion does not dwell on grief. It turns, instead, to what comes next: a detailed description of the Yom Kippur service, for which Aaron must purify himself and don special garments.

The order of events may seem confusing at first, but a closer look reveals a sequence of poignant elegance. On Yom Kippur, the fate of the entire nation hangs in the balance. Aaron, who has just experienced profound personal loss, is called to approach the task of atoning for the people’s sins with precision and care. Perhaps only someone who knows from immediate personal experience how high the stakes are, and what can be lost, can truly comprehend the gravity of serving a people and shaping its future.

There is nothing more sacred than life itself. We owe it to the families who entrust their sons and daughters to the state — and whose children endanger and, at times, give their lives for that state — to ensure that it is truly worthy of that most precious gift.

Tonight, as we pop champagne corks and toast the 78th anniversary of our national independence, let us resolve to build a country that embodies our highest values, in which all segments of society feel equally at home, of which all Israelis and Jews around the world can be proud, and which honors those who made the ultimate sacrifice in its defense.

Several days ago, I gave a guest lecture to my college Hillel director’s class on Jewish leadership via Zoom, as I do almost every semester. After sharing a few experiences and observations from the past few years in the life of Israel and the Jewish people, I opened the floor to questions from the students. As always, they were thoughtful and wide-ranging, touching on everything from the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism to the media’s treatment of Israel to how one might go about developing a career in communications.

Toward the end of the class, one of the students raised a virtual hand and posed an interesting and timely question. Do I believe, he asked, that blaming Israel for the war in Iran is antisemitic?

He noted that Israeli leaders have been advocating for military action against the Iranian regime for years; that the charge is a critique of Israeli actions and policies, rather than of the country’s very existence; and that it doesn’t seem to fit into any of Natan Sharansky’s three ‘D’s — delegitimization, demonization, or double standards — distinguishing legitimate criticism of Israel from antisemitic discourse. Why, then, do some observers believe that accusing Israel of being behind the war is antisemitic?

It was a smart question, and while I offered an answer at the time, it strikes me as being worthy of a lengthier response.

Let us state the obvious: Yes, Israeli leaders have long identified the Iranian regime and its nuclear program as a threat to Israel’s existence and have openly discussed the possibility of military action to remove that threat.

In June 1995, just five months before he was assassinated, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told The Washington Post that Iran posed a major threat to Israel and raised alarm about its nuclear program. Every Israeli leader since has echoed that concern, but none as doggedly as Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made countering the Iranian threat the centerpiece of his policy agenda for decades. As The New York Times recently reported, in the leadup to the current war, Prime Minister Netanyahu pitched President Donald Trump on a military campaign against the regime for several months, arguing that delaying it would allow Iran to create a “shield of immunity” of missiles behind which it could finally build a nuclear bomb.

Early in the war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson both suggested that U.S. military action was necessitated by Israel’s determination to carry out its own campaign against the regime, which would have resulted in Iranian attacks against U.S. assets and allies in the region (Rubio immediately added that the war would have been necessary “no matter what”).

Iranian leaders have consistently called for Israel’s destruction and have created a network of terrorist proxies dedicated, in both word and deed, to achieving that goal. A weakened regime — or a new Iranian government altogether — would certainly be in Israel’s national interest.

All this is true. But it doesn’t explain why the United States chose to go to war.

The reality is that President Trump’s decision to launch the military campaign in Iran was driven by far more than any single ally’s wishes, and claiming otherwise betrays, at best, a lack of familiarity with either the facts or how consequential decisions are made by American presidents.

Put simply, no president — especially this president — would enter a war that may well define his presidency to satisfy another country’s interests. And while Israeli input may have contributed to President Trump’s decision, so did a host of other factors, including pressure from multiple allies in the region, the advice of senior administration officials and advisors, assessments by the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, the publicly stated positions of successive U.S. presidents and administrations over the past three decades, and Trump’s own longstanding and widely publicized convictions.

To focus on Israel’s role while ignoring all other factors and considerations is to ascribe to the Jewish state outsized, almost mystical influence over American policy — a modern echo of dark tropes from bygone eras.

In truth, Israel was far from alone among Middle Eastern countries urging U.S. military action against the Iranian regime. According to The Washington Post, in the month leading up to the war, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pressed for a U.S. military campaign against Iran, making multiple phone calls to Trump and dispatching his brother, Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, to Washington to make the case in person. Despite publicly advocating a diplomatic solution — and even going so far as to declare that U.S. aircraft couldn’t use Saudi territory or airspace to attack Iran, in a clear but ultimately failed attempt to prevent Iranian retaliation — the crown prince was adamant in his appeals to Trump and other senior administration officials. “The Saudi leader warned that Iran would come away stronger and more dangerous if the United States did not strike now,” the Post reported. Saudi Arabia was the destination of Trump’s first foreign trip of his current term, during which Mohammed promised to invest nearly $1 trillion in the United States. Other Gulf states are also believed to have privately pushed for military action against Iran, which they have long viewed as a threat.

Notably, multiple countries in the region — including some that had expressed reservations about a potential military campaign and were nevertheless targeted by Iranian missiles and drones — are now urging the U.S. not to stop until the Iranian regime is no longer able to threaten its neighbors and not to make do with an agreement that preserves their ability to do so.

Numerous administration officials have also long advocated for military action against Iran.

During the 2012 talks that ultimately led to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the JCPOA, colloquially known as the Iran nuclear deal — then-Senator Marco Rubio cautioned that diplomacy would fail to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. “At that point there’s only one country in the world that can do anything about it, and that's us,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations at the time. “I think I am in line with what the [Obama] administration has said, which is ultimately [a] military option may be necessary if everything else fails,” he added. According to New York Times reporting, Secretary of State Rubio told Trump in the lead-up to the war that a military campaign could effectively destroy Iran’s missile program.

In 2017, Pete Hegseth — then a Fox News host — called Iran “America’s mortal enemy”; a year later he said the Islamic Republic was developing “a nuclear capacity which threaten[ed] the very existential existence of America.” The Times reported that Hegseth was “the biggest proponent of a military campaign against Iran” in the Trump cabinet and that he said the U.S. “would have to take care of the Iranians eventually, so they might as well do it now.”

As the Republican nominee for vice president in 2024, JD Vance identified the Iranian regime as a threat to the United States and said, “If you are going to punch the Iranians, punch them hard,” praising President Trump for authorizing the killing of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. In the lead-up to the current conflict, Vance repeatedly said that the U.S. would not permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons and that there was evidence that Iran was trying to rebuild its nuclear program; he had previously said that President Trump has “clear authority to act” to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Other prominent figures considered close to the White House — including senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham — have also pushed for military action against the Iranian regime.

The Defense Department and the array of U.S. intelligence agencies have considered the Iranian regime a threat to the United States for decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. defense officials identified Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism targeting American interests and cautioned that the country was acquiring the means to develop nuclear weapons. In 2007, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte testified that Iran’s military power “challenges U.S. interests” and identified the Islamic Republic, along with North Korea, as “the states of most concern to us” due to their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Intelligence assessments in 2010 and 2013 acknowledged that Iran already had the capacity to develop a nuclear weapon and that it possessed the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East. Also in 2013, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said his department was developing “all military options” to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power; a year later, in 2014, the Pentagon said that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is “a top administration priority.” In 2017, DNI Daniel Coates termed the Iranian regime “an enduring threat to U.S. national interests”; in 2025, the Annual Threat Assessment grouped Iran with major U.S. adversaries China and Russia, asserting that cooperation between them “reinforc[es] threats from each of them individually while also posing new challenges to U.S. strength and power globally.”

In the months leading up to the current war, defense and intelligence officials warned that the Islamic Republic continued to pose a threat to the United States despite blows sustained during the June 2025 Twelve-Day War. Admiral Brad Cooper — who today commands U.S. Central Command — told Congress after the June war that Iran still poses a “considerable” threat. The 2026 National Defense Strategy, released just weeks before the current conflict, warned that Iran “appears intent on reconstituting its conventional military forces” and cautioned that it may try to rebuild its nuclear weapons program.

Taken together, these assessments reflect a longstanding consensus within America’s defense and intelligence communities that Iran poses a direct threat not only to regional stability, but to U.S. interests and national security.

Indeed, every Democratic and Republican president in recent decades has expressed a willingness to use military force to counter Iran and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. President George W. Bush repeatedly said that “all options are on the table” and refused to rule out a nuclear strike to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. In defending the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, President Barack Obama explicitly left open the option of military action if the agreement failed to prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. “There are times when force is necessary, and if Iran does not abide by this deal, it’s possible that we don’t have an alternative,” Obama said at the time. As Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden echoed the president’s position. “President Obama is not bluffing,” he said in 2013. “All options, including military force, are on the table.” Later, as president, Biden said he would use force if necessary to prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon. “We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” he said in 2022. “The only thing worse than the Iran that exists now is an Iran with nuclear weapons.”

Finally, of course, President Trump’s own statements about the Iranian regime and the need to use military force against it leave little doubt as to his longstanding position, which predates this war by more than four decades. In 1980, Trump called the regime’s seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and its abduction of 52 Americans “a horror” and said he would “absolutely” send U.S. troops to rescue them. Several years later, he expanded on his approach. “I’d be harsh on Iran,” he told a British journalist in 1988. “One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it. Iran can’t even beat Iraq, yet they push the United States around. It’d be good for the world to take them on.”

Years later, as the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran became more acute, he said the regime must never be permitted to acquire a nuclear weapon, an approach he has maintained consistently ever since. In fact, in the lead-up to the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, the White House compiled a list of more than fifty times Trump reiterated — as a candidate and as president — that Iran can never become a nuclear power. “Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons is a major threat to our nation’s national security interests,” he tweeted in 2011. “We can’t allow Iran to go nuclear.” In 2019, he threatened that Iran would face “obliteration like you’ve never seen before” if it didn’t stop pursuing nuclear weapons. In April 2025, several months before the June airstrikes, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said there would be “all hell to pay” if Iran didn’t accede to Trump’s demands that they cease pursuing nuclear weapons. In January of this year, weeks before the current war, Trump said “the military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options” to take action against the Iranian regime.

Three days after the war began, Trump flatly dismissed claims that Israel had forced the U.S. to launch it — and suggested that the opposite was true. “Based on the way the negotiation was going, I thought they [Iran] were going to attack first,” he said in the Oval Office on March 3. “If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”

The claim that President Trump took America to war for or because of Israel crumbles under the weight of both the evidence and the historical record. Israel’s prime minister may have wanted the U.S. to engage in military action against the Iranian regime, but that is not why America went to war. America went to war because multiple U.S. allies pressed for it; numerous administration officials advocated for it; America’s defense establishment and intelligence communities have long considered Iran a major and growing threat; successive U.S. presidents have threatened military action to prevent Iran from pursuing and acquiring a nuclear weapon; and the current president decided to act on his predecessors’ threats, on military and intelligence assessments, on counsel from allies and advisors, and on convictions he has expressed for nearly half a century.

All of this is on the public record. None of it is a secret. So one has to ask why so many persist in trying to blame Israel for America’s war in Iran and to convince others of the Jewish state’s culpability.

To some, the claim offers a simple, easily digestible explanation for a deeply complex reality. But it also ascribes to Israel a degree of influence over American decision-making that is at odds with how power actually works. And while some may intend merely to critique American or Israeli policy, the claim is being promoted and amplified by others who disregard, distort, or simply omit what is readily knowable. In either case, the argument itself draws on tropes with a dark and disturbing history: the notion that Jews, or the Jewish state, exercise hidden, disproportionate, and malign influence over global affairs. Like other antisemitic conspiracy theories throughout the ages, it is belied by verifiable facts.

America did not go to war for Israel. It went to war because a broad range of American, regional, strategic, and political considerations converged — and because the president of the United States decided to act on them. One can debate that decision or argue whether the considerations justified it, but to blame the Jews for it is something else entirely.

As the region and the world hold their collective breath, waiting to see whether this two-week respite in the war yields an agreement, a return to hostilities, or a somewhat longer pause, it is worth taking stock of how the war has unfolded and what it has revealed — to the international community, to the nations of the Middle East, to the countries that launched this campaign, and not least to Israelis themselves.

First and foremost, this war has proven its own necessity. The Iranian regime’s behavior over the past six weeks has demonstrated — to its neighbors and to the world — that it cannot be trusted, that it poses a grave threat to regional and global security, and that it must be denied the ability to develop and deliver the ultimate weapon.

The regime has, of course, lied for decades about the nature and scope of its nuclear program, as both the International Atomic Energy Agency and official documents seized by Israel from a Tehran warehouse in 2018 have shown. Despite an oft-cited fatwa (religious edict) supposedly issued by the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the 1990s — and despite repeated Iranian denials — Iran has had a military nuclear program since the late 1980s, has conducted secret nuclear activities in multiple undeclared sites, and has enriched uranium to levels far exceeding any peaceful civilian need. Iranian negotiators have reportedly boasted to their American counterparts that their country is already in possession of enough highly enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs — an alarming admission.

It now turns out that the Iranian regime has lied about another central element of its military capabilities. Khamenei declared in 2017 that his regime would not develop ballistic missiles with a range exceeding 2,000 kilometers, an assertion echoed by Iranian officials ever since. Just three days before the start of the current war, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told an Indian news website that his country was not developing long-range missiles. “We have intentionally limited the range of our missiles to below 2,000 kilometers because we don’t want them to be seen as a global threat,” he said. Three weeks later, on March 21, Iran launched a pair of missiles at Diego Garcia, the joint American-British base in the Indian Ocean — roughly 4,000 kilometers from its shores.

The realization that much of Europe may now be within range of Iranian missiles has generated alarm among European officials and analysts, raising urgent questions about the adequacy of existing missile defenses. “This is for us a new dimension to the war,” one senior European Union official told Radio Free Europe in typical diplomatic understatement. Pressed on whether Iranian missiles can now reach London, British Defense Secretary John Healey repeatedly refused to answer, mumbling that his government has “no assessment that Iran has any plans to attack,” a statement unlikely to reassure anyone paying attention.

The Diego Garcia attack also heightened concerns about covert Iranian efforts to develop even longer-range intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States, a threat identified by U.S. defense and intelligence agencies more than a decade ago and made all the more acute by the revelation that Iran has already doubled the range of its missiles.

While reasonable people can disagree about various aspects of the war’s timing, execution, and strategy, Iran’s conduct during the war — including its ferocious missile and drone attacks against many of its neighbors, its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and its demonstration of the heretofore hidden capacity to target points well beyond the region — has underscored that a military campaign aimed at crippling its nuclear and missile programs and limiting its ability to threaten its adversaries was not only prudent but necessary.

To two of Iran’s neighbors, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the war has also served as a proof of concept for the Abraham Accords, the series of agreements that formalized their alignment with the U.S. and Israel. Born of both shared interests and a common threat, the accords have been instrumental to both countries’ security as they have come under sustained attack by Iran. While several countries in the region have relied on Israeli-made air defense systems to neutralize Iranian missiles and drones, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Admiral Brad Cooper revealed that Israel is playing a far more active role in their defense. “Israel is attacking drones and ballistic missiles that are aimed at Arab countries, attacking and defeating them,” he told Iran International on March 23.

Conversely, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar — none of which have joined the accords — have discovered that publicly cozying up to Iran and eschewing ties with Israel does not render them immune to Iranian attack. Qatar, which has elevated hedging its bets to an art form, has been particularly affronted by the Iranian assault, as has Oman, which mediated the previous round of talks between Washington and Tehran. Combined, the two countries have been targeted by roughly 300 Iranian drones and missiles out of some 5,000 attacks directed at Gulf states overall (the UAE alone has absorbed roughly half).

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that senior officials believe the war may well prove to be a watershed moment in the relationship between Israel and Gulf states.

“I think Iran’s full-throttle attack on the Gulf states will actually strengthen the Israeli role in the Gulf, will not diminish it,” veteran Emirati diplomat Dr. Anwar Gargash told the Council on Foreign Relations on March 17. “We’re not seeing 2,000 Israeli missiles and drones targeting us. We’re seeing 2,000 Iranian missiles and drones targeting us.”

“For countries that have relations with Israel… this relationship, in my opinion, will be even more strengthened. For countries that don’t have [relations with Israel], I expect [that] more channels will be open,” Gargash added. “Iran has actually hurt its own case at being aggrieved against by the United States and Israel by targeting the Gulf, and [has] demonstrated the intention that it had for its own neighbors and for the region.”

While some Gulf countries — chief among them Saudi Arabia — reportedly pushed hard for a U.S. military campaign against the Iranian regime and others opposed it, there is a growing consensus among them that ending the war before Iran is defanged would be a fateful mistake. “Ending the war with Iran still in possession of the tools it is currently using to target [Gulf states] would be a strategic disaster,” a Gulf official recently told The Times of Israel. “We want this war to end with Iran stripped of the capabilities to harm its neighbors,” another official told the Times.

To the United States and Israel, the war has demonstrated both the durability of the U.S.-Israel defense alliance and Israel’s status as an indispensable and peerless U.S. ally. The degree of cooperation, interoperability, and information sharing between the two militaries in both the lead-up to the war and throughout its duration has been described as unprecedented, reaching levels of operational synergy that the U.S. has never enjoyed with any of its closest allies. U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has described Israel as “an incredible and capable partner.”

“To our Israeli allies, thank you for being a brave, capable, and willing ally on this battlefield,” he said in a Pentagon press conference earlier this week. “The rest of the world and the rest of our so-called allies saw what real capabilities look like. They should take some notes.”

In the run-up to the war, several Middle Eastern countries that host American military bases, enjoy American protection, and are considered U.S. allies informed the U.S. that they would not allow their territory to be used for offensive action against Iran (all have since been targeted by Iranian attacks anyway). Israel, by contrast, readily offered its own airbases for U.S. use and American and Israeli planes have shared the same runways as they embark for sorties in the skies over Iran.

As the U.S. considers its postwar military footprint in the region, Israel has reportedly invited the U.S. to relocate some of its bases from the Gulf to Israel. “We have proved our value of late as a central ally of the United States, one that provides not only stability, but also significant operational and intelligence capabilities,” an Israeli official told Israel’s Channel 12. “American bases in Israel would create a strategic advantage for both sides.”

Finally, to Israelis, this war has shown that they have learned one of the critical lessons of October 7: that Israel cannot and will not stand idly by as foes sworn to its destruction and to the wanton murder of its people develop the means to achieve those aims.

Since that disastrous day two-and-a-half years ago, Israel has taken the fight to adversaries near and far, dealing crushing blows to Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and now the head of the snake, Iran. Twice in the past year — during the Twelve-Day War in June and in the current conflict — it has launched preemptive strikes to remove the threat posed by the Islamic Republic. While the final outcome of Operation Roaring Lion is not yet known, it is already clear that Iran’s leadership, nuclear program, missile capabilities, and military industry have been severely impaired, even if they have not been wiped out entirely. The message is clear: Israel will no longer wait for a clenched fist to strike; it will smash the hand before it has a chance to do so.

But Israelis have learned another important lesson, and that is that the time has come for them to chart their own course.

Forty-two Israelis have been killed in this war. All 29 victims of the Iranian attacks have been civilians, including five children and teenagers; 12 soldiers and one civilian have been killed in the campaign against Hezbollah since the Iranian proxy army started firing missiles into Israel on day two. More than 7,100 Israelis have been wounded and over 6,300 have had to be evacuated from damaged or destroyed homes. Over the course of six weeks, Israelis have endured a cumulative total of 96,428 missile sirens due to some 1,435 drone and missile attacks from Iran and 4,400 from Lebanon. Schools and many businesses have been closed for most of the war, placing a tremendous burden on families already struggling with the compounding trauma of having to run to bomb shelters throughout the day and night. Gatherings have been limited, people have remained close to home, and air traffic has been reduced to a trickle. The disruption to everyday life has been profound.

And yet Israelis know that were it not for their remarkable discipline and forbearance, for the near-ubiquity of bomb shelters across the country, for the heroic efforts of Israeli pilots to destroy Iranian missiles before they can be launched, and for the multilayered air defense systems that destroy the vast majority of incoming projectiles in the air, the scope of both casualties and damage would have been far, far worse. And they also know that the alternative to this war — a nuclear-armed Iran — would be immeasurably worse than anything they have endured, which is why more than two-thirds of Israelis support the war’s continuation until its aims are achieved.

Prior to the Twelve-Day War, the prospect of direct military confrontation with Iran — the most powerful of our adversaries, whose leaders chant “Death to Israel” and dedicate enormous resources to bring it about — filled many Israelis’ hearts with terror. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people would be killed, we were told. Our economy would be destroyed. Entire cities would be reduced to rubble.

But we have now endured two wars in which the Islamic Republic has thrown everything it has at us, and we are still standing. Even during the current war’s most intense days, children played outside, cafés were open, and public transit operated. Families celebrated the Purim and Passover holidays responsibly, at home. Roads damaged by cluster warheads were repaved and reopened to traffic within hours.

As I wrote in the aftermath of the June war, the fact that we have weathered yet another war with Iran so successfully should inspire us to ask what we could achieve if we weren’t held back by fear.

Israel is in an election year. Many of the candidates and parties vying for Israelis’ votes across the political map this fall will attempt to draw on our anxieties and our fears. But we have proven, once again, that we are better than that, that we are a nation that can stare down its scariest adversary and seize the day. We should demand a politics of hope and inspiration, of practical solutions to real challenges, rather than a manipulative discourse of darkness and doom. The soldiers who put their lives on the line in our defense, the spouses and loved ones who held down the fort at home, the children who sang happy songs in bomb shelters as missiles exploded overhead — they all deserve better.

The war is not over, and it may yet resume. But the past six weeks have shown that, with a little help from their friends, nations of conscience can still muster the courage and determination to confront those who would threaten them, their neighbors, and the world. The question now is whether they will act on what they have learned — and whether they will do so before the next test inevitably arrives.

When I first heard the reports of an active shooter situation at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, around 7:30 Thursday evening here in Jerusalem, my first thought was — Jen.

Rabbi Jen Lader is a member of Temple Israel’s clergy team, responsible for the congregation’s teen-related activities, and is president of the Michigan Board of Rabbis.

She is also a longtime friend of mine — we went to college together twenty years ago and last had dinner together in Jerusalem just a few weeks ago.

I immediately texted her to make sure she was okay and let her know I was thinking of her. When she finally texted back an hour later, she wrote, “I’m okay, thank you,” and then, “All kids okay.”

She was referring to the 106 children who attend the temple’s early childhood center, all of whom were safely evacuated by their teachers and temple staff as the synagogue’s security team confronted and ultimately neutralized the attacker, averting what could have been a catastrophe.

Several hours later, as she finally made her way home, I spoke to Rabbi Lader about how she and the community were grappling with the day’s harrowing events, how the temple’s security team saved lives, why she wasn’t surprised by the attack, and what message she has for Americans and for Jews around the world.

Click on the play button above to listen to our conversation.

Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem — A.M.

This episode of the Jerusalem Journal Podcast is being made available to all readers of Jerusalem Journal.

Rabbi Jen Lader joined the Temple Israel clergy team in July of 2012, following her ordination from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio. She serves as the synagogue’s ‘youth guru,’ running all teen-related activities, and is the current president of the Michigan Board of Rabbis. Hailing from Austin, Texas, Rabbi Lader earned a Bachelor of Arts in Jewish Studies from the University of Maryland and a Master of Hebrew Letters degree from HUC-JIR. She and her husband, Daniel, have two beautiful children.

Editor’s note: Since the United States and Israel launched their joint military operation targeting the Iranian regime Saturday morning, I have spent much of the time on various news networks commenting on the latest developments and offering an on-the-ground perspective. In between interviews and dashes to the bomb shelter, however, I have tried to sort out my thoughts about the broader meaning of what we are currently experiencing. This is the result. May our men and women in uniform return safely from their missions and may Iranians, Israelis, and all the nations of the region share a new era of peace. — A.M.

Like October 7, this past Shabbat morning began with a siren.

After all the bleary-eyed residents of my Jerusalem building had made their way down to the communal bomb shelter, however, it turned out that it was merely a loud and obnoxious reminder to stay alert and abide by Home Front Command directives — a sign that hostilities had begun, but we were not in immediate danger.

As on that awful morning two and a half years ago, after a few moments’ hesitation, I decided to make my way to Shabbat services at my nearby synagogue, which meets in the gym of a local elementary school. Though there were fewer people than usual, we had a minyan before too long, and the morning service proceeded as usual.

We were in the middle of the Torah reading when the first real siren sounded. After a brief deliberation, we decided to take our Torahs and prayer books with us and go down into the school bomb shelter, which doubles as an art studio. We moved a few pieces of furniture aside, arranged a bunch of chairs, placed a Torah on a table, and continued the reading.

This was not just any Shabbat. It was Shabbat Zachor, the occasion on which congregations around the world read the passage from Deuteronomy that contains the commandment to remember the Amalekites’ vicious attack on the Israelites as they left Egypt.

“Remember what the Amalekites did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how – undeterred by fear of God — they ambushed you while you were on your way and cut off all the stragglers who were lagging behind,” the text reads.

“Therefore, when the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you, in the land that He is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.”

The portion is read on the Shabbat before the holiday of Purim, linking the ancient Amalekites’ attempt to annihilate the Israelites to a latter-day Amalekite’s attempt to do the same. Though he was a Persian king’s royal vizier, Haman, the villain of the Purim story recounted in the Book of Esther, is referred to as an Agagite — a descendent of the Amalekite king Agag and an apparent heir to his biblical forebears’ genocidal ambitions.

Each year, Shabbat Zachor takes place around the anniversary of my grandfather’s passing, so I volunteer to chant the brief passage from the Torah. It is considered a special religious obligation to hear the Zachor reading and a hush tends to fall on the congregation as people cling to every word.

As I unrolled the Torah to recite the blessing, seemingly on cue, a siren blared.

(A congregant — one of several journalists in our community — muttered, “someone should really write something about this”; I told him not to worry.)

I waited for the siren to die down and proceeded with the reading as dull, distant explosions reverberated through the thick concrete walls of the shelter.

For the past couple of days, as I have been following and commenting on the dramatic developments while going in and out of bomb shelters, I have found myself considering the significance of this moment. The historical parallels invite themselves; the echoes of our people’s storied past seem too obvious to ignore.

Like the biblical Israelites, and like the Jews of ancient Persia, we, too, have been beset by genocidal foes — the most powerful of whom happen to control the Persia of today. Like Haman, the leaders of the Islamic Republic have spoken openly about their dreams of annihilation and their vision of a world devoid of sovereign Jewish existence. And like the Jews’ ancient enemies, they have sought to put their words into action, dispatching their proxies to murder Jews in Israel and around the world, exporting their venomous hate across the globe, launching ballistic missiles at Israeli towns and cities, and diligently developing the ultimate means of bringing about the Jewish state’s destruction.

But like the weary Israelites, who summoned the strength to overpower the Amalekites, and like the threatened Jews of Persia, who turned their swords on those preparing to annihilate them, over the past few days, we have experienced a striking turn of fate.

Rather than sitting passively and awaiting the first blow, Israel — alongside its closest ally, the United States — has seized the initiative and taken the fight to Iran. The Islamic Republic is now in crisis, its future uncertain, as Tehran is rocked by constant bombardment methodically destroying the regime’s centers of control. The Iranian people, long oppressed and impoverished by cruel and fanatical rulers, are stirring; expats around the world are rallying, waving American and Israeli flags alongside the historic flag of Iran. And just as Haman and his sons were hanged on the gallows he had prepared for Mordechai, Ali Khamenei and several of his children and intended successors are now dead, killed by bombs dropped from aircraft emblazoned with the Star of David.

But here in Jerusalem, rather than immediately rejoicing upon our enemies’ demise, we pause.

Unlike the rest of the world, where those who had abstained from food and drink during the solemn Fast of Esther immediately transition to the festivities of Purim, here we wait 24 hours before we celebrate what is known as Shushan Purim — a phenomenon unique to Jerusalem and other ancient walled cities.

In many ways, that moment of contemplation is where we now find ourselves as a nation.

Despite the stunning military successes of recent days, the future remains unclear. The Iranian regime — whatever remains of it — is still clinging to power. We do not yet know what reality will emerge from this war or how a new Iranian government might relate to its own people, to Israel, or to the world. And, of course, we are still under fire, preparing to read the megillah in our bomb shelters later this evening.

But if Jewish history teaches us anything, it is that, to quote Faulkner, the past is never dead — it’s not even past. Ours is a story marked by danger and deliverance, tribulation and triumph. Time and again, we come back from the brink of annihilation to stun the world and thrive.

Tonight, as on Shabbat, we will read an ancient text about a threatened people who vanquished their enemies and survived, and that story will resonate more powerfully than ever because it is our own.

Happy Purim.

In early December, Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal broke a story that drew far less attention than it deserved.

Israeli defense and intelligence officials, he reported, had concluded that much of the wave of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment that has engulfed global discourse over the past two years has been deliberately engineered by a state actor. The sophistication, coordination, consistency, and interconnectedness of both the messaging and those promoting it online and off led the officials to determine hat only a world power — or a state with vast financial resources — could be behind such a comprehensive influence operation.

While considering the involvement of other countries with axes to grind against the Jewish state, the Israelis have focused their attention on one primary suspect: Qatar.

To even casual observers, the signs of a broad effort to cultivate hostility toward Jews and Israel linked to the wealthy Gulf emirate are difficult to miss: from Al Jazeera’s propagandistic coverage to Tucker Carlson’s recently discovered affinity for the country, and from the appearance of Hamas leaders at government-hosted conferences to the prevalence of virulently anti-Israel narratives at academic institutions that receive Qatari funding.

Taken together, Qatar’s role in shaping global hostility toward Israel — and its remarkable success in leveraging its unfathomable wealth to advance its interests — has proven strikingly effective in fostering negative perceptions of the Jewish state and in undermining its legitimacy at a moment when Israel has been fighting for its very existence.

In this episode of the Jerusalem Journal Podcast, Eyal joins us to discuss how Israel identified Qatar as being behind this global defamation campaign, why the emirate has chosen to target Israel now, how it has cultivated influence in the United States and around the world, and what Israel can do to fight back.

This episode is being made available to all listeners. To receive full access to all Jerusalem Journal Podcast episodes as soon as they are released, become a paid subscriber today.

Nadav Eyal is one of Israel’s leading journalists and political commentators, a senior columnist for Yediot Aharonot and Ynet, and a regular contributor to Dan Senor’s Call Me Back podcast. He recently launched his own Substack newsletter, Between Us. Eyal is a senior scholar and adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, focusing on the Middle East, Israel, and the crisis of democracy.

Some months ago, I took one of my suits to be cleaned at my neighborhood dry cleaners here in Jerusalem. When it came back, I removed the plastic garment bag and discovered a small hole in the jacket lapel. Annoyed by the damage to the fabric, I briefly considered complaining to my trusty dry cleaners before realizing what it was: the mark left by the yellow ribbon pin that had been there for the previous two years.

All of my suit jackets have borne those pins for two years and three months. This evening, I removed them once and for all.

The recovery of the body of the final Israeli hostage, 24-year-old Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, from Gaza and its return to Israel earlier today marks the close of one of the most painful chapters in Israel’s history.

“Rani has returned home,” said Itzik Gvili, Ran’s father. “He was the first one to go in fighting and the last one to return,” he added, alluding to his son’s heroism on October 7, 2023, when he battled terrorists for hours at Kibbutz Alumim before being killed in action, his body spirited away. “Thank you to the people of Israel.”

For 843 days since that terrible day, the hostage crisis has been a festering wound, a dark cloud hanging over Israel. Now the wound can begin to heal. The cloud is finally dissipating.

And we can breathe again.

The war that Hamas launched on October 7 is now over. Israel’s war objectives have been achieved. Hamas has been decimated; though it still exerts control over parts of Gaza and remains committed to Israel’s violent destruction, it no longer poses the threat to Israeli communities that it did on October 6. The residents of those communities have largely returned home and some of the kibbutzim have expanded; there are now more Israeli families living in areas near Gaza than there were before the war. And, as of today, there are no more Israeli hostages, living or dead.

Dramatic declarations at Davos notwithstanding, critical questions remain: about the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza; what the territory’s future governance will look like; how to ensure Gaza’s population is thoroughly deradicalized; and how to prevent Hamas from seizing control and again transforming the territory into a base from which to attack Israel and murder Israelis. Even if Israel permits the Rafah Crossing to reopen in the coming days, as it has committed to do, it does not appear as though Israeli forces will be withdrawing fully from Gaza anytime soon.

Moreover, many of the challenges that have emerged over the past year will endure for many years to come. Our defense doctrine will need to be rethought and our economy refashioned. The unprecedented mental health crisis produced by the war will need to be tackled. The global assault on Israel and on Jewish communities around the world will need to be repelled. And we will need to rebuild trust between Israelis and the government bodies, institutions, and leaders that failed them on October 7 and have proven unequal to the task for much of the war. We will be exploring some of these challenges in Jerusalem Journal in the months ahead.

Yet this is a moment to pause, to take stock, and to reflect on all that we have endured and all that we have achieved over the past two years.

Caught by surprise and having suffered horrific loss and devastation, Israel swiftly rallied and responded with tremendous military might. A nation still reeling from the worst day in its history mobilized to support the families of the fallen, the wounded, and the hostages, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Israelis evacuated from their homes. Despite missile barrages, airport closures, and boycotts, the country’s economy powered ahead, emerging stronger than it was on the eve of the war. And Iran’s vaunted ring of fire — which had encircled the Jewish state and threatened to strangle it — lies in smoldering ruin, its various proxies defanged and the Islamic Republic itself wounded and humiliated.

Throughout it all, young Israelis — like Ran Gvili and the more than 1,100 other members of Israel’s security forces killed on October 7 and during the war, and the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and reservists who participated in the war effort — put their lives on the line in their country’s defense, engaging in acts of heroism and sacrifice reminiscent of bygone eras. It is they, we now know, who have been — and ultimately will be — Israel’s salvation.

When the soldiers of the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps finally identified Gvili’s body in a Gaza cemetery earlier today, they realized they had accomplished one of the military’s most solemn missions throughout this war. “The tension in the field erupted,” recalled one officer who was at the scene. “Some of the soldiers were moved to tears and embraced over the graves.” Their emotions reflected those of an entire nation.

For several days after discovering the hole in my lapel all those months ago, I tried all sorts of methods — suggested largely by ChatGPT — to shrink or conceal it. But now I’m glad it is there for good: a reminder of our collective resilience in the face of unfathomable trauma, of the heartbreaking and awe-inspiring dedication of the hostage families, and of the final fulfillment of our most sacred national promise to leave no man or woman behind.

Editor’s note: As the dramatic events of recent weeks continue to unfold in the streets of Iran, gripping the world's attention, we invited Iranian-born human rights activist Marjan Keypour Greenblatt to reflect on the origins of the current wave of protest — and why things will never go back to the way they were. I know you will find this piece as timely and moving as I did. Shabbat Shalom from Washington, D.C. — A.M.

I remember the dark days of the war with Iraq.

I was a middle school student attending a government-run public school in Tehran, where a full day of moral education was intermittently interrupted by math and science. I would come home to radio and television programming blaring military marches, mournful Quranic recitations, and daily announcements listing the names of dozens of young soldiers killed at the front. Many were my peers — boys between the ages of 12 and 21 — who had enthusiastically enlisted. They were promised a better life in heaven: seventy-two virgins, divine reward, even metallic keys to paradise worn proudly around their necks.

In the years that followed, these “martyrs” were immortalized in street names. Their families received government subsidies and special favors, woven into a system that rewarded sacrifice with material and symbolic recognition.

Nationalism ran deep, but it was intertwined with something stronger: a fantasy of salvation in the afterlife. I, too, absorbed this belief. I would tell my parents, “I’m not afraid of death. Death is an honor for those who love their country.” I was thirteen, a Jewish girl who despised the regime — the compulsory hijab, the suffocating propaganda, the omnipresent fear, the absence of freedom. Yet had I been a boy, I might have secretly enlisted to fight for Iran — not for the regime, but for the nation.

This fusion of nationalism and spiritual idealism proved immensely powerful. The former is distinctly Iranian; the latter Islamic. Together, they sustained Iran through seven years of war with Iraq.

The Islamic Republic became highly skilled at cultivating and exploiting these emotions. Manipulation was easier in a country that controlled every word of its educational curriculum, broadcast media, cultural production, and — later — much of its digital space. Through these instruments, the regime justified its failures and advanced its narratives. Over the past 47 years, it framed the hijab as protection against sexual assault, blamed American imperialism for global poverty, cultivated selective compassion for Palestinians, equated nuclear development with national pride, portrayed child marriage as maturity, and pacified hunger with promises of a better life in the afterlife.

But as the regime pulled emotional strings, the world changed. Technology cracked open the information ecosystem, and a new generation of literate, tech-savvy Iranians gained access to alternative narratives. Armed with information, young people rebelled against state-imposed norms. They pushed back against restrictions, demanded dignity, and openly mocked their inept rulers. A nation long defined as a religious entity witnessed a quiet but profound rejection of Islam — and, for many, of religion itself.

This shift extended even to identity. Young people changed their names from Ali, Mohammad, and Zahra to Ardeshir, Kourosh, and Manijeh — shedding Islamic markers to reclaim pre-Islamic Iranian roots.

Politically, faith in the system collapsed. Once a vibrant electorate, reaching a peak of 85% participation in 2009, turnout fell to 73% after the failure of the Green Movement, to less than 50% in the cycle before Mahsa Amini’s murder, and finally to less than 40% — its lowest point, at which the current president, Pezeshkian, was elected. Iranians came to understand that their votes had little impact on their lives; they served instead as propaganda, enabling the regime to claim legitimacy abroad.

The nature of protest evolved, as well. In 2017, during what became known as the Dey Protests, demonstrators in the religious city of Mashhad chanted, “No fear, no fear, we are all together.” In a totalitarian system where neighbors fear one another and informants thrive, the chant was transformative. Until then, many Iranians believed Mashhad firmly supported the regime.

By 2018, the slogans reflected a deeper political awakening. Protesters chanted, “Our enemy is right here; they lie when they say it’s America.” The rhetoric grew sharper, even extending to foreign policy: “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon — my life is for Iran,” and more recently, “Both Gaza and Lebanon shall be sacrificed for Iran.”

Iranians were losing faith in both God and government. The 2022 murder of Mahsa Amini — arrested for refusing to wear her hijab and beaten to death in police custody — marked a breaking point. Promises of heaven no longer compelled obedience and fear no longer restrained defiance. This was the moment many women rejected compulsory hijab altogether, reversing the equation of fear — daring morality police to arrest them.

The Woman, Life, Freedom Movement launched after Amini’s killing is filled with snapshots of fearless resistance: women intimidating security forces with uncovered hair; young people following clerics and knocking their turbans into the street; protesters hurling tear gas canisters back at their attackers; buildings set ablaze. They fought back knowing the risks — arrest, torture, death. Fear had lost its power.

Life for the Iranian people did not improve after the 2022 protests. The economy tanked to new lows, inflation skyrocketed, and the basic necessities of life — even clean air, water, and electricity — became scarce. Freedoms were promised but never delivered. Whatever liberty people exercised, like walking around without the hijab, was a moment of freedom earned at great risk. They lost hope in their government and God, but they found faith in themselves.

With fear gone and power regained, more people took to the streets. This is how the current wave of protests has emerged as the largest since the 1979 revolutionary uprising. “Death to the dictator,” they chant, “Javid Shah: long live the king” — slogans that challenge the foundation of the revolution in its entirety. A return to the beginning.

From the accounts of people who left videos behind, it is clear they were aware of the dangers they faced — the very real possibilities of arrest and death. But they wanted to redeem their dignity and fight for their own rights.

To quell the people’s rage, the government promised extra subsidies and food to the public. That pathetic act of charity offended the protesters. They have taken to the streets with their treasured bags of rice and thrown the contents into the air, rejecting the regime’s pitiful efforts to calm their decades-long struggle with a little bit of money. It was too late. The regime has destroyed so much and taken away so much that nothing can pacify these people.

The Iranian people are not motivated by promises of the other world should they be shot; instead, they express their love for their country and urge the importance of saving it — even at the cost of their lives.

I know one thing for sure. If I were in Iran today, I would be among the protesters, fighting for exactly what my brothers and sisters are fighting for — even if it cost me my life.

Marjan Keypour Greenblatt is a human rights activist and advocate for women and minorities in Iran. Born and raised in Iran, she is the Founder and Director of the Alliance for Rights of All Minorities (ARAM) and StopFemicideIran.org, the first interactive map documenting acts of femicide in Iran and memorializing the victims. A non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, she holds a degree in sociology from UCLA and a Master’s in education from Harvard University.

Editor’s note: Many readers were moved by our recent podcast conversation with Rachel Moiselle about her fight against antisemitism in Ireland (which is now available to all). Today we are publishing this powerful piece by Alan Shatter, who served as Ireland’s Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defense from 2011 to 2014. It is a damning indictment of the country’s political class for its role in fomenting widespread hostility against Israel and Jews — and a cautionary tale about the dangers of incendiary rhetoric gone unchecked. Shabbat Shalom from somewhere in the Pacific. — A.M.

They have been a slow burner.

Neither official Ireland’s hostility toward Israel nor escalating antisemitism in Ireland emerged overnight. They have no single root and follow no straightforward path. Rather, they derive from a convergence of historical and contemporary forces that have shaped Irish political culture. Spread from the top down, they now subconsciously contaminate the outlook of too many who live on the island of Ireland, north and south.

There is a difference between criticism of the Israeli government and hostility toward all Israelis or toward Israel’s continued existence as a state. There is also a difference between criticism grounded in factual, balanced knowledge of history and present realities, and toxic denunciation based on selective facts, distortions, invention, or political opportunism that deliberately ignores context and complexity.

Not all criticism of Israel’s government is antisemitic, just as not all criticism of Ireland’s government is anti-Irish. Israelis and Irish people alike regularly criticize their own governments, and neither state should be immune from international scrutiny. Where criticism is inaccurate, it should be corrected — without vituperation or imputations of bad faith.

But the relentless deployment of emotive falsehoods that demonize a state’s actions while stripping them of context inevitably leads to darker conclusions. When the line between legitimate and illegitimate criticism is repeatedly crossed, identifying underlying causes and motives is justified.

Since October 7, 2023, the actions and pronouncements of the Irish government — successive Taoisigh (prime ministers) and ministers — have all too often crossed that line. The rhetoric and conduct of opposition parties and many elected representatives have gone further still.

For decades, successive Irish governments have favored a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I include myself among those ministers and politicians who advocated that position in discussions with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. What is routinely ignored in today’s Ireland is that Arab states rejected such a solution in 1948, choosing instead to seek Israel’s destruction; that Egypt and Jordan between 1948 and 1967 could have created a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza but chose not to; and that two-state offers made by Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008 were rejected by Yasser Arafat and later Mahmoud Abbas.

Whether any such agreement would have ended the conflict permanently is unknowable. But there is reason for doubt when reflecting on Gaza’s history since Israel’s withdrawal in 2005.

After that withdrawal, Palestinians had the opportunity to develop Gaza as a peaceful, self-governing entity supported by billions in international aid. That was not the path chosen. Hamas instead dedicated itself to Israel’s destruction: constructing hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath civilian infrastructure, initiating repeated wars, abducting Israelis, and ultimately perpetrating the atrocities of October 7, 2023 — atrocities it has promised to repeat.

During the war Hamas initiated and deliberately prolonged, it murdered, tortured, sexually assaulted, and starved hostages, while openly calling for the global murder of Jews. It continued the war by firing thousands of missiles into Israel from locations adjacent to civilians and denied Gaza civilians access to tunnels in order to maximize and weaponize civilian casualties for propaganda benefit. Hamas openly boasts of sacrificing “martyrs” and opposes any permanent two-state solution.

Yet despite this reality, Ireland’s political class has continued reflexively to call for a two-state “solution,” while ignoring Hamas’s responsibility and agency. Palestinians and their divided, incompetent, and corrupt leadership are infantilized and absolved of responsibility for continuing conflict, while Israel is portrayed as solely responsible. With few exceptions, Israel is depicted as the aggressor and rarely as a state defending its citizens in a war it did not initiate.

This mentality — denying Palestinian agency while demonizing Israel — has dominated Irish political rhetoric since October 7. It extends beyond politics into trade unions, civil society NGOs, activist groups, and much of the mainstream media, including Ireland’s state-supported broadcaster, RTÉ. RTÉ’s selective coverage — its routine framing of the conflict as “Israel’s war on Gaza,” reliance on Hamas-run health ministry figures, and presentation of tragic but context-free imagery — has significantly shaped public perception. These narratives are echoed across print media, podcasts, and social platforms and reinforced by the relentless campaigning of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its ever-proliferating offshoots.

There are additional factors that cannot be denied: the inflammatory rhetoric of some Israeli ministers; the violent conduct of a minority of West Bank extremists; abuses of Palestinian prisoners; and instances of excessive IDF force. These warrant criticism. Too often, however, they are deployed selectively to obscure Hamas’s crimes rather than to confront the conflict honestly.

Since October 7, almost weekly protests in Dublin and Cork have become social rituals for students, activists, artists, trade unionists — and antisemites — seeking belonging. Their focus is not peace or reconciliation but Israel’s elimination. Concerts, academic events, and sporting campaigns demonize Israel and promote boycotts, divestment, and sanctions aimed indiscriminately at all Israelis.

For some in Ireland, the Palestinian “cause” has filled an existential void left by the collapse of traditional religious faith. For others, it serves as a vehicle for intersectional ideology and the revival of a Soviet-era anti-colonialist narrative that falsely equates Israel — the world’s only Jewish state — with Britain’s colonial rule in Ireland.

This narrative is most enthusiastically embraced by Sinn Féin, which during the Northern Ireland conflict acted as the political front for the Provisional IRA. Since the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Féin has grown into Ireland’s main opposition party and embedded itself deeply within trade unions and activist networks. Its focus is the demonization of Israel as an apartheid state and advocacy of BDS. While it preserves strategic ambiguity about Israel’s existence, some members openly advocate its replacement. The smaller left-wing party People Before Profit goes further, openly applauding the “resistance” of October 7 and calling for Israel’s extinction. For some, “Zionist” or “Zio” has become a routine term of abuse, and the only “approved” Jew is a self-declared anti-Zionist. The Social Democrat Party, which replicates the Sinn Féin narrative, in the spring of 2024 deselected its only Jewish member chosen to contest Ireland’s local elections because she privately expressed concern about the impact of its toxic rhetoric.

Since October 7, the Dáil has devoted more time to the Israel-Gaza war than to any other issue, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or Ireland’s housing crisis. Even after the UN Security Council endorsement of an international peace framework, the obsession continued. While ritual calls were made for the release of hostages, their release was never prioritised. Absent was any reference to the complexity of tunnel warfare, Iranian sponsorship of terrorism, or Hezbollah missile attacks that endangered Irish UNIFIL troops. The refrain of Israel’s “disproportionate response” became constant. The possibility that the war could end if Hamas simply released the hostages was never discussed. By November 2024, the Dáil unanimously adopted a resolution denouncing Israel as guilty of genocide.

In spring 2024, five months after October 7, Israel’s ambassador was excluded from all Irish political party conferences while Iran’s was welcomed; in May 2024 Ireland recognized a Palestinian state alongside Spain and Norway and was publicly praised by Hamas; in September 2024 Ireland’s embassy in Tehran was reopened; and in November 2024 Ireland supported South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice, later intervening by proposing that the Court expand the definition of genocide to apply it to Israel’s conduct of the Israel-Gaza war. That December, Israel withdrew its ambassador.

In January 2025, the government committed to the so-called PIGS Bill, criminalizing the importation of goods from Israeli settlements, a euphemism for Jewish-originated goods. The government admits its bill — reminiscent of the darkest periods of Jewish history — is symbolic: the affected trade amounted to €650,000 over five years. If enacted, it would violate the EU’s exclusive international trade competence, trigger U.S. anti-boycott laws, and damage Ireland’s international standing. Its symbolic message, however, is unmistakable: that no Israeli or Jewish person should reside or work in East Jerusalem or anywhere on the West Bank or Gaza, and that any future Palestinian state should be judenrein (free of Jews).

By late 2025, two controversies crystallized these trends: a proposal to rename Herzog Park in Dublin, adjacent to Ireland’s only Jewish school, and RTÉ’s campaign to exclude Israel’s broadcaster from Eurovision. The Herzog Park proposal collapsed on procedural grounds but not before councilors denigrated Chaim Herzog as genocidal and condemned the “crime” of Zionism. Campaigners then sought an “approved” anti-Zionist Jew to replace his name. RTÉ’s failed effort to exclude Israel from Eurovision culminated in its own withdrawal from the competition, defended as “solidarity” by the current Taoiseach but achieving nothing beyond reputational damage.

In today’s Ireland, extreme hostility toward Israel — and antisemitism itself — has become mainstream. Depicting Israel as genocidal is routine. Jewish children face bullying in schools. Irish social media is saturated with conspiracy theories and antisemitic abuse. Journalists and academics who dissent from the prevailing narrative are marginalized; Jewish experts who challenge orthodoxy are effectively silenced.

After the terrorist massacre at Bondi Beach, Irish leaders rushed to condemn antisemitism — many of them having marched at events where chants to “globalize the intifada” were commonplace. The hypocrisy was stark.

It is possible this tragedy will prove a moment of reckoning. It could lead to restraint, meaningful application of the IHRA definition, abandonment of the PIGS Bill, and serious engagement with Ireland’s Jewish community that results in positive action.

But experience counsels skepticism. Politicians are adept at issuing the right words in moments of crisis — and then moving on.

This time, I hope to be wrong.

Alan Shatter served as Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defense of Ireland from 2011 to 2014. He was a member of Ireland’s parliament, the Dáil, for thirty years, and chaired its Committee on Foreign Affairs. Today he serves as a member of the Board of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations and as Chairman of Magen David Adom Ireland.

Editor’s note: Hanukkah is a time to celebrate heroism, from the Maccabees of yore to the heroes of today, including those who displayed extraordinary valiance just this week in Bondi Beach. In this moving and timely essay, historian and Zionist thinker Gil Troy urges us to consider why the war of the past two years has produced so few classic “war heroes”— and what that reveals about Israel as a nation. Shabbat Shalom and happy Hanukkah from Jerusalem. — A.M.

In their wrenching, miraculously successful defense of Israel — and the West — since October 7, the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces performed remarkable feats. Military colleges will long spotlight the spontaneous, grassroots counterattack that terrible day, the Hezbollah beeper ruse, the twelve-day war with Iran, and Israel’s defiance of expert predictions that subduing Gaza would cost thousands of soldiers’ lives.

Yet despite all these heroics, the fighting produced few classic war heroes.

Hostage-heroes emerged — from Hersh Goldberg-Polin to Noa Argamani to Eli Sharabi — and bestsellers detail the many superheroes of October 7: Aner Shapira throwing back seven grenades before being killed by the eighth; Rachel Edry calming Hamas home invaders with freshly baked cookies; police officers like Bedouin Israeli Ramo Alhuzeil, who saved dozens of Nova festival goers; Captain Daniel Perez, who valiantly led his tank crew to battle, holding off the invaders for hours until he was killed; and Sergeant Eden Nimri, the 18-year-old who sacrificed her life so eleven comrades could escape. But since that day, although many Israelis personally know extraordinary soldiers, Idan Amedi may be this war’s one broadly recognized hero — and he was already a household name.

To historians, “war heroes” include generals like Washington, Grant, Dayan, and Rabin, and against-all-odds combat fighters like Sergeant York, Audie Murphy, and Avigdor Kahalani in 1973. War heroes are Ariel Sharon crossing the Suez Canal, and Yoni Netanyahu at Entebbe. We hail acts of self-sacrifice from Nathan Hale — “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” — to Joseph Trumpeldor’s “It’s good to die for one’s country,” to Major Roi Klein shouting “Shema Yisrael” while jumping on a grenade in order to save his soldiers’ lives.

The word “hero” is often overused, but democracies at war need them. They embody the war aims, the shared values, the national soul, and help societies navigate war’s contradictions — unleashing violence to secure peace, fighting ethically while violating the usual strictures against killing. Heroes, ordinary people doing extraordinary things, reassure others that their cause is just and that the break from normal life is temporary.

This dynamic works in civilian life, too. The world was so deeply moved by the Bondi Beach heroes — from the Syrian-born Ahmed al-Ahmed to the two sixty-something Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union, Boris and Sofia Gurman, all of whom struggled with the gunmen, the latter two losing their lives in the attempt — because they proved that ordinary people do, at times, rise to the occasion for the right reasons, even at an unfathomable price.

Israel’s shortage of classic war heroes in this war therefore tells a deeper story. It shows how Israel remains stuck in the October 7 trauma, how global hostility constrains Israelis, and how modern warfare — with its masked commandos, anonymous intelligence officers, and collective operations — obscures individual exploits. It also points to the real secret of Israel’s military success: thousands of dedicated Israelis whose names remain unknown.

Despite many triumphs, Israel is still reeling from October 7. Focusing on hostage-heroes allows Israelis to admire resilience while grappling with the inconceivable cruelty inflicted on them. “We’re talking about innocent people taken from their beds, from a dance party — taken into pure hell,” Noa Argamani said after her rescue. Their extreme experiences have become the national prism, reflecting the fear, confusion, and pain still gripping Israelis. Their tales of suffering also allow Israelis to indict Hamas, Palestinian terror, and the world’s indifference, without moral ambiguity.

Addressing the UN in March 2025, Eli Sharabi — who lost his wife, daughters, and brother — asked: “Where was the United Nations? Where was the Red Cross? Where was the world?” He exposed Hamas’s theft of humanitarian aid: “Hamas eats like kings while hostages starve.” Mocking the claim that Gazan civilians were uninvolved, he added: “No one in Gaza helped me. The civilians in Gaza saw us suffering… They were definitely involved.”

The hostages have become secular prophets for a nation lacking unifying leadership. Omer Wenkert found God in the tunnels, chanting Psalm 23: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” — just as Natan Sharansky had in the Soviet gulag decades earlier. Many hostages once distant from Judaism stayed sane through ritual: Keith Siegel reciting the Shema daily; Omer Shem Tov calling prayer his “oxygen”; Agam Berger refusing to cook on Shabbat; six hostages subsequently murdered lighting Hanukkah candles together in the tunnels; Eliya Cohen imagining wrapping tefillin and leading fellow hostages in kiddush on Friday nights. And many drew strength from Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who shared Viktor Frankl’s insight: “He who has a why can bear with any how.”

Meanwhile the world’s frenzy to criminalize Israel has pushed battlefield heroics underground. Forgetting the Hamas charter’s genocidal vows and ignoring how democracies fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, international bodies distorted the laws of war to target Israel. Soldiers now fear harassment abroad; that makes them thankful their identities are blurred.

Modern warfare further hides its heroes: we will never know who sold Hezbollah those beepers, who maneuvered around Iran to position drones near military bases, who detected Nasrallah’s vulnerability, or who identified and tracked key figures in Iran’s nuclear weapons program so they could be eliminated simultaneously. Scientists, engineers, and technicians — from laser defense innovators to mechanics who retrofitted aircraft — have played essential roles that cannot be personified.

As in America’s War on Terror, few Israeli figures emerged as iconic heroes. Pat Tillman became famous because of his NFL career; others like Chris Kyle or Michael Murphy achieved recognition through books and films. Perhaps future Israeli storytelling will highlight individuals, but the essence of this war has been collective action.

The 1,152 fallen soldiers’ ideals appear in the tournaments, good deed projects, and sites honoring them. Memorial stickers plastered across the country create a kind of prose poem to heroism: “Be the hero we need”; “Heroine in green, angel in white”; “Everyone who knew you knew you were a hero”; “You didn’t fight for hatred of those in front of you, but for love of those behind you”; “Be good”; “No matter what”; “Live for me.” All echo the Hebrew root g-b-r — to overcome, to strengthen, to be a hero.

These messages reflect the casual gallantry long woven into Israeli life: grandparents sleeping fitfully with grandchildren at the front; parents who, knowing what they know now, still escort their children proudly to induction; rising numbers of volunteers for combat units, including a sharp increase among women; professionals who could leave the country but stay because Israel is the only place they want to raise their families. It is evident in people keeping routines even when missiles fly, and in Israelis refusing to hide their identity abroad despite hostility.

Long after this phase of the war ends, Israelis will continue the everyday heroics of building the Zionist project — maintaining one of the world’s largest nonprofit sectors, sustaining high birthrates seen as a mark of optimism, and juggling ancient traditions, from lighting Hanukkah candles to celebrating Passover seders, with modern innovation in fields like AI, medicine, and pharmacology. Israel consistently ranks high in national happiness, as measured by community, purpose, and rootedness, despite being surrounded by enemies who seek and endeavor to destroy them.

Proverbs teaches, “The righteous fall seven times and get up” — as Jews have done throughout their roller-coaster history, including on October 7. Ethics of the Fathers asks, “Who are heroes? Those who conquer their urges” — including the urge to flee or to be too-vengeful. Joseph Campbell writes that a hero is someone “who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” And the Hanukkah holiday we are currently celebrating teaches that an ever-escalating spiral of spiritual grandeur and physical derring-do produces humans ready to do whatever it takes for the people and ideals they cherish.

Heroism is collective, outward-facing, and often contagious. Heroes define a generation, exemplify its values, and inspire others to follow their example.

Israel’s modern Maccabees since October 7 have done all that and more — even if few become household names. As John F. Kennedy once said of his own wartime exploits, “It was involuntary. They sank my boat.” Israelis might say the same: barbarians invaded our country and butchered our loved ones. We should celebrate our citizen-soldiers’ impressive generational accomplishments, their astounding heroics, and the values that drove them and for which some lost their lives, leaving successors more than ever committed to living for them.

The philosopher William James wrote: “The greatest use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.” Israel’s wartime heroes lived such lives, and Israelis — everyday heroes — honor them by continuing to live with purpose and determination in the country they defended and will keep making better and better.

Professor Gil Troy is an American presidential historian and Zionist thinker who serves as a Senior Fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and as a Distinguished Scholar in North American History at McGill University. Last year he published, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and Its Aftermath. His latest e-book, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and Jew-Hatred, was recently published by JPPI and and can be downloaded from the institute’s website. He lives in Jerusalem.

To Jews around the world, all too many place names have become shorthand for the terrible things that befell our people there: Kishinev, Munich, Toulouse, Pittsburgh, Manchester — and now Bondi Beach.

Sunday’s horrific attack targeting a community Hanukkah celebration at the iconic Sydney landmark was shocking — in its brutality, in the innocence of its setting, and in its ghastly death toll, which currently stands at 15. But to many in the Australian Jewish community, it was hardly surprising.

One such individual is Joel Burnie.

Joel is a longtime advocate and leader in the Australian Jewish community. He served as President of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students during his university years, went on hold a succession of senior communal roles, and today serves as Executive Manager of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), the leading public affairs organization of Australian Jewry.

For years, Joel has been sounding the alarm about rising antisemitism to Australian government officials, media figures, and civil society leaders, warning that ever-escalating attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions would inevitably lead to bloodshed — as they did so dreadfully on Sunday.

In this timely conversation, which took place just 24 hours after the Bondi Beach massacre, we discuss the mood within the Australian Jewish community, the government’s response to the surge in antisemitism, and what Israel and Jews around the world can do to help fight back.

Due to the urgent nature of this conversation, this episode is being made available to all Jerusalem Journal subscribers upon release. You can listen to previous episodes here.

Editor’s note: Einat Wilf is one of the most thoughtful voices in Israeli public life. A prolific writer, gifted speaker, and fierce advocate, she recently added another item to her already impressive résumé: founder of a political party. This piece — her first since announcing the launch of her new movement, Oz, just three weeks ago — offers a compelling vision for an Israeli politics that rises above our tired binaries and provides valuable food for thought as Israel enters an election year, with many pivotal debates still ahead. Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem. — A.M.

“Seriously? Another party? Who needs another party?”

That is the most common refrain to my announcement that I have established a new political party titled Oz — no, not the wizard, but the Hebrew word for strength and determination (or, as the writer Tom Gross said to me, “May the Oz be with you”).

But we do need more political parties, more political candidates, and, most important, new ideas for the country.

This is what the Oz Party seeks to do.

After October 7, this need became unmistakably clear. In the weeks following the massacre and invasion, I found that far more people were suddenly listening to ideas I had been writing and speaking about for years — ideas that, in many ways, had anticipated the failures that day exposed. It was then that I realized I had not only a vision for the State of Israel but also a practical roadmap to achieve it. And I saw, with absolute clarity, how far we had fallen short.

Having lived through the complete disappearance of the state structure in the days and weeks after the massacre, it became painfully clear that we cannot outsource our leadership, politics and public service to corrupt mediocrities who are living off the sweat of hard-working, fighting and sacrificing Israelis. This was the moment I resolved not only to re-enter political life after more than a decade away, but to do so as the chair of a party that could bring these ideas directly and without distortion to the Israeli public.

Oz aims to break Israel’s long political stalemate by doing something truly extraordinary: focusing on what rather than who. It appeals to all those deeply, viscerally tired of politics, media, and public discourse being organized around a single individual, to the detriment of the urgent need for serious discussion about Israel’s future — domestically, regionally, and internationally.

What Oz brings are ideas that can finally unstick political camps ossified around the outdated categories of “left” and “right” and various sectarian identities. Oz has been built around three key principles:

1. Pursue Peace Based on Arab and Palestinian Embrace of Zionism

Pursuing peace based on Arab and Palestinian acceptance of Zionism means recognizing the core obstacle that has always stood in the way: the consistent Arab — and especially Palestinian — rejection of the Jewish right to self-determination in any part of the Land of Israel.

In speaking about my own journey — from once assuming the obstacle was occupation and settlements to understanding something deeper — I often quote post-WWII British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, no friend of Zionism, who explained in Parliament on February 18, 1947, why Britain failed to fulfill its Mandate obligations: “For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.”

For years I have emphasized that this remains the core of the conflict. It is not about territory but about the Jewish people’s right to exist as a sovereign nation in their ancestral homeland. The wars, terrorism, and suffering are all consequences of this rejection.

Once this truth is understood, it becomes clear that true peace will be possible only when Arabs — and especially Palestinians — end their century-long war against Zionism. Peace will come when the destructive ideology I call “Palestinianism” is replaced with a positive aspiration to live alongside a Jewish state rather than on its ruins. That means, among other things, that millions of Palestinians — particularly in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan — must finally recognize that they are home and not “refugees” entitled to “return” to sovereign Israel.

Oz’s vision is therefore to pursue peace by replacing “Palestinianism” with what I call Arab Zionism: Arab recognition of the equal right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland. Even if realization is distant, this must become the organizing principle of Israel’s foreign and security policy. After decades of failed shortcuts, only such a long-term, patient vision can lead to genuine progress.

This idea cuts across the old left–right map. On one hand, Oz insists that Israeli leadership must constantly articulate a vision of peace — a traditionally “left-wing” stance. On the other, it rightly maintains that peace requires nothing less than the end of Palestinianism and the rise of Arab Zionism — a supposedly “right-wing” position.

2. Public Services for Those Who Serve the Public

When Oz calls for public services to be provided only to those who defend Israel militarily, it is speaking not only about national defense but about the nature of the welfare state itself. Advanced welfare systems — those that expand freedom, quality of life, and opportunity — depend on solidarity and mutual responsibility.

Historically, this shift from extended-family support networks to national welfare mechanisms rested on a shared sense of obligation among citizens. Their willingness to pay taxes to fund high-quality public services in education, health, welfare, and transportation depends on that solidarity.

In Israel, especially until peace is achieved — as October 7 starkly reminded us — the highest expression of mutual responsibility is military service. Oz therefore proposes mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces for all citizens — Jews and Arabs, men and women, secular, religious, and ultra-Orthodox — at age 18.

This position is “left wing” in its insistence on equality and the importance of the welfare state, yet “right wing” in tying rights to duties. Once all 18-year-olds receive equal draft orders, those who refuse to serve would be deemed to have abdicated mutual responsibility and would not receive state-funded public services. High-quality education, healthcare, transportation, and welfare benefits would be provided equally to those who serve and to their families.

3. Complete the Zionist Revolution: From Diasporic Mindset to Sovereign Conduct

The third pillar of the Oz platform is the most fundamental. Over centuries of exile — when Jewish communities lived at the mercy of others — patterns of thought and behavior developed to ensure survival under powerlessness and transience. These included prioritizing the present over shaping the future, waiting for a messiah rather than acting in history, and focusing on internal disputes rather than external threats.

These habits, though once necessary, are ill-suited to sovereign life. Many of Israel’s current problems stem from the incomplete transition from a diasporic mentality to sovereign responsibility. Addressing Israel’s challenges therefore requires advancing this mental and civic transformation.

The Oz website outlines several practical implications, from religion–state relations to civil service reform. One long-standing example is judicial reform. Here, the argument is that resolving the struggle between the judicial and executive branches — assuming one truly seeks resolution — requires strengthening Israel’s only elected sovereign body: the Knesset. Both the judiciary and the executive must return powers accumulated over decades and recognize parliamentary sovereignty. The Knesset, in turn, must elevate the quality and conduct of its members to reflect its role as the representative of the entire public. Again, this combines “left-wing” respect for the rule of law with “right-wing” insistence on parliamentary supremacy.

My journey has only begun, but I have already noticed not just interest, curiosity, and enthusiasm, but something more important: that Oz is giving a political home to the politically homeless, and allowing very different people to feel that they have a place. If I began this essay with the skeptics, I will end with those who found a home — people telling me that “you are the only person my father-in-law and I can agree about over Shabbat dinner,” that “this is the first time our Likudnik grandma came to the same political gathering with the rest of the family,” that “after my wife saw one of your videos we are no longer fighting over politics,” and that “my left-wing friend abroad sent me one of your videos, and now we are close friends again.”

There is no way of knowing if Oz will succeed. It is up to the Israeli public. But I believe that October 7 created a tear in time, revealing a deep thirst for ideas, vision, and genuine leadership — a thirst we have not seen in a very long time.

Dr. Einat Wilf is the founder of the Oz Party. A leading Zionist thinker and former Member of Knesset, she is the author of seven books, the most recent of which is “We Should All Be Zionists.” She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.

From the Irish government’s effort to redefine the term “genocide” in order to apply it to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza to the national broadcaster’s recent announcement that it will boycott the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest due to Israel’s participation (a decision about which I had some choice words), Ireland’s approach has prompted the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin and has caused the tiny Irish Jewish community to feel increasingly beleaguered. In recent days, an effort to rename a Dublin park honoring Israel’s Belfast-born sixth president, Chaim Herzog, drew both international headlines and national criticism, resulting in the measure’s removal from the city council’s agenda.

Among the individuals most assiduously pushing back against the tide of anti-Jewish hate in Ireland is Rachel Moiselle. Born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Rachel has gained prominence for publicly calling out antisemitism in Irish society, deftly navigating both traditional and social media platforms as she raises awareness of the problem — often to those who would prefer not to see it. A doctoral student at Trinity College Dublin, Rachel has met with Irish leaders in an effort to combat the scourge of antisemitism and has spearheaded some of the most visible public efforts to push back against it.

In our conversation, we explore Rachel’s personal experiences with antisemitism, how hatred of Jews and of Israel finds expression in Irish society, and why she believes international pressure is the only thing that can force the Irish government to change course.

This podcast episode was first made available to paid subscribers of Jerusalem Journal. It is now available to all listeners.

To become a paid subscriber, click here.

Editor’s note: Last week, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Boaz Bismuth, a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party, presented a bill that would regulate the enlistment of young Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men, igniting a firestorm of criticism — including from within his own party. One of the lawmakers most staunchly opposed to the bill is Likud MK Dan Illouz, who previously broke ranks with fellow party members by refusing to support legislation that would have enabled young Haredi men to avoid military service to nevertheless receive government subsidies. Illouz, 39, was born in Montreal and immigrated to Israel at the age of 23, serving as a member of the Jerusalem City Council before entering the Knesset in 2023. In this piece — his first since declaring his opposition to the current legislation — he explains why he won’t support the proposed bill and what an effective Haredi draft law would look like. Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem. — A.M.

For nearly two years now, since the horrors of October 7, Israel has been fighting a war unlike any we have known. It is a war on seven fronts. A war that has demanded extraordinary sacrifice from the reservists who left their families and jobs, from the young men and women who put on a uniform without hesitation, and from the citizens who understand that victory is not optional — it is existential.

In such a moment, the debate over the new draft bill is not just another political argument. It is a defining test of our values as a nation and as a movement. It forces us to confront a simple but unavoidable question: What kind of country are we? And just as importantly: What kind of party is Likud?

For generations, the Likud has been the political home of the serving public. We have been the party of the soldiers, the reservists, the pioneers, the parents who send their children to defend this country, and the citizens who carry the burden of national responsibility with pride. Our party emerged from a worldview that combines freedom with duty, individual liberty with collective solidarity. That is the meaning of the national-liberal tradition.

It is precisely because I am committed to this tradition that I cannot support the draft bill in its current form. Not because I oppose compromise. Not because I seek confrontation. But because a law that fails to bring about real, historic change in the enlistment of the Haredi community is worse than no law at all.

Over the last year, we finally saw meaningful progress. The enforcement of existing sanctions — such as those related to day care subsidies — has already led to a significant rise in Haredi enlistment. That is a fact. The trend is real. For the first time in years, young Haredi men were stepping forward not because of political pressure but because incentives and expectations began to shift.

A responsible law should strengthen this progress, not reverse it.

Yet the bill in its current wording weakens the very mechanisms that proved effective. It removes key sanctions, adds exemptions that encourage avoidance rather than service, and defines the criteria for defining individuals as “Haredi” so loosely that it risks artificially inflating the number of exemptions through bureaucratic loopholes.

No national-liberal party — certainly not the Likud — can look reservists in the eyes and say this is acceptable.

Let me be clear: this is not about punishing the Haredi community. The Haredi public is a vital part of the Jewish people. I want them integrated, empowered, and fully participating in the shared responsibility of defending our homeland. I want every young man in Israel to feel that service is an honor, not a burden placed on some while others enjoy exemption.

Proper policies create incentives. They do not humiliate; they invite partnership. They change the cultural and economic structures that today make military service difficult and unattractive for many Haredi youth. And yes, they include sanctions — smart, targeted, effective sanctions — because a society cannot function if duties are optional.

The current bill does the opposite: it reduces pressure precisely at the moment when pressure is finally working.

Some argue that “unity” requires us to accept a weak law. But unity does not mean surrendering principles, and responsibility does not mean legislating illusions. A fake solution is not unity – it is escapism. A pretend draft law that enshrines inequality instead of addressing it will not calm the public; it will deepen division. It will tell the serving public — the backbone of the Likud — that their burden is invisible.

When our soldiers risk their lives, the least we owe them is honesty.

Likud voters understand this. They know that without a fair and effective enlistment framework, Israel’s security — and social cohesion — will erode. They know that a country that cannot maintain a strong, broad army cannot survive in the Middle East. And they know that the path to long-term unity between secular, traditional, religious, and Haredi Israelis is not built on denial but on shared responsibility.

Some in the political system hope that if they pass any law, even a weak one, the public will move on. But the public will not forget. The reservists will not forget. The nationalist, Zionist majority inside Likud will not forget.

And they will ask: Where were you when Israel needed courage — not “formulas”?

My position is simple:

We must pass a real draft law — not one that evaporates on contact with reality.

A law that:

• Maintains and strengthens the sanctions that have already proven effective;

• Prevents manipulation by accurately defining who qualifies as Haredi;

• Creates real incentives for service – economic, educational, and professional; and

• Ensures that Israel will have the manpower necessary to win in every arena.

This is not extremism. This is responsibility. This is Zionism. And this is the Likud.

I know some prefer to avoid this confrontation. I understand their discomfort. But leadership is not measured by avoiding debates — it is measured by choosing the right side of them.

This moment calls for clarity. It calls for honesty. It calls for a renewal of the national-liberal spirit that once defined the Likud and must define it again.

We must remain the party of the serving public. The party of national responsibility. The party that understands that without victory, there can be no Israel — and without a strong, shared IDF, there can be no victory.

I will fight in committee for a historic law. I will work with every Zionist Member of Knesset in the coalition to ensure that the final bill is one that strengthens the army, strengthens national unity, and strengthens the Likud’s commitment to the serving public.

If we pass a law that meets these principles, I will proudly support it. If not, I will oppose it — because loyalty to the movement means loyalty to its values.

This is not a moment for political maneuvering. This is a moment for a moral stand. And I am taking that stand.

For our soldiers.

For our movement.

And for the future of the State of Israel.

Dan Illouz is a Member of Knesset on behalf of the Likud Party. He formerly served as a member of the Jerusalem City Council. Born in Montreal, he immigrated to Israel in 2009. He lives in Jerusalem.

Editor’s note: As families across America (and some turkey-loving expats overseas) gather to celebrate Thanksgiving, I wanted to offer a reflection on this moment in the Torah reading cycle and in Israel’s history — and on the resonances between them. Happy Thanksgiving and Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem. — A.M.

Over the past month and a half, sitting through Shabbat morning Torah readings in several cities on two continents, I have been struck by how closely the biblical story has come to mirror our own.

The release of the twenty remaining live hostages came on the eve of Simchat Torah, the holiday on which Jews around the world conclude the previous year’s Torah reading cycle and begin anew with the first portion of the book of Genesis, Bereshit.

At the time, several commentators drew on the story of creation, finding parallels between the beginning of the world and the new beginnings experienced by the hostages and all of us who had been gripped by their plight over their two years in captivity.

Two weeks later, addressing a congregation on Long Island, I commented that I thought the next portion, Noah, might be even more instructive.

Like Noah, we have all been through a cataclysm that destroyed the world we knew — or thought we knew — and have emerged to contend with an entirely new reality.

But the lesson of the next reading, I noted, is no less powerful, because it is there, in the portion known as Lech Lecha, that Abraham is instructed by God to go forth to the land that would come to be known as Israel.

The Torah’s message, I posited, is that it is not enough to reconstruct what was. That world is gone. Abraham was tasked by God — and we are tasked today — to pursue a loftier mission, to gather ourselves and build a world that is better than the one that once existed. For us in Israel, and for Jews around the world, that means acknowledging and reaffirming that the reality of October 6 will never return — and that the Israel we build going forward must be worthy of the sacrifices that made its future possible.

As we enter the latter half of the book of Genesis, it is hard to escape the feeling that the readings are still sending us timely messages.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayetze, is the first that centers on a dream. For the rest of the book, dreams will play a pivotal role in the narrative. From Jacob’s fateful dream of a ladder reaching the heavens, to Joseph’s dreams about his elevated stature compared to his brothers, to Pharaoh’s dreams that set Joseph on a path to greatness, these biblical dreams are no mere escapes from reality — they are the forces that redirect it.

When Jacob arrives in the place he will later call Beit El and falls asleep, dreaming of angels ascending and descending that heavenly ladder, he receives a divine promise that the land on which he lies will be his and his descendants’, and that God will be with him and will bring him back to that land. When his son Joseph, already getting on his brothers’ nerves, regales them with his dreams about their sheaves of wheat bending to his and about the sun, moon, and stars bowing down to him, it serves as the final straw that drives them to throw him into a pit and sell him to a passing caravan heading to Egypt. And when Joseph goes on to successfully interpret the dreams of Pharaoh and his key aides, he begins a rise to power that will eventually draw his father and brothers to Egypt and set the stage for both the Israelites’ bondage and their transformation into a people with a divine mission.

In a way, the arc of the past two years can be seen as closely mirroring the biblical story.

As my predecessor at the helm of The Jerusalem Post, Yaakov Katz, suggests in the title of his recent book, during the period leading up to October 7, Israelis were asleep. We had let our guard down, having been lulled into a sort of national slumber by the very group that was plotting the most devastating attack in our national history. We had allowed ourselves the perverse luxury of directing our spears inward as we bickered over the government’s divisive legislative agenda, tearing into one another at a time when those who wished us harm were looking for every weakness to exploit.

Our national nightmare began on October 7 and stretched for two long, devastating years. At times, the nightmarishness of it all seemed too much to bear: the sheer scale and cruelty of the massacre; the unprecedented number of hostages; the slow, sickening realization that the nightmare was not a moment but an era.

The blows kept coming: Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran itself. Tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from their homes; millions slept in bomb shelters for days on end. Families lived in constant fear of the dreaded knock on the door informing them that a loved one had been killed in action. Businesses collapsed. Airlines stayed away. Our economy suffered. Around the world, calls for our destruction became normalized as a wave of vicious antisemitism swept through cities large and small, fueled by media, civil society, social platforms, and officials who manufactured and amplified despicable libels.

Throughout it all, the knowledge that fellow Israelis — parents, spouses, siblings, children — were languishing in dark underground tunnels, malnourished and abused, tortured our collective consciousness, forcing many of us to wonder whether the nightmare would ever end.

And then, suddenly, with a 109-word post on a niche social media platform in the wee hours of a Thursday morning, seven weeks ago, a new phase of our two-year ordeal began.

“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan,” President Trump wrote triumphantly. “ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon.”

Like so many other Israelis, at first I didn’t believe it. Despite our protests and our prayers, experts had cautioned us not to expect all of the hostages to return. They were too valuable to Hamas, we were told. They were the terrorist group’s highest-value bargaining chips, its most effective human shields. There was no way they would let all of them go.

Over the tense days that followed, there were conflicting reports about when and how the hostages would be released, with some openly asking whether this was some kind of cruel ruse by Hamas.

And yet, that Monday morning, we all found ourselves glued to our televisions and computers, watching in disbelief as the President of the United States arrived in Israel and addressed the Knesset while wave after wave of hostages returned to Israeli soil until there were no longer any living hostages in Gaza.

In the few minutes I allowed myself to shop for the holiday that was to begin that evening, I found myself wandering the aisles of my Jerusalem supermarket with tears in my eyes. I ran into several friends and we whispered hushed hellos and hugged one another as we watched the joyous reunions between the former hostages and their families on our phones.

In my last media interview of the day, shortly before going offline for the holiday, I tried to convey what I — and so many Israelis — were feeling.

“If I look a little bleary-eyed, it’s because I pulled an all-nighter in anticipation of this day, and also because I’ve spent much of this day in tears — as, I think, have many Israelis,” I told MSNBC’s Erielle Reshef. “It almost feels surreal. This is a moment that we’ve been praying for, that we’ve been desperate to see for two full years.”

Over the course of the holiday, I found myself walking around humming Psalm 126, which is recited before the Grace After Meals on Shabbat and holidays: “When God brought back the captives to Zion, we were like dreamers.”

And it felt, in fact, like a wonderful dream.

But after every nightmare, and after every dream, the time comes to wake up and confront reality.

And that reality is dramatically different than that which existed before October 7.

The war has not ended. There are still many Israeli soldiers in Gaza, serving as a buffer between what remains of Hamas and the Israeli communities they have sworn to attack again, just on the other side of the border. There are two murdered hostages — 24-year-old Ran Gvili and 43-year-old Thai national Sudthisak Rinthalak — whose bodies are still being held by Hamas. The challenges that lie ahead are massive: we must rebuild our society and our economy, deal with concentric circles of trauma that include virtually all Israelis, and navigate a world — including our closest ally, America — that is more hostile to us than at any point in recent memory.

But like Noah emerging to a changed world, like Abraham set on a path to a new land, like Jacob given the promise of providence and return, and like Joseph drawn from the depths and elevated to greatness, we now stand at a moment of both opportunity and responsibility.

We are being called to imagine a national life that is better than what was, to write a new Israeli story that draws on the pain of the past two years and the joy of the past two months to build a stronger and brighter future.

Over the past two years, we have proven more resilient, more determined, more courageous, and more committed to our sovereign existence in this land than many might have imagined. Now is the time to channel those powerful qualities into creating an Israel that reflects our most cherished values and ideals as both a Jewish state and a democracy that is part of the family of nations — an Israel that is, at once, more prosperous and more equal, more self-assured and more open, more decisive and more thoughtful, more secure in its distinctive identity and more inclusive of all its citizens.

We are no longer asleep. Our moment is here. All that remains is for us to seize it.

When I boarded my flight home at JFK, polling places were still open across the city’s five boroughs. By the time I landed in Tel Aviv, the results were in and a strange new era had begun in the most Jewish city in the world.

It was a grim bookend to a trip that had started with a dilemma that I had never experienced before in America. Landing in Denver from London, I instinctively put my hand in my jeans pocket to extract my kippah, and then hesitated. While I have long since gotten used to concealing my Jewishness in Europe, this was the first time I found myself wondering whether I should do the same in the land of my birth.

As it turns out, I’m not the only one hesitating.

Over the course of my six-day trip, I heard numerous accounts of Jews who are taking steps to hide their Jewish identity — refraining from wearing Jewish symbols, removing mezuzahs from the entrances to their homes, changing their names on Uber and DoorDash to sound less Jewish.

While some would dismiss these precautions as paranoia, they are not without justification. Several days before I arrived in New York — my city of birth — a 59-year-old Israeli tourist was punched in the face outside Mr. Broadway, a well-known kosher deli in Midtown Manhattan; the attacker also tore his victim’s kippah from his head and stomped on it. When I had dinner there a few days later, I found myself glancing around the entrance to confirm the coast was clear before hurrying in from the cold.

In the days leading up to the New York mayoral election, there was a sense among many American Jews that something dark was coming. While some of the people I spoke to were convinced that the polls were wrong, most were struggling to come to terms with the inevitable. “How could this be happening?” they asked as they shook their heads slowly, their eyes wide with disbelief.

More than one alluded to Franklin Foer’s masterful — and heartbreaking — 2024 piece in The Atlantic, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending.”

“It’s true,” I overheard one older woman say to another as we waited to board the plane to Tel Aviv, a setting so poetic that the whole thing could have been scripted. “We had been living in a golden age.”

One day after Zohran Mamdani’s victory, scholar and former White House aide Tevi Troy wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he shared his decision to start concealing his kippah under a hat when visiting New York.

“One reason for the spate of attacks on religious Jews in New York in recent years has been the belief that antisemitic assaults won’t be punished,” he wrote. “My fear is that Mayor Mamdani will encourage even more impunity.”

“There’s nothing I can do about any of that now,” he concluded. “The voters have spoken. But I can make sure that I’m more careful on my regular trips to the Big Apple. If you see me walking around in Zohran Mamdani’s New York, I’ll be wearing my hat.”

It is easy to argue that Mamdani’s election is an outlier, an exception rather than an indication of a new rule in American politics. It was, to a large extent, a perfect storm: a field split between several scandal-plagued candidates who bickered with one another and refused to drop out, paving the way for the progressive, TikTok-savvy candidate to rise to the top on a cloud of populist promises. New York is also the bluest of blue cities and is the home base of the Democratic Socialists of America, the extremist group of which Mamdani is a member and which mounted a sophisticated field operation in support of his campaign, flooding the city with tens of thousands of volunteers deeply committed to putting him in office.

But even if, contra Frank Sinatra, the fact that a far-left candidate made it there doesn’t necessarily mean he could make it anywhere, Mamdani’s victory in New York should give us all pause.

For Democrats, this is a moment of reckoning. I am not a Democratic strategist, and this isn’t what this piece is about, but the party should ask itself whether it truly wants Zohran Mamdani — whose radical views and positions are at odds with those of most Americans, and whose margin of victory was far narrower than some have suggested, despite the favorable conditions detailed above — to be its standard bearer. It is no coincidence that the Republicans are reportedly planning on prominently featuring the controversial mayor-elect in their pitch to centrist voters ahead of the midterms.

And yet, it is also clear that the rules of the game have changed, and what has gotten candidates elected in the past won’t cut it anymore. That so many prominent Democrats are running scared and are scrambling to get on the Mamdani bandwagon is due, in large part, to the party’s failure to cultivate young, moderate, electable leaders, and to build the nationwide field infrastructure to support them. The DSA is on to something; Democratic leaders who want to see their party govern again should take note.

But the ramifications of this moment for American Jews are even more consequential.

It is hard to decide which of the data points emerging from this election should most trouble the Jewish community. Perhaps it is the fact that, even when told by pollsters that “Globalize the Intifada” is viewed by some as a call to violence against Jews, a plurality of young voters said that Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the chant made them much more likely to vote for him. Or perhaps it is the fact that, time and again, in the lead-up to the election, Jews were gaslit and told that their alarm over Mamdani’s inflammatory rhetoric, extremist positions, and dubious associations amounted to nothing more than Islamophobia. Or perhaps it is the fact that a majority of New Yorkers ultimately ignored the concerns of their Jewish neighbors and voted for a man many Jews regard as a threat. Or perhaps it is the fact that a sizable minority of Jews themselves voted for him despite his self-identification as an anti-Zionist, a position viewed by 85% of American Jews (and non-Jews) as a form of antisemitism.

There are any number of disquieting takeaways from the election, but the most salient is this: what would have been unthinkable only a few months ago — that an individual who is openly hostile to a central tenet of Jewish identity, and who holds views and aligns himself with groups considered by the vast majority of Jews to be antisemitic, could be elected mayor of the city with the largest Jewish community in the world — has come to pass.

Positions that would have been disqualifying for a candidate for public office until very recently are now not only acceptable — they are increasingly viewed as an electoral asset. And while it may be tempting to dismiss Mamdani’s election as an aberration, for all of the reasons noted above, the reality is that it is reflective of unsettling trends on both extremes of the American political map that are now seeping into mainstream discourse. In races for city, state, and federal office; on social media and the airwaves, incendiary rhetoric on Israel — often laced with classic antisemitic tropes — is being normalized, and Americans on both sides of the political map are becoming more receptive to it.

American Jews may soon have to contend with a reality that is dramatically different than anything most of them have ever known, one in which it is increasingly uncomfortable — and, at times, downright unsafe — to be openly Jewish and proudly attached to Israel in America.

Back in July, I wrote about what a post-Zionist America could look like and how American Jewish leaders — and Israeli officials — should prepare for it. I won’t rehash it here, but I will say that what seemed like a remote prospect just four months ago no longer feels quite so far off. And while a changed America may not be inevitable, the forces aligning against the Jewish state — and, increasingly, against American Jews — are consolidating their efforts at a pace that we can no longer ignore.

But although I saw more knitted brows during this most recent visit than I ever had before, there were two other anchors to this trip that offered another way of viewing this moment in the life of American Jewry.

The evening after I landed in Denver, I addressed more than 800 members of the local Jewish community at an event attended by both the governor and the city’s mayor. It is, I was told by the local Jewish federation’s CEO, one of the community’s largest annual gatherings, eclipsed only by the yearly celebration of Israel’s Independence Day.

Several days later, I attended a gala event in New York celebrating 25 years of Taglit-Birthright Israel. More than 1,000 people packed the Manhattan venue as we heard from one alumnus after another about how their Birthright experience transformed — and, in some cases, catalyzed — their relationship with their Jewish identity.

While strengthening community and deepening Jewish identity may not, in themselves, turn back the tide of hate threatening American Jews, they are essential if we want to stand a fighting chance.

A Jewish community that is more unified and more fortified in its identity — made up of proud Jews who understand, cherish, and hold foremost the ties that bind them to one another, to their heritage, to their people, and to their land — is one that can, and will, weather any storm.

The word came at 1:51 a.m. Israel time via a post by President Trump on his bespoke social media platform, Truth Social.

Like countless others across the globe, I had been refreshing the page for the better part of an hour when suddenly it appeared.

“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan,” the president wrote. “This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace.”

“BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!” he concluded, quoting scripture.

It was the culmination of several days of intensive talks in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, spurred by the president’s dramatic September 29 announcement of a twenty-point plan to end the war, secure the hostages’ release, and rebuild a Gaza free of Hamas control.

To Israelis and Jews around the world, it was also the culmination of two years of protest, advocacy, prayer, and exhortation on behalf of the hostages and their families — two years during which we have worn yellow ribbons on our lapels and pieces of tape on our shirts, posted the hostages’ stories and photographs on our social media platforms, and remembered them and their plight at every holiday and every celebration. We have been a nation paralyzed, frozen in that awful day in October two years ago, wracked with anxiety over the fate of the Israelis still held captive in Gaza.

Finally, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, on the third day of the holiday of Sukkot, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel in the form of a 119-word social media post, and the emotions came rushing.

“Matan is coming home,” said Einav Zangauker, whose 25-year-old son is one of the hostages and who has been advocating tirelessly for the hostages’ release. “These are the tears I prayed for.”

“I am finally breathing a little,” Silvia Cunio — whose sons, David (35) and Ariel (27), are being held by Hamas — told the Israel Hayom newspaper. “When it actually happens, I’ll be able to breathe normally. It will be like giving birth all over again.”

Former hostages took to social media to express their joy and relief.

“Baruch Hashem,” wrote 22-year-old Omer Wenkert on Instagram, “Thank God. It finally happened! I can’t believe it.” “Evya and Guy — I’m waiting for you,” he added, referring to hostages Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, with whom he was held captive in Gaza until his release in February.

“There’s an agreement!” shouted 29-year-old Emily Damari joyously as she broadcast herself waking up her friends and telling them about the development on Instagram Live. She was later joined by fellow former hostage Romi Gonen and the two called Tali Berman — whose 28-year-old twins, Gali and Ziv, remain in captivity — and toasted her sons’ impending return.

In Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square this morning, hostage families and their supporters embraced and danced, waving American and Israeli flags and popping champagne bottles under uncharacteristically gray skies.

But while we hold our collective breath, waiting for the Israeli government to approve the first stage of the agreement and the 72-hour window in which the hostages are set to be released to commence, we must brace ourselves for the deeply emotional days ahead.

According to the official count, there remain 48 hostages, of whom twenty are said to be alive and 28 have been confirmed dead. That number includes 47 hostages taken on October 7, 2023, as well as Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, who was killed in action in 2014 and whose body has been held by Hamas for the past 11 years.

The number of living hostages does not appear to be entirely clear. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, set off a storm of anxious outrage in April when she was recorded muttering “fewer” after her husband said 24 hostages were still alive, causing hostage families to demand clarifications. In May, President Trump said that the number of living hostages was 21 and in August he gave the number as twenty, but added, “the twenty is actually probably not twenty because a couple of them are not around any longer.”

According to the latest Israeli reports, while the official number of living hostages remains twenty, there is “grave concern” for the lives of two of them, suggesting the number may indeed be lower. We will only know for certain once we see them safely on Israeli soil.

But the fate of the murdered hostages remains equally unclear. Israeli officials reportedly believe that Hamas has lost track of some of the hostages’ remains and that the number of bodies that will be returned may be significantly lower than 28. A multinational task force will reportedly be formed to try and locate the missing bodies in Gaza, but it is by no means certain that all the deceased hostages will eventually be brought home. Some may be lost forever.

So while some of the Israeli families who have been clinging to hope for the past two years will indeed get to embrace their loved ones, seeing their greatest dream realized and joyously closing this terrible chapter, many others will not. The fortunate ones will receive a body, to be brought to dignified and proper burial in the land of their birth. Others may never have that closure.

There will be many tears in Israel over the coming days. Some will be tears of joy and relief. Others will be tears of anguish and devastation. We who have accompanied the families from afar over the past two torturous years, who have lived and breathed their hopes and their fears, will have to find it within us to embrace them and help them heal for years to come.

This coming Shabbat, Jews around the world will read the Book of Ecclesiastes, with its timeless reminder that, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven… A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

In Israel, though, those seasons have a tendency to overlap, blending into one another. Indeed, the story of this country has always been one of bittersweetness, of joy intermingled with pain — from the state’s very birth in the aftermath of the Holocaust, to the annual juxtaposition of Memorial Day and Independence Day, to heart-wrenching moments like those which we are about to witness.

The legendary Israeli songwriter Naomi Shemer captured that distinctly Israeli experience in her beautiful song, Al Kol Eleh (“Over All of These”), which has been playing in my head in a loop over the past few days.

Its chorus may offer us a guide for how we might make it through the days and weeks ahead.

Over all these things, over all these things
Please guard for me, my good God
Over the honey and the bee sting
Over the bitter and the sweet.

Please don’t uproot what’s been planted
Don’t forget the hope
Lead me home and I will return
To the good land.

Naomi Shemer sings “Al Kol Eleh,” 1981

Editor’s note: As we mark the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks, many of us find ourselves reflecting on that awful day and its aftermath. Even then, it was clear that nothing — including we ourselves — would ever be the same again.

Nine days after the attacks, I traveled to Kibbutz Be’eri to bear witness to the horrors of that day. I later wrote about what I experienced and published the account in The Jerusalem Post. I share that account with you today.

May the memory of all who lost their lives that day and in the war that has ensued be a blessing and may all the remaining hostages be returned swiftly to their families. — A.M.

Kibbutz Be’eri is remarkably peaceful.

Established in 1946, the community had a population of 1,047 in 2021. Verdant lawns stretch between small public buildings and houses shielded by leafy trees. The kibbutz is home to a printing press that serves as the community’s main source of income, as well as a veterinary clinic and a cycling center, and it is surrounded by agricultural fields. In wintertime, families from across the country flock to the adjacent Be’eri Forest to see the bright red anemones that blanket the area. Some years ago, the community — a bastion of liberalism and home to several prominent peace activists — established a fund to help support Palestinian families just a couple of miles away in Gaza.

At 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 7, Hamas launched a heavy barrage of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. Using the rocket fire as cover, an estimated 2,900 Hamas terrorists utilized bulldozers to tear through the border fence and then drove through on motorcycles and pickup trucks. They then fanned out, making their way directly to kibbutzim and towns throughout the border area.

When they got to Be’eri, they immediately killed the community’s emergency readiness squad and set up an ambush at the main gate to prevent Israeli forces from coming to the rescue. Then approximately one hundred terrorists drove into the kibbutz, dismounted their vehicles, and started going house to house, killing everyone they saw. They wrenched open the trunks of parked cars, removed spare tires, set them on fire, and rolled them into houses in order to burn the families inside to death. Anyone who fled the flames was shot. They fired rocket-propelled grenades at fortified safe rooms in order to get to the families huddled inside.

Within hours, large numbers of soldiers arrived and, after sustaining significant losses, overpowered the terrorists at the kibbutz gate. A fierce gun battle erupted. The army sent several tanks into the community and started shelling some of the houses from which terrorists were firing. The firefight stretched into the middle of the next day, until all the terrorists were neutralized.

A friend of mine who scrambled to Be’eri with his reserve unit that day said it looked like something out of a horror movie. “Never in my life did I imagine that humans could be so cruel to each other, and that I would see it,” he told me. He described seeing bodies everywhere, smoke wafting through the kibbutz.

At least 104 members of the community — approximately ten percent of its total population — were murdered that day, along with six police officers. Multiple residents were kidnapped by Hamas and are being held hostage in Gaza; we still don’t know exactly how many.

I visited Be’eri earlier this week with a colleague, part of a group of editors from Israeli media outlets invited to tour the site.

As we made our way from Jerusalem, we saw long lines of parked cars outside army bases, left there by reservists reporting for duty. Nearing the Gaza border area, we had to pass through several checkpoints, and the IDF’s presence became increasingly visible. As we approached Be’eri, we drove past neighboring Kibbutz Re’im, where the terrorists had targeted a music festival, killing at least 260 young people. Many of the victims’ cars remain on the side of the road.

Read the full piece in The Jerusalem Post

Editor’s note: We hadn’t planned on publishing again until after Yom Kippur, but the events of the past 48 hours have been too striking to ignore. The responses to the U.S. ceasefire proposal have been telling and should cause us all to reflect on who truly has Palestinians’ and Israelis’ best interests at heart — and who does not. Wishing all observing the holiday a G’mar Hatima Tova and an easy and meaningful fast from Jerusalem. — A.M.

Shortly after midnight between Monday and Tuesday, two hours after the White House press conference in which President Trump laid out the U.S. plan for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and Prime Minister Netanyahu accepted it, Gaza-based political analyst Hussein Jamal posed a question in Arabic to his 32,000 followers on X:

“A question for the people of Gaza only, and I hope only Gazans will answer it: If you were in [Hamas leader] Khalil Al-Hayya’s place, and the American initiative was offered to you, would you accept it or reject it?”

“With my eyes closed, I would accept it,” responded one user. “The most important thing is to stop this nightmare. People in Gaza can’t breathe.”

“I would accept it without discussion,” wrote another.

“Accept, accept, accept,” added a third.

They weren’t alone.

A torrent of posts by social media users in Gaza — most anonymous and almost all writing in Arabic — appeared overnight, imploring Hamas to accept the proposed ceasefire and bring the war to an end.

“I call upon the Hamas movement to deliver to us and to the nation the speech of deferred victory, and to accept the proposed American deal,” wrote an X user who identified as Dr. Eman and gave her location as northern Gaza. “Save us, please.”

“Accept anything — just accept,” wrote Adnan in Gaza City. “There’s nothing more precious than the people. Call it whatever you want. Enough blood, by God.”

Some directed their ire at those opining on the proposal from afar.

“Living in a tent — no. Your house got bombed — no. Displaced — no. Slept on the street — no. Lost someone from your family — no. Got injured — no. Went hungry — no. So why are you giving your opinion on the proposal?” asked Mohammed in Jabalia.

“All your analyses about war, resilience, and negotiation are just empty talk from a place of comfort,” summarized Jamal. “Come live one day under attack in a tent or on the street and then share your analyses.”

As Hamas continues to hem and haw — saying it will “study” the plan and consult with other terrorist groups before giving an answer — an unmistakable rift is emerging between Palestinians in Gaza and those purporting to advocate on their behalf around the world.

After nearly two years howling about the war, branding it a “genocide” and demanding an immediate ceasefire, the global “Free Palestine” crowd suddenly doesn’t seem all that eager to see it end. Rather than enthusiastically embracing the U.S. plan, which has been endorsed by a slew of Arab and Muslim governments, some of Israel’s most prominent and vociferous critics have either fallen curiously silent — or have launched broadsides against it.

“The trap of the century,” declared United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese as she circulated a text arguing that the proposal “should be opposed and rejected.” “No matters [sic] how many hands clap, this plan is in breach of international law,” Albanese added.

“Just more colonial repression and Israeli impunity, guaranteed by the complicit U.S.,” charged former senior UN official Craig Mokhiber, who called Israel’s war against Hamas a “textbook genocide” on October 28, 2023 — a mere three weeks after the October 7 attacks and just one day after Israel launched its ground campaign in Gaza.

“We cannot legitimize this farce,” said Spanish Second Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz, claiming that the proposal “perpetuates the occupation” and “consolidates Israel’s impunity.”

“The Trump-Netanyahu plan for Gaza is cruel blackmail,” wrote Syrian-born French politician Rima Hassan — who famously participated in the June precursor to the current flotilla to Gaza — in a lengthy screed. “This plan does not aim for peace. It institutionalizes the colonial management of Gaza and enshrines the submission to the United States of the states that support it.”

“‘Deradicalisation’ is a sanitised term for neutering Palestinians and forcing them to accept their subjugation,” said former Al Jazeera and Reuters editor Barry Malone in one of more than a dozen furious tweets trashing the plan and its various components. “It is not radical to fight for your freedom.”

The contrast between the emerging consensus among the “pro-Palestine” crowd and the cries of actual Palestinians in Gaza could hardly be starker. And it begs urgent questions about just how deeply the Palestinians’ supposed supporters care about their wellbeing and whether they are simply instrumentalizing — and, at this point, actively trying to perpetuate — their suffering to attack Israel.

Gaza-born Palestinian activist and writer Hamza Howidy may have put it best.

“I opened my feed today to see countless posts by Gazans desperate to see an end to this war by any way possible and the huge disappointment they have after many of those who claimed to stand with them during the past two years [have asked] the Gazans to continue get[ting] killed because they don’t like the Trump proposal to end the war,” he wrote Tuesday morning. “Shame on everyone who used their name and refuses to listen to their needs.”

Inundated by angry responses on the part of many such activists, Howidy later put up a second post.

“Apparently one post about Gazans’ opinions was enough to upset lots of those who worship Hamas and its fantasy of ‘armed resistance,’” he wrote. “Anyway, as my friends in Gaza told me, anyone who wants to lecture them on resistance and what they should and shouldn’t accept should go spend two days in a tent in Gaza amidst relentless bombardment, and then they would listen to them.”

It is notable that the critics of the ceasefire proposal include some of the individuals who first accused Israel of “genocide” and have worked assiduously to popularize the smear over the past two years.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone witnessing an actual genocide and claiming to fight for its victims — say, during the Holocaust — quibbling over the technicalities or optics of a plan to end it and save lives in immediate peril.

That so many “pro-Palestine” activists are openly bashing the U.S. proposal to immediately end the war — and, in some cases, openly calling on Hamas to reject it — raises two possibilities: that they never actually believed it was a genocide at all, or that the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is secondary to their utility as a cudgel against Israel.

It increasingly seems as though both are true.

The “Free Palestine” crowd would be perfectly content to sacrifice the people on the ground, Palestinians and Israelis alike, on the altar of their forever war against the Jewish state. We must not let them. Now is the time for people of conscience around the world to drown out the hate and elevate the voices of those who live in this narrow strip of land and want nothing more than to leave this nightmare behind them.

When this war ends — and it will end — it will be despite the “Free Palestine” crowd, not because of them. And we will remember.