On the evening of October 6, the eve of the Simchat Torah holiday, the celebration at our neighborhood synagogue in Jerusalem was in full swing. We laughed, danced, and drank until late, going to bed with a sense of happiness and security.
Just hours later, the sky crashed down on us, shattering our hearts. We woke up to the sound of sirens and rushed to bomb shelters. In shock, we read the news about terrorists infiltrating Sderot, struggling to understand if we were still asleep or living through a nightmare.
We fought a war of survival, as if history had returned and the Holocaust was chasing us once again
Within minutes, I received a phone call from my unit in the army and was immediately called up for reserve duty as a briefing officer for the Home Front Command. After a quick briefing, I went on the airwaves, radio, and TV to announce restrictions and safety instructions to the public, trying to calm people down, as well as myself, while looking into the frightened eyes of my daughters.
The massacre hit close. I grew up in the Gaza Envelope area and went to high school there. My family and friends fought against the terrorists; the children of friends were at the Nova party or served in the army bases that were attacked. Some were killed, some thankfully survived.
For months I barely slept. I did dozens of interviews every day on TV and radio, along with lectures for social organizations, senior communities, and new immigrants, both on Zoom and in person.
This was alongside intense activity as part of the Israel Victory Project of the Middle East Forum. We held the first Knesset conference to discuss criteria for victory in Gaza. For the first time in history, we brought in a key Iranian opposition activist from Europe, who called on Israel to strike Iran instead of wasting time on its tentacles.
We fought a war of survival, as if history had returned and the Holocaust was chasing us once again. Even when we decided to break away from exile, the Holocaust pushed its foot through the door of our national home, trying to get inside, and we had to push it back with force and, more importantly, with spirit—the spirit of resilience and victory.
The feeling that our enemies were trying to destroy us while we were busy fighting among ourselves woke us up, and we stood together as one solid rock, fighting side by side.
The biggest personal challenge was protecting the children. We wanted to shield them from the war, let them see smiles and love, not death and rockets. My wife and I decided that there would be no news in the house, only music. News could only be listened to through headphones. Of course, this plan didn’t work. The outside world barged in through the kindergarten and school, through the uniform I wore every morning, through the other fathers of many children in the kindergarten and school, and, of course, through the sirens.
We wanted to shield our children from the war, let them see smiles and love, not death and rockets.
We tried to explain to our kids that this was nothing new, that for 3,000 years, Jews have been attacked and persecuted, even though they have contributed more to the world than any other people in every field, simply because they were successful and resilient.
We told our children that for all these thousands of years, Jews have suffered unfair treatment. Antisemitism has not disappeared and won’t after 2,000 years. Yes, Jews now have a state and a strong army, and they try to live like everyone else, with a small home of their own, but they are still not left in peace. So now, the Jewish state has become the Jew of the nations, subject to double standards. What others are allowed to do, the Jews are not, even when it comes to basic rights like defending ourselves. The world has been used to Jews being unable to defend themselves for 2,000 years, so it’s hard for them to accept that we now can.
We explained to our children what we had come to realize, more strongly than ever before—something I knew all along: there is no justice, especially not for Jews. Unfortunately, there is only one thing that can provide security—winning the war. We must accept this and strive for victory.
Some will say that economic dependency or benefit can provide security. Indeed, it can contribute to security when someone needs you for economic reasons. But even then, if you don’t have military strength, they will simply take your economic tools or resources by force.
These insights are what we, in the Israel Victory Project of the Middle East Forum, have been advocating for the past seven years since the project’s launch, through every platform possible. In some areas, we succeeded; in others, we didn’t have enough time. In 2023, we launched a plan for the demilitarization of Gaza. Maybe, if we had had one more year, we could have convinced the decision-makers to implement the plan and prevent this horrific massacre.
We will fight, and we will win. We don’t have any other choice.
For the first months since October 7, we felt weakened and vulnerable. But now, during the last months, after successful operations in Gaza, Yemen, and especially in Iran and Lebanon, we have regained our strength and deterrence.
The world should know that we woke up and learned the lesson. We will fight, and we will win. We don’t have any other choice. “Never again” is now, and we won’t make the same mistakes anymore.
I hope that the entire moderate world, including Muslim countries around the world that seek peace and prosperity and cooperation, has awakened, learned the lesson, and realized the need to fight back against the extremists.
We cannot, and must not, appease Iran. It can only be defeated along with all its proxies.
This is a moment akin to the negotiations between Chamberlain and Hitler in 1938. If we do not learn from past mistakes and continue to appease a murderous aggressor in the hopes they will calm down, we will find ourselves facing another world war—this time much more brutal, with far more lethal weapons, driven by an ideology of conquering not just a continent, but the world.
