For two thousand years, the Jewish people wandered through the world’s indifference, expelled, hunted, humiliated, burned, and gassed. Every generation promised that it would be the last to see Jewish suffering, and yet the hatred returned, again and again, dressed in new language and false virtue.

But not anymore.

For the first time in millennia, Jews do not live in fear. We are home, sovereign, armed, determined, and unashamed of our strength. Israel is not a miracle of chance; it is the product of relentless resilience and genius, built from the ashes of those who perished and the dreams of those who refused to die. Our survival is not an accident. It is the result of courage, innovation, and will.

We are no longer the world’s convenient moral punching bag. The inversion of victim and aggressor, the propaganda that paints the only Jewish state as a colonial monster, is a lie, a modern-day blood libel, and we will no longer pretend otherwise. The world can rage, lecture, and issue resolutions but Israel will defend itself, not because it seeks conflict, but because Jewish history leaves no room for naïveté.

Those who spend their days condemning Israel from the comfort of Europe, Canada, or Australia, while excusing terrorism and tyranny, should look in the mirror. For in that mirror, they will see not only 2,000 years of Jew hatred but their own cultural, religious, and institutional failings. They will see classic Freudian projection of their own inadequacies and historical bankruptcy. Their words do not move us. Their hypocrisy no longer surprises us. We have learned that moral cowardice often hides behind the language of ‘human rights’, and that antisemitism is most dangerous when it masquerades as compassion.

We will not apologise for surviving. We will not apologise for winning. We will not apologise for building a nation that thrives in a desert where others sow only destruction. We do not need the permission of the United Nations, the approval of the European Union, or the sympathy of those who never lifted a finger when Jewish blood ran freely across Europe and the Middle East.

Our grandparents built a state so that no Jewish child would ever again be defenceless. That covenant stands. Israel’s existence is not up for debate. Its legitimacy is not a question. And its future is not negotiable.

We are a people reborn – unbowed, unbroken, and unafraid. The world may not like a strong Jew. But a strong Jew is the only kind the world will ever see again.

There are those who traffic in inverted narratives, who recast victims as oppressors and hold Israel to moral standards they never applied when Jews were defenceless. We must call that out for what it is: selective moralising that often hides an older antisemitism under new clothes. Critique is legitimate; hypocrisy is not. Demanding Israel accept vulnerability as a virtue while excusing or romanticising violence against Jews is a double standard that the world must stop tolerating.

Make no mistake: asserting Israel’s right to defend its citizens is not the same as celebrating war. Strength is a moral responsibility. A resilient nation uses its power to protect its people and, where possible, to create conditions for peace – economic cooperation, technological partnership, humanitarian outreach, and diplomatic engagement. Israel’s very existence, and the innovations that come from it, can be engines of prosperity for the Middle East if States in the region choose partnership over perpetual conflict.

To our critics in foreign capitals, lecture halls, and social feeds who assume moral suasion can unmake history, know this: Jews do not seek permission to survive. We do not need lectures when our children’s lives are on the line. We will defend our people, defend our homes, and defend the right of a sovereign nation to chart its future. Israel and the Jewish people will also, wherever possible, extend hands that can build bridges, medical aid, water technology, cybersecurity and agriculture, because power that is only coercive is a wasted inheritance. The point is this: strength must be matched with conscience and purpose.

History’s cruel experiments taught the Jewish people two complementary truths: never to rely solely on the goodwill of others, and never to renounce the moral claim to compassion that defines our tradition. We can keep both lessons. We can be implacable in defence and generous in peace-building. We can be fierce in the face of denial and steadfast in the service of human betterment.

So let there be no misunderstanding. We are here. We are robust. We are builders and defenders. Two thousand years of exile ended in a determined rebirth, and that rebirth is not temporary mercy, it is a permanent chapter in human history. To those who would erase us with rhetoric or reduce our right to exist to a debating point: we answer with work, with innovation, with science, with children in schools and Universities, with more Nobel Prize Winners, and with the ancient liturgy of a people who will not be extinguished.

If the Middle East aspires to real stability and prosperity, it will have to reckon with this reality. Israel will continue to protect its citizens and extend its innovations outward. It will continue to insist that antisemitism be named and opposed. It will continue, as always, to turn memory and morality into a bright and peaceful future for all humanity. It will do all this with or without the permission of those who seek to demonise and delegitimise the only democracy in the Middle East.

The moral inversion that seeks to paint Israel as an aggressor is an insult to history and truth. For centuries, the world watched Jewish communities being slaughtered while offering condolences too late. Now that Jews can defend themselves, many of those same voices demand restraint, disarmament, or disappearance. Those days are over.

Israel does not crave approval from Europe, the UN, or the chorus of self-appointed moral arbiters. We will defend our heritage, religion, culture, families and our future without apology. The lesson of Jewish history is written in blood: without power, there is no survival. And without a homeland, there is no Jewish future.

Am Yisroel Chai – The Jewish people live!