Hebrews

Like a scene out of The Godfather Pt III, Prime Minister Netanyahu went to the UN –an international institution salivating in antisemitism – while his nation’s army had its hand over the button to destroy Hezbollah. In a move of sheer genius, he delivered his no bullshit speech and minutes later the IDF took out the entire chain of command of Hezbollah, including Hassan Nasrallah in a huge round of explosions on the terrorist organization’s headquarters. Nasrallah - the butcher of Lebanon – not only turned Lebanon into a terrorist holding bay but he slaughtered scores of Americans. It was Bibi and the IDF who got justice for decades’ worth of Hezbollah’s victims, not the United Nations. What an embarrassment for them.

You see, justice still lives. The Hebrews created it. And we’re taking it back into our own hands.

Here Netanyahu is after coming off the podium to give the IDF its instructions after a week of Hezbollah rockets attacked all over central and Northern Israel. “We are winning,” said Netanyahu to a skeleton audience at the UN, before proceeding to carry out the win. The UN was the best diversion for Israel, giving Nasrallah a false sense of security, imagining Bibi would never strike while at the United Nations in New York. Well Nasrallah forgot the definition of the word chutzpah. As Bibi spoke at the UN, most of the global delegates walked out. And he spoke regardless, because he knew he was about to make a call to take out one of Iran’s major terror networks. The UN’s representatives meanwhile are sleepwalking into the abyss.

Netanyahu’s speech is one of the most incredible speeches I’ve heard by a politician in eons. It is fully transcribed here – or you can watch it here:

“In this battle between good and evil, there must be no equivocation. When you stand with Israel, you stand for your own values and your own interests. Yes, we’re defending ourselves, but we’re also defending you against a common enemy that, through violence and terror, seeks to destroy our way of life. So there should be no confusion about this, but unfortunately, there is a lot of it in many countries and in this very hall, as I’ve just heard.

Good is portrayed as evil, and evil is portrayed as good.”

Had the countries who walked out stayed, they may have learned something.

So the action was taken, and Hezbollah was Hezblasted. And the cherry on top was that Israel used American ammunition in their attack. Because Israel is done waiting for anyone to tell us how to defend ourselves in order to survive. No more Rafahs.

I know many love to hate certain men in power but you can’t swing this. Bibi and the IDF just showed up the entire human rights community by bearing the teeth of a nation who won’t wait to be granted permission to fight for its own survival. Israel is protecting the free world from Islamic jihadism. The West can thank us later. But already thanking us are the smart countries in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, even Jordan. They are rooting for Israel to take the fight to Khameini, the Supreme Leader of Iran. And they know that Israel is the only country that will.

This week our homeland was on fire. Israelis were being rocketed in Haifa and Tel Aviv, with the Iron Dome performing magnificent visual displays in the skies of defense. Our sisters may still be in captivity. Our community may still be at war. But our pain is purpose when we turn it into action. And Israel just destroyed Hezbollah in ten days. That’s two days more than Chanukah. Looks like we barely broke a sweat doing it.

This is a historic day. It is the beginning of the end for the Islamic Regime of Iran. Which is why there are videos of people all over Iran, Syria and Lebanon celebrating Nasrallah’s death, mainly women. Here is one from Iran.

What a full whirlwind of a week. And it had a theme, and the theme was reckoning. We are seeing a reckoning, after a year of relentless hope in the face of despair. Energy is shifting. Momentum is gathering. Success is building. I feel it on a cellular level. I feel a change in my perspective. I feel a change in attitude towards me, too. My friend put my name into Meta AI on Monday morning and this is what came up. It was the perfect way to start my week.

After October 7 happened, I put myself through the anguish because I had to see it with my own eyes. And on Monday night at the Wiltern (a sold out show that sold out by word of mouth) British hero and journalist Douglas Murray said the same thing. He went to Israel as soon as possible after that deadly day because he knew that in order to do his job he had to feel the full scope of what happened, in every one of his senses. Murray is currently on tour, and his “show” is a presentation of some of his own private footage from what he documented at the crime scenes after 10/7. There is a scene where he talks to a specialist who dealt with the bodies from the Nova festival, and who discusses the dismembered states of the bodies where parts of more than one body would have wound up in the same body bag. “We had to determine which remains needed connecting together,” she said. If Murray had not seen with his own eyes, if I had not seen with my own eyes, this would all seem quite unbelievable.

Onstage during the interview segment of his performance, Murray brilliantly said: “The toxic combination of ignorance and narcissism is the pathology in this country”. In that moment I came to understand that it is my fate that I stopped platforming the popular kids to start battling the rot in our societies. Because something really is quite wrong, and it’s our moral duty to speak about it. Murray talks about how human beings do crazy things in every era that we reflect back on and realize were crazy: slavery for one; using children as chimney sweepers for another. We must demand of ourselves the question: what is that crazy behavior now?

If only the world’s journalists had a fraction of Murray’s knowledge base and his integrity to pursue it. If only they would sacrifice their own egos in order to do their job well.

In the bowels of The Wiltern afterwards - a backstage area I used to inhabit when interviewing bands like Tegan & Sara or rockstars like Liam Gallagher - Murray was greeted by public intellectuals such as Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein. Murray and I collided, and he joked about how we were like ships in the night in the Gaza envelope when the war broke out, and I thought: my goodness, how my life has changed.

Someone on a similar mission to Murray in terms of bearing truth is Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levi, who I mentioned in my last update. Dr Cochav and her all-female team at the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children presented themselves last night at a private residence in Bel Air. I have been speaking about Cochav a lot this week for good reason.

When Cochav asked for me to speak in the crowd last night, I told of how I went to Israel and the Gaza Envelope weeks into the war because – again – I knew that as a writer and a thought leader, I had to stare it in the face. And as a human rights lawyer, and a scholar Cochav felt the same way when she immediately began documenting the atrocities post October 7. When I went over there, I spent my first few days baring witness to the atrocities all over the South, in the kibbutzim, in Re’im where Nova took place, in the bomb shelters on the 232. I will never un-see, or un-smell, or even un-taste the death I witnessed. But a few days in, I met Cochav, and we embraced like we had known each other for lifetimes. We spoke about DARVO and about how the entire human rights world was using the same tactic used to deny rape in sexual assault cases against an entire nation. Cochav in her already then tireless mission to see the unseeable and to make a record of the truth for the past, present and future, to actively and courageously record history, not only gave me hope but inspiration.

In this clip, Cochav talks about how she at first gathered all this information to share with the human rights legal system that she believed in as a scholar and lecturer at Reichman university where she taught for a decade, only for the United Nations to immediately turn the other cheek. Instead of continuing to beg for a seat at the table, Cochav began her mission to make a binding archive of materials like those at Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, making cases for every individual who endured a humanitarian crime by Hamas, so that a/ there’s a record of it and b/ there may be prosecution of these crimes in the future. That is how the Civil Commission came to be. You should know that after this video ends, the crowd and interviewer Moran Atias are stunned into silence. Atias broke it by saying of the UN: “well, fuck them”.

“Is there international law for Israeli women?”

Cochav is an emblem for me of what it takes to be a Jewish leader in this moment; to reinvent the wheel outside of the systems we once helped to build that have ultimately betrayed us. She is a mother of four. Since October 7, every ounce of her energy has been squeezed into finding every single facet of information to give every victim a story, while exposing herself to the minutiae of the horrors. Even if the entire world wants to look away, we must speak this into existence because we can’t afford to look away. If you are looking to give tzedaka during this season of chagim, please consider donating to Cochav’s Commission here so they can continue doing this historic work.

This week too, I saw my friend Noam Ben David on the BBC in the UK promoting the new Nova documentary We Will Dance Again, and I decided I had to honor her bravery, and the bravery of all the survivors by watching the documentary myself. And maybe I shouldn’t be so vulnerable online but after I watched the film (available on Paramount Plus in the US), I didn’t know how else to convey to people who need to watch this documentary why. I had not stopped sobbing for an hour.

To the Nova community, not only am I so unbearably sorry for all the lives massacred on October 7th, and for all the families who lost their loved ones. I am so sorry that for the survivors who endured unspeakable sights and efforts in order to live you must live every day with paralyzing trauma and fear while the world ignores your pain and celebrates the people who massacred your friends, and who murdered their souls, and parts of your souls.

I am so sorry that in Western democracies, there are bands and artists who put the flags of those who murdered your friends and loved ones on their guitars and behind their stages; who block freeways in America to show solidarity with your torturers; who scream slogans and chant words they don’t understand, the purpose of which only serves the terrorist organization that slaughtered the people you went to a peace dance party with, because more than anyone else in the West, it was you who believed in peace with your neighbors the most.

I am so ashamed of the people I considered friends and family for years, who will never watch this documentary, and who will continue to live in a fairy tale, ignoring the reality of what you had to overcome. You have more courage than they could ever dream of having, as they align themselves with the popular cause to make themselves successful while erasing the spilled blood of your families.

I am so grateful that my integrity landed me here, to do this now. I no longer have to squander my time on this earth propping up false idols. Instead I have the privilege to witness the atrocities you overcame and to urge the West to see the truth of what happened to you, so that you can survive, and banish the darkness with the magnificence of your brave light.

The BBC only agreed to show this film as long as the producer agreed to not call Hamas “terrorists”. What’s new? So let’s move on from the BBC. Let’s focus on who we do have beside us.

I want to direct you to a second monologue from Sky News Australia anchor Erin Molan, who is neither Jewish nor Israeli. She went viral last week for her astounding monologue about Israel’s pagers operation, calling out the hypocrisy of Israel’s critics, namely Clementine Ford, who sides with Hezbollah. To this day, Molan is the only news anchor worldwide outside of Israel who has invited me on her broadcast to discuss the war. Today she sent me this - her second monologue - due to my amplification of her first. Once again she delivers blow after blow of moral clarity injected with full open heart and fiery words. Her desire to make her voice matter not just for us but for humanity is - as her wish expresses - going to make her daughter exceptionally proud.

It’s the month of Elul, and Rosh Hashanah is upcoming. I think back on this time last year, and what I was writing about before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. My mother had just lost her best friend. I was going through change, searching for meaning and purpose. And although we would never have wanted October 7 to rock our lives in our worst nightmares, this past year has forced me to face darkness in a way that I needed on every level to understand why I’m here and what I have to offer, and crucially who wants to receive it.

These days are filled with tears and anger and grief but they are no longer filled with confusion. Everything is clear. I am clear. I feel clear about who I am and what I’m doing, and I feel clear about who sees me for that, and who stands next to me. I find myself in the company of people who feel exactly the same way every day, and that gives me wholeness. I no longer feel empty. Thank you to everyone who interrupts me, who stops to say hello in the street or at the grocery store, who hovers over my airplane seat, I don’t mind at all. It’s my honor to be here with you in this moment.

To speak of happiness at this hour is not quite right, but I know that when I smile these days, when I laugh, when I have reason to feel light, it’s coming from the deepest place of need and recognition. I hope you are all having a peaceful Shabbat and a meaningful upcoming holiday season. Hold on. This doesn’t last forever.

Soon I will share with you details of a last-minute thrilling project and event coming together for the victims of the Nova attack that I’m so proud to be putting together. Watch this space.