Together, we can and will prevail

Solidarity. Strength. Stewardship. These are not abstract slogans—they are lived virtues, forged in fire and refined in fear. A friend of mine—an Israeli father—recently shared a haunting image: his young children in a safe room as rockets rained down on Tel Aviv. Earlier, he had quietly ushered them there with a smile—his soul steeled by necessity, his courage masked by calm. That moment wasn’t just about survival. It was moral leadership under fire.

These scenes may not be isolated. They may be previews of a far darker future—one in which our own children in Western democracies face similar threats if we continue to look away. Imagine if those explosions had carried chemical or nuclear warheads. First fired at Israel. Then at other nations across the Middle East, Europe, or beyond. A genocide—not the imagined one falsely screamed by zealots about Gaza, but a real one. A strike at the heart of the West: free markets, rule of law, women’s rights, pluralism—and the bitter irony of a society that platforms and tolerates those who seek its destruction.

The horror is unspeakable—and may have been realised but for pre-emptive actions taken, consistent with Article 51 of the UN Charter, which affirms every nation’s inherent right of self-defence.

We live in momentous times. As Lenin observed, “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” This is one of those weeks.

But I don’t want to dwell on geopolitics or meta-trends. The cogs of history are always turning. Instead, I want to focus on individuals—on Israelis I feel a deep kinship with: Jews, Druze, Muslims, and Christians I met while living in Israel from 2019 to 2021. They are in my thoughts—they are my brothers and sisters in their time of need.