War: Day 14

Living for fourteen days in an active war zone drains something deep out of you that sleep cannot replace. My children wake up not knowing what tomorrow will bring, only that another siren may come, another sprint to the shelter, another night watching the sky explode with interceptions while missiles streak overhead. We are alive minute by minute, miracle by miracle, and I thank the God of Israel for every one of them, because without those miracles the story would look very different. People watching from comfortable countries cannot begin to understand how an entire society adapts to this reality, how parents try to act calm while their children shake, how normal life somehow continues between alerts. Israelis are strong, resilient, stubborn about survival, but make no mistake about it, living like this is brutal. It is exhausting. It is fear wrapped in faith, courage forced out of necessity, and a daily reminder that the world can turn into hell on earth in the time it takes for a siren to start screaming.

Humans always manage to discover new ways to test the limits of endurance. Living through war turns that experiment into a daily routine. Sirens, shelters, phones buzzing with alerts, children asking questions you wish they never had to ask. It becomes the rhythm of the day.

I moved to Israel from the United States eighteen months ago. Eighteen months. That is barely enough time to figure out which grocery store has decent produce, let alone learn how to run to a shelter while calculating whether your kids are close enough to grab before the siren finishes its first scream. This is not theory for me. This is not a television panel discussion. This is life.

Day fourteen of this war. Fourteen days of sirens, interceptions lighting up the night sky, and the strange quiet that comes afterward when you realize you are still alive. War is ugly. Anyone who pretends otherwise is either lying or has never experienced it. Buildings are destroyed. Families are shattered. People die. That is true on every side of every war ever fought.

And I hate it.

I hate that my children know what a bomb shelter looks like. I hate that my phone is filled with emergency alerts instead of normal life. I hate that an entire region is trapped in cycles of violence and grief that should have ended generations ago.

But hatred of war does not mean blindness about why it happens.

This war did not appear out of thin air. It was not born from “Zionism” or “American nationalism” or whatever fashionable slogan people throw around from the comfort of a café thousands of miles away. This war began with evil decisions made by evil men. The regime in Tehran built a machine dedicated to terror for decades. Funding militias, training killers, celebrating slaughter as policy.

And then came October 7.

That day was not a misunderstanding. It was not a military operation. It was deliberate slaughter. Civilians murdered because they were Jews. Families butchered in their homes. Children executed. Women assaulted. People burned alive.

That is not politics. That is evil.

If someone cannot recognize that level of barbarity as evil, something is deeply broken in their moral compass. A regime that murders its own people by the tens of thousands, funds terrorism across the Middle East, and celebrates massacres of civilians is not misunderstood. It is not complicated. It is evil.

I wish the world were different. I truly do. I wish my children were growing up in a world where peace was the default condition of humanity. A world where countries did not need armies and missiles and air defense systems. A world where sirens were used for ambulances and not incoming rockets.

But that world does not exist.

The real world contains people who believe murder is holy. It contains regimes that glorify death. It contains ideologies that treat the destruction of entire populations as a victory.

So until peace becomes real, someone has to confront that darkness.

Israel does not pretend to be delicate about it. Israel is blunt. Israel is fierce. Israel is stubborn about survival in a way that only a people with three thousand years of history can be.

And standing beside Israel is the United States, our great ally. Two democracies that understand something basic about the human condition: evil does not disappear because you ignore it. Evil disappears when it is defeated.

That is what this war is about.

This is not Zionism versus Islam. Millions of Muslims live peacefully around the world and in Israel itself. This is not American imperialism versus some imagined resistance.

This is good versus evil.

One side builds hospitals, universities, and democratic institutions. The other side builds terror networks and indoctrinates children into martyrdom. One side protects religious freedom for Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others. The other side slaughters people for their identity.

There is no neutral ground between those two realities.

History does not remember the comfortable spectators who watched evil unfold and decided it was too complicated to judge. The middle ground in a fight between civilization and barbarism is not wisdom. It is cowardice.

Pick a side.

Stand with the people who build societies where human life matters. Stand with the nations that defend freedom, even when doing so is painful and costly. Stand with the forces trying to push the world toward stability and prosperity.

Or stand with the butchers.

Because those are the only two choices that actually exist.

The Jewish people have been here before. For centuries we were told to endure quietly while others decided our fate. Those days are gone. The return to Zion changed that forever.

Today the Jewish homeland is defended by a sovereign nation, a powerful military, and alliances that understand the stakes. The Star of David is no longer a symbol forced onto a frightened people. It flies on aircraft protecting them.

War is horrible. No sane person celebrates the destruction it brings. But sometimes war becomes necessary because evil refuses to stop on its own.

When that moment arrives, the responsibility of decent people is simple.

Fight until evil loses.