A child knows.

You ask them what they did wrong, and after a moment, they’ll tell you. Not perfectly, not always comfortably, but honestly enough to begin again. You ask ChatGPT the same question, and it answers with clarity. Whenever I use it and provide instructions and it doesn’t deliver, I just ask: What did you get wrong. It doesn’t defend itself. It doesn’t deflect. It says it. Sometimes it’s a bullet. Sometimes it’s a laundry list.

And then there’s us, the Jewish people.

We’re in the middle of something that’s often framed as politics, security, or history. It’s all of those things. But underneath it, this is a war of stories. Not just what happened, but what it means. Not just facts, but framing. And we’re losing it. We are losing the war on the actual truth. On the real narrative.

Our enemies have told a story about us. There are a lot of them and a lot amplify. It’s simple, emotional, and repeatable. It travels well because it’s built to. Ours is more complicated. Older. Layered with truth, but harder to tell, and too often told too late. And there aren’t that many of us and too many aren’t actively involved in the fight of our lives.

Anyway, it’s not just about our enemies and just what they’re saying. It’s what we’ve failed to say. And why I’ve been sounding the alarms and speaking up the best way I know how for around 15 years now.

And if I’m honest, it’s not just about saying it better. It’s about what we’ve chosen to build, or not build, around it. And we haven’t. We’ve treated narrative like an accessory, not infrastructure. Something reactive, not something we invest in, nurture, and scale.

It hasn’t been led like it matters, if it’s been led at all. It hasn’t been funded like it matters. It hasn’t been organized like it matters. Those who know my advocacy over the past two decades know that I’ve been speaking up about this for years. Bottom line is, good intentions aside, for the people of The Book, we’ve sucked for a while in telling our story.

The result is what we’re seeing now. Reactions. Uncoordinated and rudderless. A lot of noise, but no sustained direction. No big picture thinking. No unity at the highest levels on this subject, if it’s a subject at all.

We have to be willing to look at our own role in all of that and more. Where we overcomplicated the telling of the truth when we should’ve simplified. Where we assumed understanding from the middle ground instead of earning it with narrative grit. Where we spoke to ourselves about all sorts of things instead of the world.

And where we stayed silent.

Because we did.

We trusted that the truth would carry on its own. That history would speak for us. That intention would be understood without explanation. It doesn’t work like that anymore, if it ever did.

As a branding expert with my own international agency, I can tell you that a story untold doesn’t stay neutral. It gets replaced. And our Jewish story is in the process of being actively replaced by those who want to see it warped.

None of this takes away from the reality we’re living through. The violence, the loss, the need to defend ourselves. That’s real. It’s immediate. Of course. But, in the long run, narrative isn’t secondary to that. It shapes how all of it is seen, understood, and remembered. It’s the story, stupid. And what we didn’t build in terms of an ongoing narrative has finally caught up to us. And the results are catastrophic.

So we need to ask the question a child can answer. That ChatGPT can answer. What did we get wrong? Not as an exercise in blame, but as a starting point.

The starting point is alignment.

On how we can be seen as who we are and not as who we aren’t. Not forced messaging, but shared direction. Responsible and capable, well-intentioned global Jewish leadership working with honest allies that treat narrative as a priority, not a side function. Investment that matches the scale of the challenge. Infrastructure that connects creators, thinkers, institutions, and operators so ideas don’t sit, our this-is-really-who-we-are stories move and get out there into the fucking open to serve the Jewish People as a whole.

A shift from reacting to building, from isolated voices to coordinated output, from moments to momentum.

Not more uncoordinated and rudderless noise.

A well thought-out and true narrative that, like us, is built to last.

-

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You don’t really understand what matters until you’re running for your life in the middle of what was supposed to be a normal day.

I didn’t fully understand.

I mean, I’ve been through our wars and all of our running to escape rockets. I remember my eldest son as a newborn in my arms during the Tzuk Eitan war with Hamas, 13 years ago. Escaping those kinds of rockets is a completely different ordeal to these IRGC and Houthi missiles. What they can do, and are doing all over my neighborhood and country - North, South, East, West - is something else.

I know what I’m about to write is going to sound obvious. It does even to me. But no matter what gets destroyed, cars, houses, factories, offices, businesses, roads, schools, systems, even cities over time, can be restored.

People can’t.

And once that clicks, because you’re living through something like this and you really get it, it doesn’t unclick.

Five weeks now.

No school. It stopped when the missiles started. A few weeks in, there was an attempt at Zoom, which mostly didn’t work. Kids distracted, alerts and sirens interrupting ten times a day. It sucked. It’s kids at home now during Passover, trying to make sense of why their world keeps shrinking. They’re incredible, they take it in their stride, but it’s not easy.

I’m trying to work. Trying to be present for them. Trying to be a good partner to my wife. Trying to take the puppy out without overthinking how far I am from somewhere safe. You leave the house and you have to think about it. How fast can I get back? Where are the kids? Where’s the nearest shelter? How do we coordinate if we’re apart? How do you communicate calmly when nothing about this is calm?

A cluster bomb landed right down my street. Another one near where I used to work. Another at my train station. Another near my kids’ school. Missiles everywhere from this current war and the 12 day war. Today, a colleague of mine, Einav, who’s in the advocacy fight with me, shared how her grandmother’s neighbor’s place was destroyed by a cluster bomb. I have friends serving in Gaza and in Lebanon. Everyone is affected, and not in small ways.

We carry on.

People call it resilience. Strength. Like we’ve tapped into something admirable. I get why it looks that way from the outside. And it is. It’s incredible how the whole country is getting on with this. Soldiers, seniors, kids, parents. Literally everyone. And we are resilient, I’ve spoken about that a lot. But there’s another truth alongside that.

From the inside, it’s just hard.

It’s hard managing work when everything is unstable. Hard keeping your kids calm when they’re already going a bit batshit crazy. Hard checking in on my mum, who’s going through this now without my dad, who passed away six months ago. Hard watching the news. Hard watching people you know carry more than you. Friends whose partners are in reserves, holding down full-time jobs and full-time parenting with no break. Hard not knowing when any of this changes. Plans gone. Letting people down with a speaking tour canceled. Things you ordered don’t arrive. Sleep comes in pieces, if at all. No space. No schedule. No routine. Hard to be creative. Hard even writing this fucking essay.

And still, we carry on.

Not because we’re trying to prove something. Not because we’re aiming to be strong. Because there’s no choice. When life narrows down like this, when everything becomes about seconds and decisions and who’s safe and who’s not, things get very clear. Making sure you and everyone you love is alive.

That’s it.

And in that reality, you don’t choose resilience. You just continue.

What people call resilience is often just what life looks like when you have no choice but to keep going.

Keep going.

-

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I’ve been wanting to write for quite a while. Usually when I want to write, I just write. it comes pretty naturally to me. For you it might have been a week. for me, that feels like forever.

But of course it’s a little complicated to write these days.

Or do anything simply here in Israel, of late.

You watch what’s happening on the news. You follow people on social media. Everyone more or less knows what we’re going through because you can see it. The missiles landing. The red alerts. The military maps. The scary footage. Everything that gets your adrenalin pumping.

That part’s visible.

What doesn’t really make it into the coverage are the little things. The moments in between. The human bits. The people interactions. The parts of life that seem too small to mention until suddenly they aren’t small at all - because they’re looking at you straight in the face.

My wife’s asleep - she just got home after her first night out with friends in three weeks (2 missile alerts while she was out), and the eldest is with a friend of his not too far away (first time we let him out of our sight the last few weeks) and our youngest and puppy are in the closet shelter in an apartment we’re fortunate to stay at for the duration of the war, a 15 minute north of our Tel Aviv digs. It’s quiet for the moment. Last alert was less than an hour ago.

I don’t have anything grand to say about the war tonight.

Nothing. I’m too tired for that .

What I do have are little things. Life things.

Five minutes earlier, he was scolding me.

A few days ago I was sitting in the lobby of the building here. I had my leg kicked up on the side of the old leathery armchair. Like, knee dangling. An old, bald, dark, grumpy-looking man came through with a walker, looked at me, and asked whether I sat like that at home.

I told him, honestly, that actually - I do. Because I really do! I wasn’t trying to be cheeky, but yes, he took that as cheek, gave me a proper piece of his mind and then went on his way, hobbling down the hallway.

Five minutes later the alert went off. Incoming missiles.

We passed each other again in the hallway. He was hobbling back to his apartment. I walked up to him and asked if he needed help getting back. He knew I meant it. He knew exactly who I was, and I knew that he knew exactly who I was. The same guy who had just told me off a few minutes earlier.

But he blessed me. He smiled. Not politely. Warmly. I asked if he was sure he didn’t need help. He knew I meant it. He said he was fine.

And I knew he meant that, too.

In those five minutes, it felt like we’d become friends again. Or maybe not again. Maybe just friends, full stop. Ok, maybe not friends, just fellow men. Two people who’d shared one small moment of friction, and then immediately been pulled back into the same, let’s face it, surreal and unpleasant reality we share where little frictions become insignificant. Not even something to talk about, really.

There’s something quietly beautiful in that. When you experience and feel it for real. Like I’m feeling it now as I think back on it.

Bear with me. I’m tired. Might ramble a bit.

About a week ago at a small shopping center we were out with the family doing a quick run for essentials when another siren went off. The first two people I saw were Arab, a young man and a woman. How do I know? They were speaking Arabic and were dressed accordingly. I asked where the local shelter was. They pointed us in the right direction and made sure I understood exactly where to go. “This way, then right, then striaght, and right and down two floors and you’ll see a….”. I understood exactly where to go.

Three or four minutes later we were all standing together in the shelter.

Arabs, Jews, probably Christians, Muslims. A whole mix of Israelis under one roof, not saying much, just waiting for the all clear. All in it together.

Just like this yesterday…a random bomb shelter in Tel Aviv…..

People you love look different when they’re the ones standing guard

Then there’s my nephew, who comes home for breaks from serving in the IDF. A boy I love very much who’s suddenly in uniform, protecting me, my wife, and his cousins.

When I look at him, I don’t just see a soldier. I see a die-hard surfer. A guitar player. A video game player. An amazing son and brother. A kid who is giving and caring, funny and wise, talented, creative and a proper mensch. I remember the day he was born. I remember carrying him as a toddler. Looking after him as an uncle when he was small, here and there. We have shuarma dates now in our hood.

He’s good people. You know someone for eighteen years and you know exactly who they are. When I look at him, I’m reminded in the most personal way possible that most of the people here are simply decent human beings trying to protect the people they love and the lives they were meant to live. Our lives don’t revolve around the IDF. We’re not a news item. We literally all are the IDF. We’re this boy. Or girl. We’re Uncle Eitan who served. Or his nephew who serves. Protecting our community lives as a part of our mandatory service is just a part of who we are.

There are so many people I know in Israel living through this who don’t want to complain too much. We all know what’s at stake. We know lives are being lost. We know what we’ve been through together over the last two and a half years. We know what this country’s gone through since its inception, and what our people went through long before that.

So no, nobody really wants to moan. But that doesn’t make it easy. The agony of every day we’ve all been through since October 7th. The disruption to your life. The running for shelter. The hate. The misunderstandings. The uncertainty. The exhaustion. The way your routines with your kids, your work, your thoughts, your body, your sleep, all start getting bent out of shape.

It isn’t really about the coffee

Here’s something else. I’ve found myself missing a café I go to a few minute walk away from our place. A certain blend of coffee I like there, killer danishes, too. But it’s not really the coffee or the danishes.

It’s everything around those things.

The walk there. The street. The weathered bench. The people watching. The noise from the kids’ playground nearby. The dog park. The way the neighborhood sounds when life’s just carrying on around you and nobody’s bracing for anything. The way it sounds when you’re listening to what you listen to through your headphones and experiencing everything out there to your own soundtrack. The details are endless, and most of them are the sort of things you never think to appreciate because they’re just there, quietly being a part of your day together.

Until they’re not.

That’s what I’ve been feeling and it’s not some dramatic and poetic, artsy epiphany. Just a very real appreciation for all the little parts of an ordinary life that make it feel whole. Like - when you’re out of the apartment or not running, you feel things more. I’ve been having a lot of moments like that. Looking around me in awe at the spirit of the people in this country. Like, really looking at them. It’s not Israel. It’s the people of Israel. It’s always been the people of Israel.

Don’t need to go where you don’t want to go

We had a birthday in the family on Friday night and my mother and sister and aunt and fam, all of us managed to get together. (Not so simple!) After a really nice evening, someone asked whether everyone really believes in this war. Usually that kind of question would lead somewhere. We’d talk. Argue a little. Maybe really go there and have a full-on debate. Argue a lot.

Nobody really went there.

Not because we didn’t have thoughts. Everyone did. I certainly did. I do.

There’s been an evil regime dedicated to our destruction for quite a while. Working on it. Talking about it. Building toward it. And I believe that at some stage something had to be done about it. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a war monger. But I have been for this action, like so many Israelis and others, for the longest time. And I do want us to see this through. I want us to finish what was started. I want the military threat of the Iranian regime taken down so we’re not living like this every few years. I’d like the Iranian people to be free after almost 50 years of a regime destroying their lives and collective future . They deserve more.

But that night, we were tired and it was enough just to sit together and eat and be together and leave the heavier conversation where it is for a little while. Or never bring it up again.

(As I write that, I have a smile on my face, because that probably is exactly what I would have said at the dinner table had I not been too tired to say it. I’m smiling even more as I write this.)

While writing this piece tonight, I’ve had to run to the shelter twice.

That’s another thing we take for granted when life’s normal. Peace and quiet. Real peace and quiet. The ability to sit in one place long enough to finish a thought. To hear yourself think. To let a sentence arrive without an alarm cutting through it. You don’t fully understand how valuable that is until it’s interrupted enough times.

Sometimes you have to fight for that. Not as a slogan. Not as a line. Not in the Lord of the Rings. But in real life.

And I think that’s what I’ve been trying to say to myself here all along.

Not that war is frightening, exhausting, and disruptive. Of course it is. But that what we’re ultimately trying to protect are also the parts that don’t make the news because they’re too ordinary. A walk with the dog. Just standing on the balcony for a minute and listening to the night. An uninterrupted work call. A walk in the park with your kid. Making eye contact with an adjacent driver at a red light.

The ability to sit in peace and quiet and finish writing a few thoughts without having to run for your life.

And when the sirens stop, life quietly returns. Not all the dramatic parts you see on the news. The ordinary stuff. Like catching a moment for yourself before you switch off the lights for the night in the hope that it’ll actually be a restful night.

Speaking of which….

Laila tov to us all.
And love from israel.

-

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Yes, I’m writing a lot. I have time on my hands with the Iran war, and lots of thoughts.

For almost three years now, anyone paying even casual attention has watched something gross creep back into public conversation.

Statements about Jews and Israel that once lived in the fringes are now said openly, confidently, and shared millions of times. We all know it. We all see it.

Israel’s committing genocide.

Jews secretly control governments.

October 7 didn’t happen the way people say it did.

None of this should feel surprising anymore. It doesn’t to me. Yawn. What’s striking is how bloody comfortable people have become repeating it. The language keeps changing, the platforms keep evolving, but the narrative itself is ancient. And you don’t need to be a Jewish scholar to see it.

We’ve been watching it build for a long time. Not fringe anymore. Everywhere.

I’ve been in this narrative fight for more than fifteen years. Long before October 7, long before most people here now knew me, I was tracking how hatred about Jews was evolving online on Facebook. I spent years watching fringe communities form, grow, and slowly move closer to the mainstream. I tried to sound the alarm as best I could with my writing while so many people still believed antisemitism was mostly a relic of the past.

For years the growth has been slow. And all over the place. With people like Kanye and Owen Jones, Dua Lipa and more.

Then October 7 happened.

And the scale changed overnight.

Suddenly the entire Jewish community felt it.

Ideas that once lived in obscure corners of the internet suddenly exploded into the center of the conversation. Narratives that used to circulate quietly in forums began appearing on mainstream timelines, repeated by influencers, commentators, and ordinary people who likely have no idea (or every idea) they’re repeating something centuries old.

Take Tucker Carlson.

In one of his shows he asked, “Why are we defending mass murder in Gaza?” while questioning American support for Israel. Criticizing governments is normal in democracies. Israelis do it every day. But the framing matters.

Carlson has also described Israel as effectively a “client state” driving American policy, suggesting U.S. interests are subordinated to Israeli ones. That accusation isn’t new. It echoes a centuries-old conspiracy that Jews secretly manipulate powerful governments. Different century, different language, same underlying story.

Yep. Tucker. Hugely popular and influential. And dangerous. (One of those bad mothertuckers.)

Candace Owens pushes a different version of the same narrative. Yes, she is bat-shit crazy. But hugely popular, too. At one point she described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “a holocaust that is being committed on Palestinian children and women.”

She does more than criticize a war. She takes the most specific and documented genocide in modern history and turns it into a rhetorical weapon against the people who were nearly wiped out by it. It’s appalling. And she does it consistently. Owens has also claimed that “Jewish supremacists had everything to do with the Civil War in America,” resurrecting the familiar trope that Jews sit behind the scenes manipulating historic conflicts.

Hitler fanboy Nick Fuentes moves the narrative even further into conspiracy territory, claiming Western governments operate under “Zionist control.” Andrew Tate packages the same idea differently, regularly talking about “Zionist influence” as if Jews operate some invisible global command center. Cenk Uygur pushes his own variation, describing Israel as committing genocide while downplaying or ignoring the openly genocidal language of Hamas.

Different political tribes and different audiences, but the same story: Jews have a sinister agenda and are uniquely malevolent and uniquely powerful.

That contradiction has always been the magic trick of antisemitic narratives. Jews are described as weak parasites and omnipotent puppet masters at the same time, and somehow the contradiction never bothers anyone repeating it.

The brilliant , who I’ve been getting to know this past year and who I’m increasingly impressed by, has spent years explaining why. Propaganda doesn’t work because it’s just sophisticated. It works because it’s repeated until the accusation begins to feel like common knowledge. Say “genocide” often enough and eventually people stop asking whether the accusation actually fits the definition. That’s how you build a narrative.

And once a narrative sticks, facts have a hard time catching up.

Genocide scholar (and friend) Stephen D. Smith has warned that the study of hatred isn’t only about remembering victims. It’s about understanding how ordinary societies slide into destructive thinking long before violence begins. Hatred almost never erupts suddenly. It spreads through stories first. Germany in the 1930s didn’t begin with extermination camps. It began with caricatures and conspiracies repeated until they sounded obvious. Rwanda’s genocide was preceded by years of radio broadcasts describing neighbors as enemies. The Balkans followed the same pattern.

You don’t need to be a brand builder or storyteller like me to see that at this stage.

It’s about the spreading of stories..hate-filled and deceiptful stories. In each case the groundwork was laid not with weapons, but with language. And not just with influencers and personalities online but from mainstream media to elite universities.

That’s why what we’re seeing now is critical to understand far beyond Jews.

Many of the voices like the people above and like the truly nauseating spreading these narratives claim they’re defending Western civilization. But conspiracy thinking about minorities has never strengthened democratic societies. It corrodes them. Once people get comfortable believing hidden cabals secretly control events, trust in institutions collapses, facts become negotiable, and public debate turns into theater. I am not controlling the world neither is my wife, our friends or families but the tropes out their in their billions online say we are - because we’re Jewish.

How many times have we bloody said this: the story about Jews is often the opening act. The rest of society eventually becomes the next target. Which brings us to where we are now. If people can’t see it at this stage…

Can you see it?

We’re living in an era where ideas travel instantly and millions of people participate in shaping public narratives every day. Social media has turned conversation itself into a kind of creative act.

Some people are using that power to spread lies. Others can use it to defend truth.

Understanding the pattern really is fucking important because it helps people recognize what they’re seeing instead of being manipulated by it. And once you recognize the pattern, it becomes harder to ignore.

The people pushing these narratives understand the power of repetition. That’s why they keep repeating the same accusations again and again.

And again!!!!!

I don’t know what their agenda is and I really don’t care. All I know is that they’re wrong, and it’s WRONG. The rest of us have a choice. Like, literally. Ordinary people like me and you. Not to become historians overnight. Not to win every argument but to refuse to let obvious lies pass as normal conversation. And that means in your feeds and with friends and colleagues, too.

Because when truth loses its meaning - on the ground level, not on the media but you start facing it in real life - YOUR REAL ACTUAL LIFE - everything else eventually loses its meaning, too. And that’s a world I’m really not bloody willing to accept. Not for me. Not for my kids.

I hope you’re with me on that. I hope you’re in the trenches in the fight of our times. Because it began a long time ago. And with everyone on board, even though it’ll take along, long time and it’s a forever war, we’ve got a chance at turning this narrative war around.

-

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I don’t wake up thinking I need to document history. I wake up thinking, where are the kids this AM? What happened again yesterday? What’s happened in the last few hours. Wife OK? We in sync? Family. Work. Friends. Where’s the phone?

That’s been the rhythm the past few days.

If you don’t live here in Israel, it’s hard to explain the rhythm. Not the drama: again, the rhythm. The alert sound on the phone is sharp and pierces. I hate it. You feel it in your body before I can process the words to anyone. I check the alert. I calculate. A few minutes. Talk to kids. The wife. Where’s the puppy? One of us grabs the bag that’s been permanently parked by the entrance. And we start to move.

— writing interrupted by missile alert —-

Up until a while ago, under Hamas rocket fire, we’d go to the stairwell. Not ideal, but it is (was) what it is (was). I know well cracks in the wall. Where the magnetic stickers are and on which doors. Where the paint on the windows are peeling .

Ballistic missiles are different. We’ve been there a few times. I’ve seen, in person, the damage they did in my neighborhood not more than 700 feet away. I’ve seen what they do to big buildings. Heard the Iron Dome rockets launching from my hood and then being destroyed above our heads.

I’ve seen the videos of people singing in bomb shelters. Dancing. Making it a moment. I’m glad that exists. I really am. And I love seeing it. But when I look around me, what I’ve seen is none of that. An older man taking the stairs slowly. A neighbor pretending not to steady him but doing it anyway. Kids watching their parents’ faces.

Nothing’s really going to plan.

My mother refuses to go to a shelter. Flat out refuses. I call her. I push. She waves me off. Says she’s fine. She’s stubborn. I get frustrated. Then I let it go. She’ll be fine with the neighbors.

We had a birthday lunch planned on Saturday for my nephew. My sister’s son. Friends and family coming. We waited until the very last hour to see if we could make it 7 blocks to her place - but we couldn’t. Too risky.

Just another quiet adjustment to the calendar.

Nine people today were killed in Beit Shemesh. In their shelter. A direct hit but even though they were underground, it didn’t help. It’s absolutely awful and it’s incredibly hard to process. It’s almost like I can’t think about it. We all know what might happen. You don’t talk about it or try to go there in your head - right now.

Right now we try to carry on.

At some point yesterday late afternoon, after way too many runs across the street to the public shelter (almost 20 for sure) I made the decision with my wife to leave Tel Aviv for a few days. A family member has an apartment fifteen minutes north and they’re out of town and were kind enough to open it up for us.

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Three times we tied to pack up and go but we couldn’t get out between the missiles alerts, but finally in the evening we took the chance. (Getting stuck in a car with missiles that are incoming ain’t fun.) I remember driving and thinking, there’s a decent chance we’re going to end up on the side of the highway with a siren screaming. Shouldn’t we prepare the kids? My wife and I explained what we’d do if that happened. We drove.

We made it.

And then real life didn’t pause.

— writing interrupted by missile alert —-

My eldest had trouble breathing. We stood there in a new apartment with missiles coming down every hour or so and had to decide whether this was a cough, nerves, or something more serious. I stayed with the kids and the puppy while my wife drove back into what felt like an emptied ghost town to get medicine.

I didn’t feel brave. I felt responsible. Focus. I kept doing small mental calculations. That’s what this is. Call wife. Get kids in shelter. Dog, too. How long. Constant calculation.

My kid was fine. My wife got back. I lay down for maybe twenty minutes. Then the sirens started again.

This apartment has a small reinforced room. A walk-in closet, really. After the third alert that night, we decided we’d all just fall asleep in it. It’s tight. Harry Potter vibes. We sit on the floor. We shift. The puppy curls up against whoever seems most tired, like him. We dim the lights. We wait. We fall asleep, elbows and knees in faces…

In the morning, I write back to people who have checked in and watch the news. I call friends and bust open the laptop to work. We just signed a new client the day this current war started. The work continues even though war headlines and missile alerts interrupt. That’s how life is right now. I accept it and know how to function in the mess so long as shit doesn’t get too messy.

We went to the supermarket because we didn’t arrive with much and the local one was open. Forty-five minute delay in their basement because of incoming missiles again. I stood there with a half-full cart thinking, this is absurdly normal. Then the alert cleared and we went back to debating pasta sauce.

I tried recording a video update later. I couldn’t get through it without a siren interrupting me. I laughed after I stopped recording. Not because it’s funny. Because sometimes the only alternative is to laugh. And cuss.

We’re at war.

I saw a line from Andrew Tate floating around saying, “Nobody wants this war.”

There are just so many dangerously useful and influential idiots out there, those with an agenda or plain, morally corrupt narcissists, saying ridiculous things.

It’s seriously shocking. “Nobody wants this war.” It’s a pure sentence. It travels well. It sounds moral. It sounds ‘right’. But tell that to the vast majority of around 90 million Iranians who have lived under a regime that beats women, literally pays for armies to massacre people, hangs gay men from cranes and absolutely massacres its own bloody citizens. Tell that literally to people in their hundreds of thousands dancing in the streets with the fall of Khamenei. Tell that to every country threatened for decades by that regime’s ambitions. Yeah, nobody sane wants a stupid war. But this is liberation from pure evil. I don’t want it, but I want it.

— writing interrupted by missile alert —-

Hey, back again, three missile alerts and hard to get into a writing groove.

No, I don’t want that missile. I don’t want dead Israelis or innocents. I don’t cheer death. I don’t celebrate someone being killed, even if I believe they were a modern-day mass murderer like Khamenei was or anyone who served him. But I also know you’ve got to take out your enemies who want you dead, say they want you dead, plan on you being dead, encourage others and build teams to make you dead, and make dead around you anyone you disagree with.

Khamenei did all of the above. I’m grateful he’s no longer around.

But what’s being dismantled isn’t just a person. It’s a system that has crushed its own people and destabilized half the region. There’s more evil there. More fanaticism.

That affects me and my story.

So while you see many Jewish advocates getting on camera and telling you the news, if you’ve been following me these past 15 years, you know I don’t do that. I don’t do the news. I’ll express what interests my eyes, my soul, my senses, my values, my world, my brain.

I’m interested in the old man on the stairs hobbling to the local bomb shelter.

My stubborn mother who won’t budge.

The Arab man and women at the grocery store who directed us to the shelter earlier today, and then joined us in it.

My wife the way she always jumps a bit with the siren.

The extended birthday lunch for my nephew that didn’t happen (yet).

The friend who checked in that I thought never would.

The friend who didn’t who I figured would.

How proud I am of my kids, just the way they’re handling all of this.

The client who signed anyway.

The closet à la Harry Potter that now serves as our temporary family room and how grateful I am for it.

I’m interested in the rhythm, the nuance, the moments.

History might be shifting. I’m aware of the magnitude. You hear me talk about it all the time. I’m aware of the uncertainty and complexity. But right now, in this apartment, I’m focused on something simpler.

On the fact that we’re here. We’re together.

And together we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Am Israel Chai.

— My writing wasn’t interrupted by missile alerts as I completed this. Score! —-

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Another essay about Jewish identity. I can almost hear the collective sigh.

Yeah, I know. We’re tired. Tired of explaining who we are. Tired of talking antisemitism. Tired of defending Israel. Tired of arguing about Zionism as if the Jewish right to self-determination is a debate club topic instead of a lived reality. Tired of feeling like our existence needs footnotes.

So at the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me be clear from the start. This isn’t about inspiration. It’s about self-respect. It’s about Jewish identity.

Perhaps yours.

In January 2015, after the murders at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket attack in Paris where four Jewish shoppers were murdered and 15 were taken hostage, I wrote to a close friend who had just moved there from Israel. She told me she was shaken, and then she said something that lodged in my chest. Since arriving, she hadn’t really been telling people she was Jewish because she was too scared to.

Just awful. And I totally understood her.

I grew up in Hong Kong and London. I’ve had the playground Nazi salute. The “Get that Jew” outside school as a kid. But the adult versions too. The raised eyebrow. The weird look or pause. The quiet internal calculation about whether in this meeting with friends of colleagues is the time I mention I’m from Israel, or just let it slide.

But that week, hearing my friend talk about her uncomfortable aversion to saying openly who she was because of a safety concern, well - it’s just gutting. And there’s no judgement in there. I don’t mean gutting as in disappointment with her. Just gutting in the sense of being sad. And knowing that in the long run, it’s not a strategy for our community. Silent as we must be sometimes….

Silence doesn’t protect you. It only postpones the moment. Antisemitism doesn’t require you to be loud, religious, political, or Israeli. It only requires you to be Jewish. The rest gets filled in by people who are more than happy to define who Jews are, what Zionism supposedly means, what Israel represents, and where we belong.

Dara Horn wrote, “I really, just, never wanted to write a book where Jewish identity was defined from the outside.”

Defined from the outside. That’s the fight.

Anyway, that night after speaking to my friend, I sat down to write.

Three words showed up.

I’m that Jew.

I didn’t plan them. They arrived, and I found myself staring at the screen asking whether “that Jew” was the stereotype people expect or the actual human being I know myself to be, a father, a creative, flawed and complex, fully human and not available for reduction.

What followed in terms of the writing that came out wasn’t some kind of narrative strategy. It wasn’t branding, my field of expertise. It was something I had clearly been holding in for years finally refusing to stay quiet. It was my gut and most personal reflection or sense of who I am.

When I finished, I read it and liked it and published it on a The Times of Israel blogpost.

Lot’s of people responded but someone wrote in the comments section “I'm that so nice to know I'm not the only one who feels that way Jew. Kavod.” Which made me sit up straight in my seat. Wow, it landed with someone. And they used my musical I’m That Jew notes and made it their own. So I immediately wanted to make this something everyone could not just read, but watch and feel.

So I started making a short film.

Lots of I’m that Jew statements. Lots of people. Real people. I obsessed over every cut. Which sentences with which people? Which names. Einstein. Spielberg. Amy Winehouse. Do we include this line? Is that too much? Not enough? Who else could it belong to? Streisand? Bloomberg? Kravitz? Kissinger? Gadot? What about Meir, Spitz and Portman, Sacks and Sagan?

I wasn’t just assembling a montage. I was asking a bigger question.

If the world insists on flattening us to a few deceitful things, what does it look like to show the full picture of who we are? This is all of us. This is all of it. I’m that Jew and we’re all that Jew. You can’t put us in a box. It’s not how many we are. We aren’t that many. It’s how much of the good stuff we’ve got in us.

So I trusted my gut to go bigger.

People told me six minutes was too long. “No one has the attention span.” Maybe. But stereotypes are short. Depth takes time. Depth is human and I don’t follow trends. The number six, after the Holocaust, was a point of principle for me with this piece. Six minutes stayed.

When it was finally done, hitting publish was its own moment.

I remember thinking somewhere in my head, why go public with this? You can still keep this between friends. Or better yet, publish it anonymously.

But if I was going to show “I’m that Jew,” I couldn’t hide behind anonymity. I didn’t want to. Wasn’t even an option. Anxious as I was (and I was a little), I have never hidden my identity and the underlying truth of expression was a desire to come out and say it for the world to see. And to inspire my people to do the same, if the piece even got to them.

My wife and I talked about what that might mean. The heat, the hate, the online trolls, the negative attention. But I’m that Jew and that Jew is me, probably no more than you.

So I put my full name name on it. And I wrote this:

”Lest any Jew forgets – because of all the violence directed at us, the hatred, the incitement to kill, the vile words, the missiles, the rockets, the knives, the rocks, the deafening silence of the world that we all feel right now – we should be proud of our heritage, accomplishments and spirit. Just like anyone else on this planet. And we shouldn’t be shy about it.

Rise up, speak up and keep your chins up. We'll get through this because we love life and we're strong and smart and funny and beautiful and talented and resilient and educated and hard-working and positive and so much more.

We’re okay. In fact, we’re more than okay.
We rock. Here's a little reminder.”

I hit publish on my Facebook page.

(Here it is on my YouTube channel).

Within hours, it felt like the ground shifted. Likes and shares and comments, shares multiplied and within a couple of days on various platforms, views climbed into the millions. “I’m that Jew, too.” “Someone finally said it.” “I’ve been scared to say I’m Jewish sometimes out loud. Not anymore. Thank you.” “Well done, my Jewish friend, from my Muslim friend.”

What grew from that post wasn’t a campaign. It became a living community. For more than a decade now, every Friday I wish my Facebook community Shabbat shalom and I look forward to it because it’s real. I’ve had that page since around 2013 or something and it’s a real community I love. Jews from Argentina, Toronto, Paris, Johannesburg, Melbourne and everywhere in between.

History has been clear. Lowering your voice doesn’t remove the target.

And this isn’t about social media. Sure, you see the fight there and it should be, too. Critical. But it’s OUT in the real world. That’s the fight.

When my friend and colleague in this fight, Shai Davidai, stood outside Columbia University after being barred from campus, he said at some point, “We just want to be Jewish in public.” That line isn’t and shouldn’t be dramatic. It’s pretty bloody basic. We want to exist openly - without explanation or apology. And be who we are. It’s crazy we even have to say it but let’s stop talking about how crazy it is and get to changing the norm out there.

I also recently had the honor to meet Rabbi Doron Perez, who speaks about Jewish unity with a depth forged through unimaginable loss. Just speaking to him, he reminds you that unity isn’t sameness. It’s shared responsibility. Shared destiny. Space for difference without fracture. There’s room for the loud Jew and the quiet Jew. The believer and the skeptic. The Israeli and the diaspora kid who’s still figuring it out. The left and the right. It’s about all of us. It’s about tolerating (yes, tolerating) each other and learning to treat each other with dignity and respect.

I’m That Jew was already being written in my head that day I spoke to my sister in Paris who was justifiably scared to be who she was openly.

It was written to her. To my brothers. To my Jewish family to remind us of who we are and we are so much and so beautiful. To anyone who felt the pressure to edit themselves out of reality, even for a few minutes, so you don’t rock the boat. So life is easy breezy. But life gets smaller when you can’t openly be who you are. And it might be easy breezy but, to me, that’d be yucky yucky.

You don’t have to be loud. You don’t have to be political. You don’t have to post daily about antisemitism, Israel, or Jewish pride or speak about it ad nauseam with everyone. But at some point, if you are Jewish, there’s always an uncomfy moment (or many) that you have to decide whether you’re OK to ‘come out’ as a Jew because of something someone said that was intentionally or unintentionally offensive.

But it’s not for the Jewish People that you speak up.

It’s for yourself, first.

Because when you say I’m Jewish, openly and without apology, you are standing up for you. You are refusing to let your identity be drafted by people who misunderstand or resent it or seek to poison the world against you for no good reason. You are exercising your G-d-given right to just be who you are. And that’s what our enemies want every single one of us individual Jews NOT to do. (Cue Nike tagline.)

You owning and defining your unique Jewish identity as a part of an inclusive family is what I’m That Jew has always been about for me. It’s not a brand to me or a campaign so much as it is a feeling I invite Jewish people to say to themselves first in their own way, grounded in true Jewish spirit and values. We’re living in a moment where antisemitism is louder, where Zionism is distorted, where Israel is debated as if Jews are optional in the conversation. In this environment, shrinking and being small is not an option. That is surrender.

It starts internally. Between you and yourself. Between you and your kids. Your friends. Your community. It lives in how you show up, how you correct a lie, how you educate, how you refuse to accept things that should not be accepted, how you fight for your children, how to say the word ‘Jewish’ without lowering your voice in the real world, how to fight for tolerance and peace and understanding and truly comprehend that it must be fought for….and that it starts with you.

I’m that Jew.

Love,
Eitan

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Every now and then, something big happens.

An event that shakes everything. And you realize the problem wasn’t only what happened. It was what you believed before it.

For me, and for many others, October 7 did that. October 8 made it permanent. October 8 was the day we had to start facing what is. No more illusions, wishful thinking or going back to the world as we knew it before.

Yossi Klein Halevi described the collapse of the confidence that Israel could manage its enemies and trust that the worst was behind us. He said October 7 “ended the post-Holocaust era,” the long stretch in which Jews believed we had finally secured our place and learned how to defend ourselves in a world that, while imperfect, was fundamentally navigable.

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What ended wasn’t only a military assumption. It was a psychological one.

It was the idea that hatred could be contained. The belief that ideology could be softened by economics….and the assumption that if we were rational enough and patient enough, things would eventually stabilize.

I live in Israel. I’ve been speaking up for years for our collective Jewish narrative simply because I love our collective identity and don’t like that it’s (I’m) misunderstood. I’ve also been very vocal about our enemies and their growing hatred these past two decades.

But Jewish advocacy isn’t my job. Fighting antisemitism isn’t, either. I build brands for a living with my boutique branding agency. And yet I’ve felt compelled, again and again, to say things that felt obvious about my Jewish identity, but strangely controversial. October 8 changed something even in me.

Radical ideologies don’t evaporate because we prefer them to. Living here in Israel really forces you to look reality in the eyes more often than you might like. Suicide bombers, knife attacks, truck rammings, shootings, serving in the army and all our wars - the whole shebbang. But after October 7, there were no more fucking mental qualifiers or quiet caveats. No private hope that maybe this could still be managed into something tolerable.

The illusions were gone.

Jordan Peterson has said, “You are free to ignore reality, but you are not free to ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”

Now that line isn’t a political one. It’s human.

For years, so much of the West convinced itself that extremism could be moderated by prosperity or that genocidal language was symbolic. That hatred was really grievance and that if we ‘contextualized’ enough and ‘de-escalated’ enough, everyone would eventually want the same liberal order.

It was a comforting story but hey, it just wasn’t true.

When October 7 happened, we all watched parts of the Western world rush to reinterpret what was plainly visible. To intellectualize it. To soften it. To dilute it into something easier to digest than what it actually was.

Evil isn’t a fashionable word. But it’s accurate. What happened on October 7th and in its aftermath was pure fucking evil. Absolute barbarism. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make you compassionate. It makes you dishonest. It makes you hollow.

Peterson said something else; “To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into being.”

And I kinda live that.

Truth might be hard to digest, but truth isn’t cruelty. It’s structure. It’s our foundation (Or so it should be.) It’s the bloody framework that allows a society to function without collapsing into delusion (hello, world.)

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When we distort reality to protect our feelings, we don’t create peace. In the long run all we’re creating is fragility.

I’m not blind to suffering. Whether it’s an Israeli civilian or soldier fighting to protect his family, or a true Palestinian innocent caught in the crossfire of the average Israeli’s fight against terrorists and their ideology that’s intended to wipe out all Jews. Every true civilian’s death is a tragedy.

But moral clarity and moral callousness are not the same thing. We can grieve and still refuse to lie about what we’re facing. If an ideology openly calls for your destruction, believing it doesn’t really mean it’s not moral sophistication. It’s negligence.

And this is bigger than Israel. The real fault line isn’t geography. It’s whether a culture still believes that reality - actual, actual, real reality! - matters. Whether it still has the courage to say, out loud, that some ideas are barbaric and must be confronted rather than accommodated because it’s not nice to rock the boat.

Calling out the truth often isn’t warm. It isn’t pleasant. It’s hard.

But it is real.

I tell my kids, very simply, “Life is hard.”

My father-in-law said that once to them when they were super young and I didn’t like that. But you know what? He was right. I repeat it to my kids on occasion. Not dramatically. Not woe-to-us-all-life-is-hard. Just…honestly. It’s hard to build a career. Hard to get up and go to school. Hard to have and keep a relationship. Hard to show up when you’re tired. Hard to succeed. Hard to live with obligations, both personal and societal….and all the rest.

Everything meaningful takes work.

I don’t sugarcoat it because I don’t want them walking into adulthood thinking the world owes them something. It doesn’t. And pretending it does only sets you up for resentment and confusion.

Acknowledging that life is hard and it’s good to stare it in the face, that doesn’t make your life bleak. It makes it full and sturdy.

The same applies to civilizations.

Freedom is hard. Liberal democracy is hard. Moral responsibility is hard. Defending your values when they’re attacked is hard. But the alternative isn’t comfort. The alternative is decay.

Comfort is not a strategy.

We don’t get to choose reality. But we do get to choose whether we face it or bow to illusion. There’s no nobility in denial. There’s only strength in truth. Facing what is, even when it’s uncomfortable, is the only strategy that lasts. That’s the choice, and the work, that will define us as we move forward in these uncertain years ahead.

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The United Nations sells itself as the moral referee of the modern world. A place where peace is protected, human rights are defended, and the vulnerable have a voice.

That’s the brand. It sounds good. It reassures people that someone serious is in charge.

Bollocks.

What the UN has become is not a neutral forum but a political instrument. One increasingly shaped by authoritarian regimes that understand how power actually works in the modern age. If you control the language of morality, you can hide your own crimes while pointing endlessly at someone else.

Useless.

This isn’t paranoia. It’s structured that way.

The UN is made up of member states, many of which are not democracies, not free, and not accountable to their own people. They silence dissent at home, jail journalists, persecute women and minorities, and rule through fear. Then they walk into UN chambers and speak fluently about justice, dignity, and equality without blinking.

That’s how cheap and empty talk defect from what’s really going on on the ground and how moral authority is something they claim, but over and over and over and over again not something they earn.

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It’s not so simple living in Israel right now.

I don’t mean that as a dramatic opener. I mean it very literally:

Day to day life continues, but it doesn’t settle. Everything functions, people are doing what they do, but nothing feels fully calm, and that tension sits with me whether I want it to or not.

The last couple of years have been heavy in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived inside it.

October 7 changed everything. The murders. The kidnappings. The sheer scale of cruelty. The Surprise. The way the country froze and then mobilized all at once. Families were torn apart and time stopped for them, for us, while we all measured life in hostage counts, funerals, announcements, and prayers. We lived and breathed every aspect of this war.

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We all did everything we could to bring people home, here and from around the world, and at the same time Israel was fighting on multiple fronts. All of this happened while antisemitism outside of Israel didn’t just rise, but revealed itself to be normalized itself in institutions, culture, and public life. That part alone was deeply disturbing and unsettling. But this whole bloody mess is.

Then there was Iran. Or namely, the IRGC.

Twice we were attacked directly with ballistic missiles. Actual missiles, some landing close enough to me that I didn’t need to imagine what could have happened. We could feel it in the vibrations we felt as they landed. We understood very clearly what that kind of weapon means. And later, we could see it. In a destroyed building 10 minutes away. A giant crater in another building, one minute away. Our revolving office doors blown out along with cafe and restaurant windows downstairs.

Now people say the “war is over”. Or almost over.

Most of the hostages are home, which matters more than anything, but the sense of relief is incomplete. The Iranian regime is still there, very present, very loud in the background of everything. It’s not a headline to us. It’s a constant awareness.

I know you probably already know that, but I mean, I want to try and put it into reality for you. I’m not trying to explain this as a strategist or a politician. Because I’m not. I’m just a man. I’m married. I have two kids. We wake up, they go to school, we go to work, we see friends and family and eat out and we try to go about living a normal life. As best we can.

It goes something like this lately…

You wake up and it’s already on your mind. Even before you check the news. There’s a quiet calculation running in your head about what might happen today, or tonight, or at some random hour when you’re asleep. You send the kids to school . You go to the office. Have meetings. You answer emails. You make plans. At the same time, conversations with people along the way drift to bomb shelters, what kind of reinforced rooms, what are the school procedures, and who lives close to what in case.

None of this is dramatic in the moment.
It’s casual. That’s almost the strangest part.

In the evening, you might go out for dinner or sit with friends or watch something at home. You laugh. You talk about regular things. You might not even talk about Iran. You’re drinking, having fun, pople-watching. Spirits are high: definitely!

And still, it’s there.

The knowledge that if something happens, it won’t be a siren you’ve heard a hundred times. It will be something much bigger, and you already know what that looks like.

Before going to sleep, it’s hardest to ignore. For me anyway, because it was almost always most jarring at night. Getting the kids out, staying calm, getting to the shelter across the street….

On top of all that, there’s constant chatter from people you might know in the army. Friends. Family. Reserves. Regular service. Some hear things. Rumors circulate. “Brur, it’s definitely happening in the next 24 hours. My niece’s uncles sister in law is a high ranking officer and she said…”. You know….

We’ve lived with uncertainty for years now, and we’re doing it again, layered on top of everything that came before. It’s hard to describe without it sounding strange or exaggerated, but life here with that right now feels normal in a completely abnormal, surreal, and unfinished way.

Because that’s what it is: unfinished.

May freedom come to the people of Iran. May they get the help they need to be liberated from their oppressors already, and may we continue to support them from Israel - even if we are to take a hit. Their fight against their Jihadi oppressors is our fight, too.

May we finish this.

Ran Gvili is home.

Deceased.

The last hostage to come out of Gaza after the pain of October 7. Saying it out loud feels surreal, like finishing a sentence we refused to believe would ever end this way.

And yet, here we are. Relieved. Broken. Grateful. Devastated. All at once.

There’s a release in knowing there’s no one left behind. No real people with names and lives and families still hanging in the air.

No countdown continuing in the background of daily life.

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Waiting in the context of everything October 7 does something corrosive to a society. It stretches time, blurs reality, and keeps grief permanently unresolved.

For 843 days, Israel lived in that suspended state. Tonight, that suspension ends. And may it stay that way

But this isn’t closure. This isn’t comfort. For Ran’s family, and for every family that lost someone or got them back changed forever, there’s no ability to simply move on. There’s only learning how to live with what can’t be fixed. That truth deserves to be said without euphemism.

What this moment does offer is the ability to continue. To take a breath that has been held for far too long. To allow the country, and our people around the world, collectively, to shift from relentless waiting to deliberate resolve.

This didn’t happen on its own. It happened because of pressure. Real pressure. Military pressure. Intelligence work. Negotiations that crossed moral minefields. Global voices that refused to let the hostages disappear into silence. Your voice. Narrative pressure matters. Words matter. Persistence matters. Every action and every voice that kept the obligation alive played a role.

That obligation is simple, and it’s ancient. We bring our people home.

We choose life.

Even when confronted with such death and destruction, we choose life.

And when life is stolen, we choose dignity. We choose memory. We choose responsibility. We choose creativity. We choose family. We choose to build bridges. We choose unity. We choose charity. We choose sacrifice. We choose hope.

We choose life.

Thank you to the IDF forces who carried this burden in the field for so long, and who continue to every single day.

Thank you to the powers that be who worked in the open and in the shadows to get our people home.

Thank you to every individual, in Israel and around the world, who refused to let the world look away.

Thank you to our allies, big and small.

This was not inevitable. It was fought for.

Tonight is heavy and full of relief. As it should be, this whole mess has been a clusterfuck of confusion.

But it’s also clarifying.

And if it’s not clear what’s clarifying, it’s this: that this is who we are. A people who don’t abandon their own. A people who keep their word. A people who hold pain and principle at the same time. A people who will fight against the odds for their identity and heritage and values, and a people of G-d or light or spirit or whatever you want to call it.

A people of spirit, hope and action

Ran Gvili is home. Our last hostage is home.

Tomorrow, we continue. With grief. With gratitude. With challenges ahead.

But with life, as always, still chosen.

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Yes, responsibility.

For years, the Iranian people have been fighting a brutal Islamist, jihadi regime that has robbed them of their future. They have marched in the streets, gone on strike, shared videos at enormous personal risk, and spoken out knowing full well it could cost them their freedom or their lives.

Women have removed their hijabs in public defiance.

Young men have stood unarmed in front of guns.

Families have buried their children and somehow found the strength to keep going.

A new report in The Times of Israel highlights that a network of Iranian doctors estimates more than 16,500 people have been killed in this suppressed uprising, underscoring the staggering human cost of this fight for freedom. (The Times of Israel)

That kind of incredible courage doesn’t come from ideology, it comes from desperation and hope existing side by side. It comes from somewhere deep inside, a yearning and desperation to simply be free.

Over the past year, I’ve spoken constantly about Islamist extremism and the destruction caused by jihadi leadership. Not because it’s a Jewish issue, and not because it’s an Israeli issue, but because it’s a human one.

Wherever these regimes take hold, they silence women, crush minorities, murder dissidents, and export chaos far beyond their borders. Iran sits at the center of that machinery, fueling instability well outside its own territory.

That’s why this moment matters so deeply.

I don’t see this as a pro-Trump or anti-Trump question, and I don’t see it through the lens of left or right. This isn’t about American culture wars or partisan loyalties.

It’s about whether the world recognizes a rare and historic window when meaningful change might actually be possible.

I hope, and yes I pray, that the quiet right now reflects preparation rather than indifference. That what looks like hesitation is actually careful organization. And that if action comes, it comes strategically, deliberately, and with the Iranian people at the center of it, not as collateral damage or an afterthought, but as the very reason for acting.

If there’s a price to pay, and if those of us here in Israel have to take a hit to help tip the scales toward freedom for the Iranian people, most of us are willing. Truly - many of us are and it ain’t easy wanting it because we know what it means for us…but we’ve seen what happens when the world shrugs, waits, and convinces itself that the Jihadist problem will resolve by a bloody miracle on its own.

It never does.

If the world under American leadership fails to act now, looks away yet again like predecessors have, or decides that a false sense of stability is preferable to justice, what follows won’t only be darker for Iran. It will be darker everywhere. For Jews, for women, for minorities, for democracies, for anyone who still believes freedom is something worth defending.

The Iranian people are already doing the hardest part themselves.

They’re standing up, risking everything, and refusing to disappear quietly. History will remember what they did, and it will judge what the rest of us chose to do while they were asking, bravely and patiently, not to be abandoned once again.

It’s on us.

What’s Happening in Iran Matters to All of Us

What’s happening in Iran right now isn’t theoretical. It isn’t academic. It isn’t something you debate on panels or reduce to talking points.

It’s people. Real people. In the streets. Risking everything.

This isn’t a protest you can scroll past and pretend you understand. This is a population standing up to a regime that has ruled through fear for decades. A regime that beats women into silence, executes dissidents, crushes dissent, and exports violence far beyond its borders. What’s unfolding in Iran right now matters not just for Iranians. It matters for the rest of us too.

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I was in Venezuela in 2006.

Back then, whenever I traveled or backpacked, I always wrote things up.

Long emails. Journal-style dispatches. I’d send them to family and friends from my Yahoo account so they could see what I was seeing and feel a bit of what I was feeling. I used to backpack a lot.

A few weeks ago, with everything going on in Venezuela now, I remembered that trip and went digging. I found this piece. Something I wrote almost twenty years ago, when the country was still standing on its feet, when people were living free.

Reading it again made me smile. And ache.

Not many people are aware that nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled the dictatorship. Eight million people who should be home.

I hope things change for the better.

I hope they all flood back and rebuild what was taken from them.

I loved Venezuela then. I still do. And I hope this gives you a sense of what it felt like when times were still pretty good.

Here’s what I wrote back then.

When Mike told me that he and Anat were going to Venezuela to visit their friend Umberto, it seemed like a dumb idea not to go. So I did. And Sean (El Noss) wanted in, too. Bonus. So, on a dreary NYC day on the 21st of December, with the NYC subway staff on strike, I cabbed it to La Guardia. Hours later, Sean and I checked into a small hotel in Caracas for an overnight stay. The next morning we flew to Puerto Ordaz in lower Orinoco, the industrial heart of the Guyana region, and drove to Ciudad Bolivar, a small town on the banks of the Orinoco River. Our pousada was nestled on a small hill overlooking town and it was charming by any standard. With hammock in room, our windows presided over lush green trees, and in the not-too-far distance, a vast rain forest, one that we’d head into the next day to witness the highest waterfall in the world in all its glory.

Getting a day in this charming town was a treat and we spent it exploring brightly colored streets, climbing steep hills, and shopping in local markets. We stopped for a fresh fish lunch at a family restaurant, paying just 6000 bolivares (roughly $3) for our delicious feast. We bought coffee and an assortment of pastries from a bakery and munched away in the sun outside a church in Bolivar Square, just staring at the sky and taking in day one. Later, for dinner, we bided our time and waited for the painfully slow service at the pousada’s restaurant. The wait was worth it. El Noss had steak, and he hasn’t stopped talking about its tenderness since. Doubt he ever will.

The next morning we boarded a four-seat Cessna at the local airport. Crammed into the back with crates of potatoes and lettuce, we took off and flew over the jungle tickling the underbelly of white clouds over the famed tepuis (table-top mountains) and orange-colored rivers. Truly breathtaking, it was a wee taste of what awaited us over the next few days. Landing at base camp in Canaima, we met and bonded with the rest of our 12-person group. Some German, French, Swiss and Argentinean backpackers. And, representing Venezuela, a 60-year old woman, her daughter and grandson.

While waiting, we strolled to the nearby lake, home to a beach and a gorgeous waterfall. Small children played with puppies while women took care of family laundry in the water. Late in the day, we clambered on board what would seem like our home for the next three days. A long, narrow, wooden canoe, manned by two indigenous Indians. With the sun setting it was magical to take in the beauty of this tropical rain forest. But it wasn’t smooth sailing. The water wasn’t calm, and it certainly wasn’t warm. Being that it was a narrow canoe and there were plenty of rapids to get through, we each had to sit perched on the edge of our seats and do our individual bit so we wouldn’t capsize. We quickly realized it wasn’t going to be comfortable.

Our first stop was the Sapo Falls. We got off the boat and were able to walk right under it the length of the way. But it was no picnic. We were told to take off our glasses and leave our cameras behind, and in single file we started walking under the huge canopy of rock. Within seconds, you couldn’t see past the wall of water and all you could hear was the deafening roar of thousands of tons of water. Halfway through the path we could hardly breathe thanks to spray and a lack of oxygen. The water crashed against the rocks splashing against us, reminding us, as if we needed reminding, to stay firmly pressed against the back wall. The water’s power was terrifying, and the guide had to turn us back before we got to the other side of the river.

Back on the boat, we were traveling at high speed though rapids under a darkening tropical sky. It was unsettling because setting out so late wasn’t part of the plan. The water had no shame and it steadily streamed in. Suddenly, it was pitch black. The cold set in, it was windy and we were getting very wet. Worst, we had no idea where we were headed in this vast rain forest or when we would get there, or, if we would get there. Besides having to pee like a mofo, all I could think was what to do if we capsized in the pitch black. Nothing like last year’s tsunami situation, but still, it was on my mind. Luckily, that question didn’t need answering. We made it to base camp. A large, remote bungalow in the middle of the darkness with 12 hammocks. Shouting for joy, we disembarked, rubbed our sore buns, peed, switched to dry clothes, and got warm.

The Indians prepared a hasty dinner and we chatted as we ate, then got into our individual hammocks and fell asleep, wondering what the next day would bring. What it brought was a magnificent view. With the sun rising, we found ourselves under one of the famed tepuis (tabletop mountains). Breathtaking and awesome, we took in the beauty as we munched on arepas and eggs for breakfast. We boarded the boat and embarked on a wild ride in the rapids again. It was rougher. But much more fun in the daylight. Tossing and turning, we shot through a labyrinth of rivers, scraping past boulders embedded in the water, and bopping down sudden drops. The forest was strangely quiet, save an exotic bird or two. There were simply no animals to see. But the splendor of the rain forest made up for that. And two hours later, we disembarked and started walking uphill. Higher and higher up a steep mountain until we suddenly reached a clearing and the world’s highest waterfall greeted us. At just under 1000 meters, the Angel Falls are a stunning sight. Standing opposite it, we were observing a river up high on Auyantepui, one of the largest of the tepuis as its journey abruptly ends and it has nowhere to go but down. The cascade, almost 20 times as high as Niagra Falls, spills down into Cañón del Diablo (Devil’s Canyon). It was truly awesome. And we didn’t want to leave.

But lunch in the form of freshly grilled chicken was being prepared down below so back down we went. A little drama ensued as were attacked by swarms of relentless insects that knew how to bite. They got into the girls’ hair and the mens’ shirts and we had to run a while. There was more drama when we arrived down below. Since it was Christmas Eve, the Indians wanted to take us back to where we’d originally started from the day before. Understandable, they wanted to be with their families that night. As a group we had no problem with their desire. What we had a problem with was that it would cut our trip in half, and we’d already paid for everything. And being on the damned boat for 6 hours in one day with the 2 more planned in the dark again, well, we weren’t thrilled.

Still, we blamed the tour operators, not the Indians. Bad organization. And we discussed options. The general consensus was that we continue with the trip as planned. With the Venezuelan lady helping us translate we tried to reason with them and come to an agreement where everyone was happy. But the Indians simply weren’t willing to stay. After lunch we boarded the boats with the issue unresolved. When we got to hammock city, we took a vote. The decision. Mutiny in Canaima. We basically told the Indians that we were staying. They tried radioing home base to get authorization to leave us, but this being Christmas Eve, no-one picked up. In the end, they left 8 of us in the rain forest, while 4 members returned with them. They left us dinner and promised they’d return next morning. We took them at their word.

No civilization, no electricity, no plan. And that’s what made it exciting. It’s not everyday you decide to stay in a rain forest tout seul with no guides. It ended up being a very special evening. Magical, in fact. Christmas Eve and we were 9 strangers (including Cheetah, a friendly dog) in the middle of nowhere, eating, talking, laughing and trading jokes under the stars. When fatigue finally overcame us, it was with the pitter-patter of raindrops that Canaima’s mutineers fell asleep.

The Indians arrived the next morning as promised. We ate, boarded the sore-bum contraption and stopped at the Sapo Falls one more time before saying our goodbyes at homebase. El Noss and I boarded separate Cessna’s for the way back. After making a stop at another local airport, I found myself alone with the pilot at 3500 feet over the rain forest and casually asked him questions in broken Spanish about flying. To my utter horror, he suddenly got up and walked away from his seat telling me to fly. I lunged for the controls, grabbed them, and, for what seemed like an eternity, pleaded with him to stop kidding around and get his tush back in the pilot seat. We were bobbing around up, weaving left and right as I tried to control the plane, my face frozen in unabashed terror over heavenly green terrains and tepuis. He was having a right laugh at my expense but I wasn’t laughing. Finally, after a good 5 minutes, he took back his seat, chuckling. Bastardo. Truth be told, there’s a big part of me that wishes I took him up on his offer by moving into his seat. It’s not everyday you get a flying lesson above one of the most beautiful rain forests in the world. Next time, eh?

I met El Noss at the airport, which unbelievably, was deserted. Everything was closed because of Christmas so it was an uneventful day and night. We flew to Caracas the next morning and met Mike, Anat and Umberto at his girlfriend Melanie’s house. Five of us (Melanie couldn’t make it) hopped into Umberto’s Jeep and set out for the 4-hour drive to Churoni, a lazy beach town on the north coast. The drive was spectacular. Once we were out of Caracas, we continued north to the Henri Pittier National Park. Driving up steep, winding roads past lunatic bus drivers (who had long spikes on their rims), we watched as the clouds enveloped us, it being a cloud forest and all. The Jeep’s external thermometer dropped from 27 to 19 degrees celsius in 15 minutes, and all you could see outside was a gray mist and lush green foliage. The silence was beautiful. And then, just like that, we broke through and were on the other side, coming down towards the beautiful coast where we were to meet up with around 20 other Venezuelan family and friends.

There was Miguel, Armando, Mercedes, Litzzy, Omar, Jean, his twin brother Chevvy and Finnish friends, Isabel, Muffiet, Mike and Anat, Sean, Umberto and his wonderfully insane father and sweet mother-in-law.

The next few days were beach-filled and blissful. We’d get up in the mornings to eat a Caribbean breakfast with the crazy clan down in our pousada’s courtyard, prepared by a huge sour-faced lady cook and her helpers. We’d walk through the town down to the small harbor (stopping on the way for empanadas) and cram into small boats destined to isolated beaches. Of course, there was the obligatory booze purchase first at the town store. The truest statement I can make about Venezuela is that you can’t not drink in this particular South American country. Literally. If you’re with a group of locals and you aren’t holding a glass of rum and coke, Smirnoff Ice, Gauadapido or whisky, it’s sacrilege. Blasphemy. You must be holding a drink at the beach, at dinner, on a boat, in a car, in the bath, on the toilet and in bed. Everywhere. And so it was, coolers full of alcohol were purchased and joined us on the beach. Together we lay in the sun, buzzed for hours, soaking up rays and cooling down in the water, climbing coconut trees to get coconut filled with fresh water for our rum. We ate fresh cheese, slices of meat and hunks of cake prepared by Umberto Senior’s wife.

The evenings were spent eating, resting, and dancing the night away. Highlights. People watching. Coming back from the beach to eat pipios (sandwiches filled with meat and vegetables, grilled to perfection). And an evening when Omar got so drunk he had to be rushed to the local hospital. After a few days, Mike, Anat and Umberto drove west to a small fishing village to go scuba diving while the rest drove back to Caracas. I opted to stay alone in town one more day and night. I needed more beach. That evening I went to the main plaza where a fire show was put on and famed drummers sang traditional Venezuelan tunes that you couldn’t keep still to. I ate dinner alone at a fish restaurant, eating the only dish they had on offer and relishing every moist morsel.

The next day I hung at the beach and read my book before walking to the harbor with my backpack to catch a boat that would take me to the fishing village to meet up with the scuba divers. But the fisherman I’d negotiated with the day before was a no-show so I had to renegotiate with another one. He didn’t speak any English (hardly anyone did) and but somehow I was able to explain where he had to take me. 40 minutes into the boat ride, we pulled into a coast and he and his friend told me to get off. We were there. But we weren’t and I knew it. I was being had and they were feigning ignorance. It was obvious this beach wasn’t it. There was no village. No harbor. Nada. After arguing with them for 20 minutes, I came to the conclusion it wasn’t only futile but dangerous to continue insisting. All my money was on me, my passport, and I was alone with them. Bummed, I jumped off and started walking on the beach. Not too far off, there were some tents pitched up and that’s when a bad thing turned into a good thing. I approached a family, and a Venezuelan man called Jose who spoke perfect English took it upon himself to help me find a way to get to the village. But not by boat. By car. He tracked down some transportation for me, made sure I had exact change so I wouldn’t be taken for another ride again and was extremely kind. I practically had to fight him before he’d accept a small token of my appreciation in the form of bolivares for beers for his family.

I got into my ride with a 50-something year old driver from the town of Maracay and it was the funniest hour I had in Venezuela. In broken English and Spanish we somehow managed to communicate about his nutty life. Married with two kids by his wife and currently involved in three ongoing affairs with children from two of them, this guy just LOVED the ladies. He made it abundantly clear in the form of hand gestures, gazes to the heavens and strange, clicking mouth sounds. We stopped for beers at a small shack along the way and rode the coastal mountains at a speedy 20 miles an hour, and my belly hurt all the way, the guy had me roaring. A real character, he belonged on a TV show, not in a car driving people like me around. Or maybe, that’s exactly what he should be doing. In any case, he got me safely to Mike, Anat and Umberto, who greeted me with tired diver’s eyes. We watched the pelicans for a while, bought some delicious cakes at a small family stand, and then drove back to Caracas. I’d been separated from them for one day only, and it felt good to be in their company again, hearing Umberto’s crazy stories, Mike’s silly jokes, and have Anat show me where all the gas station toilets were. Talking about gas, did you know it costs more to buy a bottle of water in Venezuela than to fill an SUV with gas? Crazy, but oh so true.

And here’s where the story ends. Almost. Umberto continued to be the perfect host in Caracas, along with the lovely Melanie. She prepared a beautiful dinner at her house and invited a few of her friends. We ate and danced. El Noss had decided to leave the next day so we parted ways, no doubt knowing that we were going to make all our Manhattan friends green with envy with our shared stories. The next day, they drove us through the streets of Caracas and we visited the tomb of Simon Bolivar, the national hero. We visited markets awash with Caracians selling huge fireworks freely on the streets, not to mention grapes and mangos by the kilo. We checked El Hatillo out, a colonial town in the suburbs of Venezuela where we stuffed ourselves with sweet churros dipped in cream and sipped rich, hot chocolate. Of course, there was New Year’s Eve, too. Umberto’s father had a huge party at their mansion overlooking the city. We arrived at eleven o’clock and at midnight the whole of Caracas erupted in a fiery display of fireworks set off by the locals. The colorful flashes of light lasted for several hours, as did our dancing and downing of fine rums. In fact, we danced salsa and merengue all night long. It was one long, exquisite party which didn’t end even when the sun popped her head up to say hello at 6 am. That’s when we started chatting about Hugo Chavez and listened to what our new friends had to say about what he was doing to the country. But that’s another story. The festivities finally came to an end at around 1 in the afternoon once we’d eaten yet again, arepas from the local areperia. Not a bad time for 12 days. Not a bad time at all.

Venezuela is a stunning country. The people are warm, hospitable, and beautiful. The food delicious, and the weather perfect. You can travel to the Andes, or to the Amazon, head to the rain forests or the white sand coasts, or revel in Caracas nightlife. It’s an adventure. It’s cheap. It’s different. And there’s so much to do. Too much, almost.

So I’ll be back. You can count on it.

Peace, health and love to you.

And happy 2006, people.
Let’s make it a good year.

Eitan

#imthatjew

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Not a battle. Not a clash. A massacre.

Ordinary Israeli civilians were hunted in their homes by Hamas, in their neighborhoods, and at a music festival where young people had gathered to dance.

At Nova, people were chased, shot, burned alive, and executed while trying to flee. Bodies were found piled together. Families were wiped out. Entire communities were shattered in hours.

Over 1200 people - murdered.

And as part of that massacre, there was strategy. Not chaos or impulse. A deliberate campaign of sexual violence carried out against women.

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I don’t experience it as theory, or as a chapter in a book, or as something to be debated at a safe distance. I experience it the way most Jews do.

It’s always there, influencing how visible I’m willing to be, how carefully I choose my words, and how often I remind myself that simply being Jewish is still, somehow, controversial. I try to understand antisemitism the academic way. I read the articles. I listen to the panels. I participate in them. I absorbed the explanations. Race. Religion. Tribes. Geopolitics. Religion. Antisemitism. Economics. Power. Scapegoating. Blah blah blah. All of that.

And all of it matters.
All of it explains something.

But none of it fully explains what it FELT like for me as a young kid in Hong Kong, with the occasional kids teasing me with Hitler marches and making Jew jokes. At age nine…

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And still, we’re here.

And we’re going to continue being here.

We’re here not because it’s been easy. It’s because a lot of us have chosen to stay present, to stay visible, Jewish and loud and with purpose.

I’m thinking about a lot of things this new year and I’ll likely get into it in 2026…but for now…this:

The New Year isn’t about pretending the pain didn’t happen.
It’s about refusing to let it define the whole story.

It’s about choosing responsibility over fear.

Pride over shrinking.

Community over silence.

Being Jewish has never been a passive identity for me. Ever. As a kid even…growing up in Hong Kong or London, or my later years in Boston or NYC.

I lived it out loud for all to see.

Being Jewish, if you care about it, asks something of us:

Courage. Memory. Responsibility for one another.

We carry our history with us. Not as weight. As grounding.

I do, at least.

I’m That Jew who believes our future is built by showing up. By telling the truth. By staying human.

And by choosing, again, to continue.

I will.

And I’m glad you’re here with me as I share deeper thoughts in this medium which I love. (Especially to those of you who are paid subscribers - it actually helps much more than you probably realize right now.)

That’s it. All I wanted to share.

For now.

We know the pro-Palestine narrative is filled with misinformation. But most people can’t realistically fact-check every claim. T…

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Not about being Jewish.
Not about Israel.
But still relevant.

I’d just come off one of our most successful years at Natie, my branding agency.

We’d finished branding a global organization after working hand-in-hand with them for a year and a half. We had another 12 clients up on the wall. The team was on fire.

Things were objectively good.

And yet. I didn’t feel on top of the world. At all.
Quite the opposite.

In my head, I had this pie chart of how my time was spent. It looked something like this:

65% work.
30% family.
5% me.

And for that 5%? All I wanted to do was sleep.

I was unmotivated. Frustrated. Exhausted.
It’s hard to see it when you’re inside it, but looking back, it’s obvious. I was completely burnt out. Properly done. I felt like I had nothing left to give.

My inner dialogue wasn’t exactly kind.

“Eitan, what the hell is wrong with you? The agency is killing it. You’ve made personal pieces that inspire people around the world. Tens of millions of views.
Family’s good. Kids are good. Get it together.”

This went on for months.

I couldn’t figure out what to do. And the more I thought about it, the more stuck and irritated I became.

After talking to lots of smart, well-meaning people and getting absolutely nowhere, I sat down with someone who simply listened. Someone I trusted. Someone who genuinely had my best interests at heart. Someone who knew me.

After I unloaded all my miserable guts, she asked one very simple question.

“What do you want, Eitan?”

I told her that no matter how much I was doing, I felt depleted. I didn’t know why.
It felt like a full-blown what-am-I-doing-with-my-life moment and I had no idea why. Things were, on the face of it, good!

“With your life? That’s a massive question,” she said. “Especially when you’re not sure. That’s a lot of pressure. It’s a BIG thing.”

Yes.

She asked if I was open to trying something else. A different angle.

Yes again.

Then she asked, “What are some of the things you enjoy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Things you like doing. Things that bring you joy.”

Silence.

Two full minutes.

“I like delivering brands. I like working with my team. I like creating films and writing creative pieces that resonate. That reflect my truth and shared humanity. I love my family.”

She stopped me.

“No. Not those. I mean the more personal things that actually give you pleasure. Real joy. Anything counts. Especially the small stuff.”

Silence again.

This time, three minutes.

My tank was empty when it came to small things.

After a while. First thing that came into my head.

“I like going to the movies on my own sometimes. In the middle of the day. I like buying the biggest popcorn and getting the biggest Coke Zero. I like disappearing for a bit. I haven’t done that in ages.”

“Great,” she said. “What else?”

“I like going to the beach in Tel Aviv and watching the sunset.”

“What else?”

“Listening to albums from start to finish. Really listening to them while doing nothing else. Ones that mean something to me. Not just a few songs but all the way through from start to finish the way the artist intended the songs to be heard.”

More things started to come.

Going for a spontaneous bike ride in the city at night when the streets are quiet.
Getting together with a close friend and being my absolute self.
Building big Legos.
Taking portrait pics of people as they look into the camera.

She then said, “That’s fantastic. Now, write all of them down. Right now. Make a list.”

I did. With her sitting there. About 20 things. None of them huge. None of them dramatic. Just… things.

Wandering the city without Google Maps.
Proper laughing, quality time with my wife.
Playdates with my sons and being fully present.
Arcades. Video games.
Eating ramen noodles.
3 days in the desert.

“Okay,” she said. “You’ve got a list.”

“Great,” I said, not hiding the cynicism. “So now I’m supposed to do all of these?”

“No,” she said. “Just look at the list this week. If you can do one or two things, great. Don’t go crazy. That’s not the point.”

Fine. OK.

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That week, with the list sitting in my iPhone Notes app, life went on as usual. At some point, with a bit of time on my hands, I looked at it. Honestly, dreading it.

“Listen to an album from start to finish. Really listen.”

Hmm. I can do that.

I found The The’s DUSK, put on my headphones, closed my eyes and for 42 and a half minutes I disappeared. Matt Johnson’s scratchy vocals repeatedly singing, ‘If you can’t change the world. Change yourself. And if you can’t change yourself. Change the world…’

Goosebumps.

First time in forever.

I looked at my list again and reached out to a good friend. We met at the beach, had a few beers, talked about everything under the sun then watched it paint the Tel Aviv sky in pinks and blues as it dipped into the Mediterranean Sea.

That first week, I didn’t just do one or two things. I did five or six.

By the end of the week, my mood hadn’t magically transformed. But something had shifted.

So I kept going. The next week. And the week after that. Sometimes repeating things from the list. Sometimes adding new ones.

Vanilla milkshakes.
Helping someone in real life for no reason.
One-minute films celebrating my kids.
Spontaneous overnight getaways.

Months passed. Then half a year. Eventually, a full year.

I felt better. A lot better.

I looked back and realised something had quietly changed. That original 5% of “me time” where all I wanted to do was sleep had grown into 15%, sometimes 20%. And in that time, I was actually doing things I wanted to do.

It wasn’t just about doing fun things. It was the combination. The intention. The choosing.

Most of the things on my list were easy.
They didn’t require huge effort.
Nothing intimidating. Nothing life-altering.

Choice turned out to be the key.

Choice is power. Choice is control.

Instead of drifting, which is exhausting, writing things down, thinking about them, and then doing them on purpose changed everything. Making choices, rather than avoiding them, gave me back a sense of control.

Little by little, micro-bundles of joy started stacking up.
Five minutes became half an hour.
An hour a week became four.
Incrementally. Quietly. It added up.

Those micro-bundles led to bigger shifts.

One of them was a decision to be more selfish. In a healthy way. If something doesn’t come from a place of genuine desire, what’s the point? It’s just a drain. Less “I should do this.” More “I actually want to do this.”

That led to saying no to clients who felt wrong, even when the money was good. Spirit-suck clients. It led to spending less time with people who were, overall, negative. And investing more in the relationships that felt energising.

More joy.

And no, besides being a husband and a father, which is hands down the greatest source of joy in my life, I didn’t find the one BIG answer I was obsessing over.

Yes. But it’s not the one big thing that I thought it would be.

I’ve figured out that it’s the accumulation of many small things that is the big thing.

I have a joy list.

Here’s to yours.

-

PS. To the woman who listened and suggested, thanks. You know who you are.

PPS. I wrote this a few years ago. I’m revisiting it now in a very different world. I live in Israel. The years since October 7 have been lived inside war, with grief, fear, and tension humming constantly in the background, even on days that look normal. That kind of weight drains you quietly over time. And not just here. The diaspora feels it too. Which is exactly why this still matters. When so much is out of your control, choosing joy deliberately and unapologetically isn’t indulgent. Choose joy. Choose life.

#imthatjew

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Days before I flew to Australia a few months ago, I was still running to bomb shelters with my kids. That’s just been life here of late. You adjust. You function. You keep going. Then suddenly I was in Australia meeting the Jewish community, walking along Bondi, sitting near the Opera House, watching people jog, drink coffee, live freely. The contrast wasn’t lost on me. It never is.

I didn’t come to Australia as a tourist. I came as family.

I sat in synagogues, schools, boardrooms, living rooms. I spoke to high school kids and university students. Parents. Teachers. Community leaders. I met Jews who were exhausted but standing tall. Jews who hadn’t realized how much pressure they were under until someone from Israel sat across from them and said, I see you. I’m with you.

And I meant it.

I felt it everywhere. Sydney. Melbourne. Adelaide. Perth. The warmth. The hugs. Strangers who didn’t feel like strangers. Shabbat dinners that turned into long, honest conversations about fear, pride, anger, love. I even sat with non-Jewish Australians. Muslims. Christians. Indians. Iranians fighting their own regime from afar. People who cared enough to ask. To listen. To learn.

I came to give. I left carrying Australia with me.

Then the massacre at Bondi happened.

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They talk about us like they’ve done field research. In reality, they skim a headline, watch a TikTok made by someone who’s never left their neighborhood, and suddenly they’re Middle East historians.

It’d be funny if the consequences weren’t so ugly.

It’d be funny if it weren’t falsely shaping how millions see us.

And while the last two years made this ignorance impossible to ignore, none of it is new. The demonization didn’t appear overnight. It’s been building for years. I’ve been speaking about it publicly for a long time. But for a lot of people, it’s suddenly “breaking news” in the last couple of years that Jews aren’t what their memes say we are.

On that note, I’d like to introduce you to someone who was blowing up every stereotype, every lazy accusation, every bad-faith caricature before October 7.

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