Antisemitism is a death sentence for Jew-haters.

Throughout history, powerful empires have made the same fatal mistake: believing they could erase the Jewish People. The Islamic Republic is next on a long list of Jew-haters who have vanished.

artwork by Future of Jewish

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Three-thousand years ago, in a dusty valley west of Jerusalem, a shepherd boy rewrote the rules of power.

It happened in the Valley of Elah, a strategic fault line between the coastal Philistine strongholds and the mountain cities of ancient Israel — Jerusalem, Hebron, and Bethlehem. The Philistines came to split Israel in half. King Saul responded, bringing his army down from the highlands. But the two sides became deadlocked. To charge meant to die.

And so, the Philistines sent out their ultimate weapon: Goliath.

Six-foot-nine. Armored head to toe. Wielding a sword like a cleaver and a spear as thick as a weaver’s beam. He came out twice a day for 40 days to mock Israel and challenge someone — anyone — to face him in single combat. The winner’s people would rule; the loser’s would be enslaved.

None of Israel’s warriors stepped forward, except one boy. Unarmored. Unafraid. Armed with nothing but a sling and five stones. His name was David.

The rest is history: Goliath was struck down, not by brute strength, but by speed, precision, and the will to act first. The giant’s own sword was used to finish him.

Israel, today, is once again in the Valley of Elah.

Iran, like Goliath, bellows across the world stage — a towering regime boasting vast land, immense population, and limitless oil wealth. It wraps itself in armor: terror proxies, ballistic missiles, enrichment centrifuges, and diplomatic theater. It boasts that it will wipe Israel off the map, that it captured Jerusalem in its dreams, that Jews are a cancer to be cut out.

And once again, the world stands paralyzed, trapped by its own cowardice, lulled by appeasement, preferring dead Jews over uncomfortable headlines.

But Israel is not afraid of giants.

Iran is 75 times Israel’s size. Its population is ten times larger. On paper, it’s the favorite. The Goliath.

But we remember what happened in that valley. Because we were there.

We know what the world forgets: that Goliath’s size was also his weakness. Scholars believe he suffered from acromegaly, a condition that causes giants but also blurs vision. He needed an attendant to guide him. He shouted “Come to me!” not as a taunt, but because he couldn’t see his opponent. He was powerful, but clumsy. Threatening, but vulnerable. His might blinded him.

Iran is the same. What looks like strength (its proxies, its rhetoric, its uranium stockpiles) is also its liability. It overplays. It underestimates. It assumes the Jews will wait. But we don’t.

Throughout history, powerful empires have made the same fatal mistake: believing they could erase the Jewish People. Pharaoh tried. Babylon tried. The Greeks and Romans tried. So did the Crusaders, the Czars, the Nazis, and now — once again — the Islamists of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the ayatollahs of Iran.

They’re all gone. We’re still here.

This is not coincidence. It’s pattern. It’s prophecy. It’s survival by strength, faith, and memory.

Israel is not just a country; it is the collective answer to 3,000 years of antisemitic delusion. We have heard the threats before. And when self-professed enemies vow to destroy us, we believe them. When they build tunnels to murder our children or enrich uranium to vaporize our cities, we do not wait. We act.

As the Torah teaches: “When someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This is not revenge. It is survival. It is reality.

This is exactly what Israel has done, decisively and unapologetically, against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and now, Iran. Our moral compass is not dulled by the world’s selective outrage. We defend our people, even when it makes the world uncomfortable.

So when Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sent a letter to the United Nations on Friday, demanding condemnation of Israel for striking Iran’s military and nuclear sites — calling the act a “declaration of war” — the irony could not be more insulting.

No kidding it’s a declaration of war. It’s the war that your regime declared in 1979.

Let’s not forget: Before the Islamic Revolution that year, Iran and Israel had peace. Not just tolerance, but actual diplomatic relations, strategic partnership, and cultural exchange. Israeli farmers helped teach Iranian agriculture. Israeli engineers partnered with the Shah’s government on water and infrastructure projects. Iranian Jews were safe, proud, and thriving.

And then came the “revolution.” And with it, a new doctrine: Death to Israel. The Jews became scapegoats. Partners became enemies. Synagogues were raided. Jews were hanged in public squares. Iran traded in its ancient Persian legacy for apocalyptic Islamist ideology. It has never looked back, but we have never forgotten.

What did Iran expect would happen? That we’d sit quietly while they arm Hezbollah and Hamas to the teeth, rain rockets on Israeli cities, and murder and kidnap our people? That we’d hold peace talks with the folks who habitually call for our annihilation? That we’d ignore their centrifuges spinning underground while they sit at global summits quoting poetry?

This is a war that the Iranian regime has sustained, ever since, through terror, through rockets, through hostages, through militias, through their twisted ideology of martyrdom and genocide. It’s the war written into their constitution, preached from their mosques, emblazoned on their missiles: “Death to Israel.”

They’ve misunderstood their target. Israel is not suicidal. And diplomacy is not equipped to deal with regimes that weaponize diplomacy itself as cover to develop rogue nuclear weapons.

Over 3,000 years ago, Moses looked at a battered, wandering people and gave us a charge that echoes still: “Be strong and courageous.”

Today, our people wear that charge like armor. They do not desire war, but they will not flee from it. The IDF is not just a military; it is a declaration that repeated threats against the Jewish People do not go unanswered.

In Kabbalah, we are warned against imbalance. Too much chesed (loving kindness) creates weakness, enabling evil to thrive. Those who act with only love and no limits become doormats to those who act with only hate and no conscience. This is why the Kabbalists emphasized gevurah: strength, boundaries, and discipline. Without it, chesed curdles into naiveté, and kindness becomes complicity.

The Jewish People have given the world its conscience. But conscience without courage is a luxury we can no longer afford. The time has come for gevurah.

This begs the question: What did the world think “stopping Iran’s nuclear program” meant? Luncheons? UN panels? A stern tweet from Brussels? Iran has used the language of diplomacy the same way it uses proxies: cynically, manipulatively, and with genocidal intent just beneath the surface. The ayatollahs don’t fear words. They fear results.

Israel is one-tenth the size of Iran by population. It is 75 times smaller in land. But Iran, with all its bluster, forgets one thing: David didn’t just survive Goliath. He ended him. That’s the real story. That’s the Jewish story.

And if they had taken even a moment to read the Bible they claim to know better than we do, they would have seen how that story ends — for Haman, for Amalek, for Antiochus, for Titus, for Hitler. The enemies of the Jews vanish. The Jews remain.

You don’t have to love us. But if history is any guide, you should fear us. Not because we seek war, but because we survive them.

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