The Jews have a right to win.
Survival is no longer enough. After centuries of virulent antisemitism which still haunts us to this very day, Jewish strength, unity, and faith must become our victory. No permission required.
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Tonight marks the start of Sukkot, the Jewish festival of fragility.
For seven days, we step out of our homes — the sturdy, temperature-controlled comfort zones of modern life — and sit beneath a roof that can barely withstand a gust of wind. We eat there, sing there, sometimes even sleep there, staring at the stars through the gaps in the thatched branches. It’s an act of faith and memory: a reminder that Jewish permanence has never been built on walls, but on will; not on comfort, but on conviction.
After October 7th, Sukkot feels different. The illusion of safety — in Israel, in the Diaspora, and in the Western democracies that once swore “Never Again” — has been shattered. The sukkah now mirrors our moment: exposed, uncertain, yet defiantly standing. And it teaches us something vital: not only about survival, but about victory.
The Jews have a right to win.
Sukkot forces us to confront impermanence — and to find strength in it. Diaspora Jews, especially, must now recalibrate their paradigms. The past two years have torn away the comforting illusion that any political party in the West will protect Jews unconditionally.
The masks are off.
Antisemitism oozes from every corner — Left, Right, and even the so-called center. One side wraps it in the language of anti-colonialism; another cloaks it in conspiracies about global elites. Call it “anti-Zionism” if you like, but its old poison tastes the same.
We are past the halo period of post-Holocaust guilt and sympathy. That moral insurance policy has expired. The Jewish People are once again being tested, not by whether we can assimilate, but by whether we can withstand. The sukkah teaches us that security cannot come from outside walls. It must come from within: from Jewish unity, Jewish pride, and Jewish purpose.
More than half a century ago, the American philosopher Eric Hoffer understood this better than many Jews do today. In 1968, he wrote:
“The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources.”
Hoffer’s words were prophetic — and they’ve aged without mercy. No matter how integrated, educated, or beloved Jews believe they are, when pressure mounts, they find themselves alone. The liberal allies vanish. The conservative defenders equivocate. The institutions and governments that claim to protect Jews suddenly “both-sides” our dead.
It’s an ancient pattern wearing modern clothes. If Israel survives, and thrives, it will indeed be because of Jewish efforts and Jewish resources. Because history has never sent a cavalry for us; only tests. And Sukkot, in its fragile defiance, reminds us that even when the world abandons the Jews, the Jews must not abandon each other.
And yet, some Jews still fail to grasp this. According to a recent poll published by The Washington Post, nearly 40 percent of American Jews believe Israel has committed “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. This is beyond absurd; it’s obscene. Jews, of all people, should know better than to casually weaponize that word. To accuse the one Jewish state on Earth of genocide is not just ignorance; it’s moral betrayal.
The irony is staggering: While some Jews in America are parroting the language of their enemies, Israel’s intelligence services are literally protecting their lives. Just last week, the Mossad assisted in uncovering and thwarting a Hamas-linked terror cell in Germany that was plotting attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets. Jews in Berlin, Paris, and New York sleep more safely because of Israel — the same Israel that some now accuse of committing the crimes that were once committed against us.
Attacking Jews in the Diaspora does not “free Palestine.” It does, however, prove — again and again — why Jews need Israel to exist. Every Jewish restaurant vandalized, every synagogue defaced, every student threatened on a college campus is not an act of liberation; it’s an echo of our oldest nightmares. Those who target Jews abroad are not fighting “occupation”; they are fighting Jewish existence and Jewish success. And that, more than anything, is why the Jewish state is not merely a political project; it is a moral and theological necessity.
One Jewish Briton even wrote a letter to a Member of Parliament after the murder of Jews at a Manchester synagogue last week, asking: “We have seen the recent murder of Jews at a Manchester Synagogue. How does that make you yourself feel? Disgust or delight? This is a serious question, I need to know the answer.”1 The fact that such a letter can even be written — in a Western democracy, in the year 2025 — tells you everything you need to know.
Certainly, it’s increasingly uncomfortable to be a Jew and an Israeli right now.
To know that if you show your Israeli passport at a foreign airport, you may be intimidated or denied entry. To walk through Western cities and see mobs chanting for our destruction. To see “intellectuals” justify massacre as “resistance.” To be gaslighted by Muslims who call us “Islamophobic” for being scared that more than 10 percent of the Koran is explicitly antisemitic. To be told that Jews will be safeguarded after antisemites attack our places of worship and communities. To be told that Jews are acceptable only if we’re quiet, apologetic, invisible, or dead.
And yet, Sukkot calls this a season of joy. Because joy, in Jewish life, has never been the absence of discomfort. It is the awareness of blessing in spite of it. We are not the Jews of before the Holocaust. We have a state. We have political power. We have capital. We have global connections. We have an army that fights for Jewish life, not against it.
We have the capacity to defend, to rebuild, to endure — and yes, to win. Gratitude is not passive; it is fuel. To forget our blessings is to invite fragility. To appreciate them is to multiply our strength.
The world loves the idea of Jewish survival, but not Jewish strength. It wants the Jew of the Holocaust — frail, frightened, apologetic — not the Jew of Sukkot, who builds, celebrates, and fights when necessary.
But Jewish ethics never required self-destruction. The Jews’ right to win is not only political; it’s moral. Because the only alternative to Jewish victory is Jewish death. The world cloaks its cowardice in words like “ceasefire” and “restraint,” but restraint in the face of evil is not righteousness; it’s surrender.
There is no moral high ground in letting your children die so your enemies can appear noble. Our moral tradition demands clarity, not confusion. And that clarity says: Life must triumph over those who worship death.
The sukkah’s open walls remind us that all kinds of Jews belong inside. The Four Species — the lulav, etrog, myrtle, and willow — represent Jews of every temperament, practice, and persuasion. None is complete alone. This is the time to stop judging Jews who don’t think, act, or look like you. Stop the purity tests. Stop the sneering, the tribalism within the tribe.
Ask questions instead of hurling accusations. Lead with curiosity instead of contempt. The Jews who pray in black hats, the Jews who dance at Tel Aviv Pride, the Jews in Paris, Brooklyn, Johannesburg, Melbourne, and Buenos Aires — all are holding up a corner of the same tent. Israel will win when Jews remember how to see each other as family, not factions.
The sukkah recalls the Clouds of Glory that surrounded the Israelites in the wilderness — divine protection amid exposure. Israel today lives that paradox daily: surrounded, vilified, yet guided by a moral compass older than any of its critics. Faith in the wilderness means believing not only that we will survive, but that our survival has purpose: to bring light to the nations, even as they curse our flame.
Our enemies may believe that chaos is our undoing. They are wrong. Chaos has always been our classroom. The wilderness is where we learned to trust, to build, to carry the Ark through fire and fear. It’s where we learned that fragility, when filled with faith, becomes unbreakable.
Sukkot is also Chag Ha’Asif — the Festival of Ingathering. Once, it marked the gathering of crops; now, it marks the gathering of a people. For 2,000 years, Jews prayed for a return to Zion. That prayer has been answered. But an answered prayer still needs guardians. The ingathering is not over; it’s ongoing. Every Jew must stand with Israel, must refuse to bow to intimidation, must teach their children to be proud Jews — that’s part of the harvest. That’s how we keep the promise alive.
In ancient times, Sukkot marked the harvest — a moment of abundance, when farmers might have felt invincible. The Torah commands us to leave that abundance and sit in a fragile hut, to remember that strength is temporary unless renewed through faith and community. Power is never guaranteed.
The Jewish People will remain strong only to the extent that we continue to invest, not just in security and military might, but in the strength of our Judaism, our Jewish communities, our Jewish education, and our global Jewish solidarity. A sukkah without reinforcement collapses. So does a people that forgets its foundation.
When Israel fights, it doesn’t fight only for Jews. It fights for the right of moral clarity to exist in a morally confused world. Every rocket intercepted over Tel Aviv is a shield for the same values that built the free world — human dignity, conscience, and civilization itself. The Jews’ right to win is the world’s right to hope that good can still prevail.
Joy, in Judaism, has always been an act of defiance. The sukkah is not just a shelter; it’s a statement. The Jewish People will celebrate life even when death lurks at the edges. We will bless even when cursed. We will build even when threatened. Because our joy is not naïve; it’s prophetic. It says: You can shake our walls, but not our roots.
The sukkah stands as both metaphor and mission. Fragile, exposed, but holy because we built it. It is not the symbol of Jewish weakness. It is the symbol of Jewish defiance. So let the world rage. Let our enemies mock. Let the wind blow through the branches. We will sit beneath them, sing our songs, raise our flags, and remember: The Jews have a right to win, not just a right to exist.
Because after millennia of wandering, we did not build a sukkah to cower under. We built it to remind ourselves that even in impermanence, the Jewish spirit remains indestructible.
“Email to Labour MPs: Is the Left inciting the murder of Jews?” Hellish 2050.
You are wonderful people. Am Yisrael Chai 🇮🇱from an Irish Zionist
Fantastic!!! Stand together and be proud. You will win, fight,fight,fight. ❤️