You don’t have to like the Jews, but you should fear us.
Today, a complete Jew is rooted in tradition, but capable of self-defense; fluent in Torah, but unafraid to fight.
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Less than 100 years ago, much of the world observed in pure silence as the Jews were nearly eliminated.
Now, they watch us in awe as we strike back at today’s new-and-improved version of the Nazis.
This is the great reversal.
What was once a people hunted, herded, and humiliated is now a people who fly F-35s, run world-class intelligence agencies, and strike their enemies with speed and precision that rivals myth. What was once a people dependent on the kindness of strangers is now a sovereign nation whose hand is steady on the trigger.
You don’t have to like Jews. History has shown that much of the world doesn’t, anyway.
But you would be wise to fear us.
Before the rise of Zionism, the dominant caricature of the Jew was that of the galut (exilic) Jew: weak, passive, rootless, physically ineffectual, confined to the ghetto or the margins of society.
Centuries of diaspora life — expulsion, pogroms, persecution — had taught Jews to keep their heads down, to survive by wit rather than strength. That survival was a kind of miracle, but it was not dignity. It was not power.
Zionism changed that.
The Zionist movement, especially in its early days, was not just about returning to a land; it was about returning to a self. Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky didn’t merely envision a state; they envisioned a new kind of Jew: one who walked upright, one who farmed his own land and built his own home and defended his own borders.
The “new Jew” was self-reliant, self-possessed, and above all, unafraid. This was not just nationalism rooted in indigeneity; it was transformation rooted in dignity, defiance, and the reclamation of Jewish strength. It was a rebellion against 2,000 years of helplessness.
Long before the image of the passive, powerless Jew took hold in the European imagination, Jews were warriors. In ancient Jerusalem, we fought to defend our Temple, our land, and our people. King David was not just a poet; he was a soldier, a general, a giant-slayer. The Maccabees didn’t write op-eds; they led a guerrilla revolt against a Hellenistic empire and reclaimed Jewish sovereignty with blood and blade.
The Jewish story began not in submission, but in resistance. We were never meant to be lambs. We were a nation of shepherds and soldiers, prophets and kings. The exile distorted that image. Centuries of persecution taught us to hide, to bend, to survive through intellect and subterfuge. But that wasn’t our origin story; it was a coping mechanism, a forced adaptation to a world that had disarmed us.
Zionism didn’t invent Jewish strength. It reawakened it.
The “new Jew” of the 20th century was really the ancient Jew reborn: tanned by the Mediterranean sun, plowing ancestral soil, training in the hills of Judea. He traded the ghetto for the kibbutz, the shtetl for the soldier’s uniform. And in doing so, he reminded the world — and perhaps more importantly, he reminded himself — what it means to be a free Jew in his own land.
If the “old Jew” was stooped in prayer, the “new Jew” was flexed in readiness and vigilance. We held onto the memory of who we once were, and we made a promise to ourselves and to each other about who we would never again allow ourselves to become.
This was not about aggression; it was about survival. Because history had taught us the most painful lesson of all: No one was coming to save us. Auschwitz wasn’t just a horror; it was a verdict. The verdict was that weakness kills. Powerlessness is not moral. It is mortal.
So we built a nation that trains its sons and daughters to fight, to lead, to sacrifice. We built an army where women serve in combat, and where pilots drop leaflets before they drop bombs — because we also retained the moral code that the “old Jew” never let go of.
But make no mistake: We fight now. And this leads to discomfort around the world.
Let me explain: The discomfort the world feels today watching Israeli airstrikes is not about “human rights.” It’s about the unsettling realization that the Jew is no longer begging for protection, but delivering justice with his own hands.
People were more comfortable when we were victims. When we cried out from the boxcars. When we lit candles for the dead. When we quoted Anne Frank and hoped for the best in human nature.
But there’s a different kind of Jew now, one who remembers the lessons of the Holocaust and the expulsions from Arab lands not as museum exhibits, but as warning labels. One who does not wait for sympathy, because we know that sympathy never stopped a pogrom. One who lives by the Talmudic ethic: “If someone comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.”
That’s what Israel is doing. That’s what Zionism gave us. And that’s what the enemies of the Jewish People and their online cheerleaders are now learning.
The Jewish People have never wanted to be feared; we wanted to be accepted, to be neighbors, citizens, partners. That was the original dream, but the world taught us to abandon that fantasy.
Today, we don’t ask you to like us. You don’t have to invite us to your cocktail parties, your award shows, or your campus rallies. We’ve seen what many of you do there anyway.
But you will think twice before harming us. You will think twice before funding terrorists, spreading blood libels, or pretending neutrality as missiles rain on Israeli population centers. You will think twice because we are not who we once were. We are not the Jew who lowers his eyes and apologizes for existing. We are the Jew who trains, who fights, and who wins.
We didn’t want this, but now we own it.
Zionist visionary Max Nordau coined an interesting term at the Second Zionist Congress held in Basel in 1898: “Muscular Judaism.” There, he called for the rebirth of the Jewish body alongside the Jewish spirit, believing that strength, agility, and discipline (mental and physical alike) were prerequisites for national revival.
Nordau’s vision was a direct response to the frail image of the Diaspora Jew, hunched over his books, cowering in the ghetto, his body made weak by centuries of powerlessness. Nordau sought to replace that image with something new, or rather, something ancient. Because the Jew had not always been weak. Muscular Judaism wasn’t innovation; it was restoration.
And Nordau was onto something. His ideas took root in the early Zionist movement and flourished in the kibbutzim, where Jews returned to the land not only spiritually, but physically. They drained swamps, plowed fields, built homes with their own hands, and cultivated what was once barren. This wasn’t theoretical nationalism; it was sweaty, sun-scorched, calloused-handed Zionism. It was strength.
That strength evolved into defense.
Before Israel even became a modern state, Jews organized paramilitary groups like Bar-Giora, Hashomer, the Haganah, and Irgun. These fighters didn’t wait for permission; they secured Jewish lives against antisemitic Arabs while others dithered and looked the other way. By the time the Israel Defense Forces was officially founded in 1948, the idea of the “weak Jew” was all but dead. Today, the IDF is widely regarded as the most effective military force on earth, pound-for-pound.
But Muscular Judaism wasn’t limited to the battlefield. It reshaped Jewish identity across every domain. In the decades leading up to the Holocaust, Jewish athletes began winning Olympic medals in disproportionate numbers. In Austria, Jews made up a small percentage of the population, but an outsized percentage of sports teams.
Hakoach Vienna — named for the Hebrew word “strength” — became a world-renowned football club. Its players wore Stars of David on their uniforms and took pride in names like Bar-Kochba. At their peak in the 1920s, journalists called them “one of the best teams on the planet.”
And in 1929, a Slovak-born Jewish athlete named Imre Lichtenfeld won national championships in boxing, wrestling, and gymnastics — all in the same year. He would later go on to found Krav Maga, the close-combat system used by Israeli special forces to this day.
Today, a complete Jew is rooted in tradition, but capable of self-defense; fluent in Torah, but unafraid to fight. The “old Jew” and “new Jew” need not be enemies. When fused, they create something stronger than either one alone: a Jew who prays with conviction and punches with precision.
Muscular Judaism reminds us that we cannot think our way out of antisemitism. We cannot donate our way out of it. We cannot virtue-signal our way into being liked. We must be strong — physically, emotionally, spiritually; individually and collectively. And that strength must be visible, so visible that those who wish us harm reconsider.
If there is any reliable way to prevent antisemitism, it is this: Make the cost of harming Jews unbearably high. This is not vengeance. This is deterrence.
Because, in the end, we didn’t become strong to dominate; we became strong so we would never be dominated again. We didn’t rise so we could oppress; we rose so we could live. And we didn’t build a Jewish state so the world would finally love us; we built it so we would no longer have to care if they didn’t.
The world may once again be growing uncomfortable with Jewish power. But we are far more uncomfortable with Jewish graves. And given the choice, we will choose power — every single time.
So no, you don’t have to like us. But you will respect us. You will fear what happens when you try to destroy us. And you will learn, sooner or later, what every empire, caliphate, and regime that tried to erase us eventually discovered: The Jews do not disappear.
No fear from me, just my admiration and full support.
Another perfectly stated essay by Joshua Hoffman.