Seventy-seven years ago, on a sliver of land no larger than Wales, a miracle was proclaimed: not whispered, not negotiated, but declared with the full thunder of a people reclaiming their destiny. Israel was not born of the Holocaust; it was reborn despite it.
The very forces that sought to erase the Jewish people – through ghettos, gas chambers, and mass killings – were defeated in the most remarkable and poetic way imaginable: a people bloodied but unbroken chose life, defiantly, irrevocably, and forever.
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion stood before history, not as a supplicant, but as an architect, and gave voice to a truth that no tyranny, no genocide, could silence. The return of Israel was no act of charity by a guilty world. It was the return of history itself, a moment when exile yielded to sovereignty; when dreams, stubbornly preserved across centuries of dispersion, took the form of a flag, a language, a people reborn.
This year, as we mark Independence Day, we are called not only to remember but to bear witness. Israel’s survival is in itself a rebuke to those who still traffic in the old hatred. Yet survival alone does not explain the full measure of Israel’s achievement. It is not merely that Israel endured; it is that she chose, again and again, to build, innovate, and embrace the future with open arms.
In the span of a few decades, a barren land was transformed into a flourishing society, a Start-Up Nation whose technological and scientific contributions have enriched the world. A place where democracy, often messy and contested, nonetheless stands as a model in a region long ravaged by tyranny.
And yet, the ground continues to shake. The memory of Hamas’s attack on Israel and mega-atrocity on October 7, 2023, still raw and bleeding, reminds us that the hatred that animated Israel’s earliest enemies has not been consigned to history’s rubbish heap. It endures, mutating into new forms, cloaked in new hypocrisies. Too often, when Jewish blood is spilled, the world equivocates. Too often, the old silence returns, wearing the mask of moral complexity.
IF ISRAEL’S enemies have weaponized chaos, then Israel and her true allies must weaponize hope. Not the anemic hope of slogans but a muscular, strategic hope forged into policy, diplomacy, and action.
The Abraham Accords, for instance, represent not merely a diplomatic achievement but an underdeveloped revolution. Their signing shattered the myth that enmity between Jews and Arabs was immutable.
They gestured toward a future in which shared prosperity, mutual recognition, and even friendship could replace grievance and war. Yet, too often, these accords have been treated as trophies rather than tools. Their transformative potential remains largely dormant, their diplomatic capital unspent.
What is needed now is not another ceremony, but a movement – a coalition animated by the spirit of the accords, capable of reshaping the Middle East and challenging the ascendancy of extremist ideologies. The nations that dared to reach out to Israel must now dare even more.
Together, they must forge a new bloc, one not merely content with normalization but determined to push back against the tide of radicalism that seeks to engulf the region once more. A bloc capable of speaking with one voice at the United Nations and other global forums, challenging the legitimacy of movements that glorify terror, teach their children to hate, and build empires of fear on the ruins of shattered lives.
Imagine what could be accomplished if Israelis, Emiratis, Bahrainis, Moroccans, Sudanese, and others stood together, not just in commerce but in conscience. Imagine a Middle East where the builders, dreamers, and innovators drown out the bomb makers and preachers of death.
This is not naive idealism. It is a necessity if we are to prevent the future from being held hostage by those who worship destruction.
Israel’s victories are many, and they are not confined to the battlefield. They are seen in the thriving cities that grew from dust, in the breakthroughs in medicine and technology that have saved lives far beyond her borders, in the culture, art, and music that proclaim – against all odds – the vibrancy of a people who refused to be extinguished.
'In Israel, to be a realist, you must believe in miracles'
As Ben-Gurion once observed: “In Israel, to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.” Yet the true miracle lies not simply in survival but in the choice, made anew each day, to live, build, and hope.
ON THIS 77th Independence Day, we are called not only to celebrate what has been achieved but also to recognize the work that remains. The Abraham Accords are not the end of a journey; they are the beginning of a new chapter, an unfinished symphony that demands bold conductors, leaders willing to seize the moment and mold it into history.
The forces of hatred have not vanished. But neither has the indomitable spirit that brought Israel into being, sustained her through war and siege, enabled her to transform mourning into music, tragedy into triumph.
To honor Israel today is to recommit ourselves to the struggle she embodies: the defense of civilization against barbarism, the insistence on hope against despair, the unyielding choice of life over death.
Am Yisrael Chai is not a slogan but an eternal covenant. A people lives. A nation thrives. A dream, battered but unbroken, endures.
The writer is the executive director of We Believe In Israel.
