After years of threats, after decades of Iranian terror, after October 7th and the missiles and the proxies and the nuclear centrifuges spinning in underground bunkers — Israel and America finally said: enough!
This morning, Israel launched Operation Lion’s Roar and the United States launched Operation Epic Fury, a massive coordinated strike on Iran’s military infrastructure and senior leadership. Iran responded with dozens of ballistic missiles aimed at Israeli cities. Millions of Israelis, my family included, spent their Saturday running in and out of bomb shelters.
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This is not just another round of Middle East conflict. This may be the beginning of the end of the most evil regime on earth.
It did not happen on a random Saturday.
In the Jewish calendar, today was Shabbat Zachor — the “Sabbath of Remembrance” — the Shabbat immediately before the holiday of Purim, which begins this Monday night. Every year on this day, Jews around the world read from the Torah the commandment to remember Amalek, the ancient tribe that attacked the weakest members of the Israelite camp — the elderly, the stragglers, those who could not defend themselves — for no reason other than pure, murderous hatred of the Jewish people.
“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you came out of Egypt — how he met you on the way and attacked your rear, all the stragglers at your back, when you were faint and weary, and he did not fear God. Therefore, when the Lord your God gives you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek. Do not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:17-19).
We read these words this morning. There are no coincidences. God is speaking to us – and we should listen.
The Iranian Mullahs are not the biological descendants of Amalek. But Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, one of the towering Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, taught us that Amalek is not a bloodline — it is a spiritual category. In his words:
“The notion of ‘the Lord will have war against Amalek from generation to generation’ is not confined to a certain race, but includes a necessary attack against any nation or group infused with mad hatred that directs its enmity against the community of Israel. When a nation emblazons on its standard, ‘Come, let us cut them off from being a nation so that the name of Israel shall no longer be remembered’ (Psalms 83:5), it becomes Amalek. In the 1930’s and 1940’s the Nazis, with Hitler at their helm, filled this role. In this most recent period they were the Amalekites, the representatives of insane hate.”
Rabbi Soloveitchik wrote those words in the 1950s about Nasser and the Mufti. Today, the Mullahs of Tehran have taken their place. The Iranian regime views Israel as a cancerous tumor that must be removed. The regime regularly calls for genocide against Israel. It has funded Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad — every proxy terror organization dedicated to Jewish annihilation. That is Amalek.
Maimonides, the greatest Jewish legal authority in history, wrote regarding Amalek that “it is forbidden to forget his enmity and his hatred.” In other words, it is not enough to remember Amalek’s evil attack against the people of Israel. We must remember their hatred. We must never forget how much they despise us.
Why would we need a special commandment for that? Because Jews are a people of compassion and generosity, and it is in our spiritual DNA to look for the good in others, to seek common ground, to believe that somewhere behind every enemy is a human being capable of reason. These are beautiful qualities. They can also get us killed.
God is telling us: do not project your values onto people who want you dead. Remember the hatred. Do not let time soften it into something manageable and forgettable. Because the moment we forget how much they hate us, we grow passive, we grow soft, and we stop doing what is necessary to protect our families and destroy this evil before it destroys us.
France, England, and much of Europe have spent decades telling themselves that if they are just tolerant enough, accommodating enough, the jihadist tide will recede. Instead they have watched their cities transform, their Jewish communities flee, and their governments paralyzed by a refusal to name what they are facing. They are living in a fantasy.
Rabbi Soloveitchik saw this coming decades ago: “Do not rely on the justice of the ‘liberal world.’ Those pious liberals were alive fifteen years ago and witnessed the destruction of millions of people with equanimity and did not lift a finger. They are liable to observe, God forbid, the repetition of the bloodbath and not lose a night’s sleep.”
He wrote that about the 1967 crisis. He could have written it today.
Thankfully, our brave nations – Israel and America – did not wait for European permission. We did not wait for a UN resolution. We acted.
God bless Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump. They refused to be passive. They ignored the critics — the foreign policy establishment, the European chancelleries, the editorial boards — who always have a reason why now is not the right time to confront evil. They understood what Maimonides understood: that forgetting the enemy’s hatred leads only to catastrophe. And so they acted.
Purim — which begins Monday night — celebrates the fall of Haman, the Persian official who signed a decree of annihilation against every Jewish man, woman, and child in the Persian Empire. Iran is Persia. The Ayatollahs are Haman. And this Purim, the decree is being torn up.
The Book of Esther does not end with Jews cowering in their homes, grateful to have survived. It ends with something much stronger: “The Jews struck all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and did to those who hated them as they wished” (Esther 9:5). There is a time to pray and a time to fight. Right now, it is time to do both.
God bless Israel. God bless America. Am Yisrael Chai — the people of Israel live, and we are fighting back.
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While Israel’s soldiers are fighting this battle, Israeli families are paying a devastating price on the home front. Homes have been damaged. Families have been displaced. Children who already lived through October 7th and the 2025 war are hiding underground again.
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