The arrogance of inheritance must end for Israel’s redemption

We are not the first generation to face a crisis, nor will we be the last. But ours carries a unique burden: the arrogance of inheritance.

For 3,500 years, our people have written down their mistakes. Jeremiah warned us, and we refused to listen. During the siege of Jerusalem, Jews slaughtered animals on the altar while their brothers starved within the walls. We elevated ritual above survival. We confused piety with blindness. And the city fell.

“These stories were recorded not for poetry, but for survival. That is why even our greatest shame—the Golden Calf at Sinai—was carved into our memory. The people who had just heard the voice of God still fell into idolatry, and we wrote it down. We wrote it down so that no generation could ever claim innocence, so that we would remember our weakness as much as our strength. Do not forget. Do not repeat. But what they did not plan on—what they could not plan on—was us.”

But what they did not plan on—what they could not plan on—was us. A generation that mistakes convenience for morality. A generation that believes hashtags can replace history. A generation that dares to imagine peace without victory, sovereignty without struggle, survival without sacrifice. October 7 shattered that delusion. It was not only a massacre—it was a revelation. It revealed the fragility of our illusions, the emptiness of our complacency and the weakness of leaders who confuse appearances with destiny. We woke up that day to discover we are still who we have always been: a people tested in fire, called not merely to endure but to overcome.

And yet, instead of clarity, we see confusion. Instead of unity, division. We see Jews in the streets protesting not our enemies, but our own survival. We hear demands for a ceasefire without victory, as if surrender were an act of compassion, as if retreat were a path to peace. This is not morality—it is madness. To abandon victory is to condemn every soldier, every hostage, every family who has sacrificed. To call for peace without victory is to baptize defeat as virtue.

And even as we fight, we risk betraying those who fight for us. Too many of our soldiers return home broken, their bodies scarred, their minds haunted, while the nation looks away. We demand their sacrifice, but we do not prepare to carry its weight. To ignore their wounds is to abandon them in plain sight. It is to repeat the oldest sin of all: forgetting that the covenant is not only with God, but with each other. If we cannot care for those who bled for us, then we have already begun to forget who we are.

This is the arrogance of inheritance: to believe survival is owed to us, even as we unravel it with our own hands. History is merciless. Every time we abandoned resolve, we were scattered. Every time we chose weakness, we fell. From the walls of Jerusalem to the ghettos of Europe, from Babylon to Berlin, the story repeats itself: our destruction has always come when we forgot who we are. And that is what terrifies me today. The arrogance of our inheritance. The belief that survival is owed to us. The fantasy that the covenant guarantees us, no matter what we do. But the covenant is not a shield against cowardice—it is a call to courage.

The task of this generation is not to “survive another 3,500 years.” Survival is not the end of our story. The task is redemption. The task is to transform suffering into strength, exile into sovereignty, despair into renewal. The covenant was never about eternal victimhood. It was about people who would wrestle with history, sanctify life and carry the promise of redemption forward.

That requires new leaders. Not bureaucrats. Not caretakers of rotting institutions. Not fundraisers addicted to donor money and applause. We need leaders untainted by corruption, unbought by the world, unbroken by fear. Leaders who will root themselves in the covenant and the traditions of our people, and who will speak with fire. Leaders who can proclaim, teach and explain—not only to the nations but to our own confused children—why Israel exists, why sovereignty matters, why victory is not arrogance but survival.

And most of all, leaders who cannot be moved. Leaders who stand like oaks planted by living waters, unshaken when the winds howl. Like David before Goliath, who did not flinch at the shadow of a giant. Like Solomon in his wisdom, unmoved by the clamor of the crowd. Leaders who cannot be bought, cannot be bent, cannot be broken—for only such leaders can carry our people through the storm into the dawn.

Make no mistake: the storm is here. We see it in the streets of Paris, New York and London. We see it in the parliaments of Europe, rushing to declare Palestinian statehood even as Jews are murdered. We see it in American universities where Jewish students hide their mezuzahs while their peers chant for our destruction. We see it in Jews themselves, who believe that surrender is compassion and that appeasement is safety.

And now, in the midst of war, the nations rush to declare a Palestinian state. Spain, Ireland, Norway, France, Britain—one after another, eager to proclaim that Jewish sovereignty is temporary, conditional, expendable. It is a familiar story: the world turning its back, forgetting why we returned in the first place.

For ours is the oldest complete story of a people and a land. Longer than Rome, older than Britain, deeper than America itself. We are not here because of the Holocaust. We are here because Abraham walked this soil. After all, prophets sanctified this soil, because kings built Jerusalem stone by stone. We are here because exile was a wound, not a home.

If the world has forgotten this, then it is our task to remind them. To reteach the story of who we are and why we are here. To proclaim that Jewish sovereignty is not a gift of nations but the fulfillment of the covenant. That Israel is not a colonial project but the return of an indigenous people to its land.

History is not fate—it is forged by choice. October 7 forces us to choose: another date of destruction, or the dawn of redemption.

The Jewish story has never been about resignation. It has always been defiance about taking what the world meant for our destruction and turning it into creation. That is why we planted vineyards in exile. That is why we prayed in Hebrew even when it was forbidden. That is why we wrote down our failures: not to wallow in shame, but to demand something greater of ourselves. This is the demand now: that we shed the arrogance of inheritance. That we refuse the ignorance of convenience. That we remember who we are. Compassion without victory is cruelty. Peace without justice is oppression. Survival without redemption is failure.

The storms rage—the world wavers. But we cannot. If we are to be worthy of the covenant—if we are to inherit not only the pain but also the promise of our people—then we must demand not only survival, but redemption.

October 7 was not the end of Jewish history. It was its revelation. And it calls for nothing less than a new Jewish leadership, a new Jewish courage and a new Jewish future. The arrogance of our inheritance must die—so that the redemption of our people can live.