"The world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him."

Menachem Begin's battle plan for Jewish dignity and survival

In August 1982, six Jews were murdered in a terror attack at a kosher restaurant on Rue des Rosiers in Paris. It wasn’t a battlefield. It was a place where Jewish families came for couscous and calm. Two of the dead were American citizens. All of them were Jews.

From Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin didn’t just condemn the terrorists. He called out the political climate that made such horror inevitable. Begin directly criticized French President François Mitterrand for comparing Israel’s military response in Lebanon to a Nazi massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane.

“This horrendous talk,” that Begin warned, “created an atmosphere” in which Jewish blood became acceptable collateral.

France, then as now, was offended—not by the terror—but by the Jewish audacity to speak the truth.

France, then as now, recoiled—not at terrorism, but at the temerity of Jews to name it. The blood of Israeli children murdered on October 7 has barely dried, and Emmanuel Macron is already floating unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. He is joined by those moral midgets leading Canada, Britain, Spain and Brazil in using the corpses of dead Jews to attack Israel’s existence.

Genocide, which happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany and on October 7, has now become synonymous with Israel thanks to the repetition of the blood libel that Israel’s war against Hamas is just that. Never mind that Israel continues to warn the human shields in Gaza of pending attacks and has provided food, water, electricity, vaccines, and safe passage out of combat areas time and again. The atmosphere is more polluted than ever, contributing to a series of attacks that include the maiming, burning and murder of Jews in the United States.

Once again, Jews are expected to mourn quietly and defend themselves meekly. Once again, the guardians of “peace” ask the victims of terror to apologize for surviving it.

Time to stop trembling and start fighting.

Menachem Begin z”l

Israel is not a supplicant at the bar of international morality. It is the moral bar. It does not ask permission to exist. It asserts it. It does not beg for peace. It imposes justice. It possesses drones that see through walls, intelligence that sees through lies, and a will that sees through the fog of appeasement.

The world, predictably, finds this unsettling. Jews are not supposed to fight back. They’re supposed to die well.

Not anymore.

“I Am Not a Jew with Trembling Knees”: Begin’s Legacy and the Moment of Moral Clarity

In June 1982, Israel’s Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, met behind closed doors with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Then Senator Joe Biden lectured Israeli Prime Minister Begin over Israeli settlements, jabbing his finger at the prime minister and banging his fist on the desk. Mr. Biden warned that eroding support for Israel threatened U.S. aid. Israel was at war in Lebanon and far more dependent on American assistance than it is today.

If Biden thought Begin would fold, he was badly mistaken. Instead, Begin shouted at Biden: "Don't threaten us by cutting off aid to give up our principles. I'm not a Jew with trembling knees,"

Israel possesses world-leading missile defense systems, an unmatched intelligence apparatus, and the resolve of a nation shaped by history but no longer confined by it. It decimates its enemies—not out of vengeance, but survival. And that shift in power, in moral clarity, is precisely what so many find unsettling.

The anti-Zionist campus infrastructure is now under sustained and accelerating assault—from alumni, donors, lawmakers, and an awakened Jewish public. Endowments are under scrutiny. University presidents are being held accountable. Jewish students are organizing, not apologizing. This is not just defense—it is counteroffensive.

Like the collapsing arc of the New Left in the late 1960s, today’s campus radicals are turning to increasingly unhinged and violent rhetoric because they are losing cultural legitimacy. Their power, once unchallenged, now reveals itself in desperation. They vandalize, they seize buildings, they shout down dissent not because they are ascendant, but because their ideological edifice is cracking.

They are losing. And yet the Jewish people for the most part remain reactive, submissive observers, content to mobilize complaint and eager to hear yet another “There is no room for hate” bullshit statement for another indifference politicians. It is time to stop holding conferences and Zoom meetings where we all complain about how Israel and its supporters are portrayed or treated.

We are in a war, and we must be combatants.

Far too many Jews, particularly in America, seem unmoored, caught between their loyalty to Leftism and fear, unsure how to respond to a world once again uneasy with Jewish confidence. They hate Trump more than they love Israel. And at the same time, the handful of anti-Semitic and Israel-hating bottom feeders such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, etc., can no longer be rationalized by those who are loyal to conservative ideology.

Indeed, for too long, Jewish groups have enabled the intellectual and political forces that are motivated by wiping out Israel. Donors, instead of building centers for Zionist thought or teaching Hebrew as a civilizational language, poured billions into Holocaust education divorced from modern Jewish sovereignty. These programs are now leading the effort to demonize Zionism. Jewish organizations embraced social justice and allied themselves with the very groups that use the elimination of Israel as their intersectional organizing principle. Reform rabbis, in particular, abdicated their responsibility as leaders, twisting Jewish rituals and traditions into opportunities for social justice virtue signaling.

Now, the consequences are unavoidable. What was once the moral vocabulary of civil rights has been repurposed to kill Jews, first in Israel, then everywhere. And despite the countless examples of individual determination, still, too many mainstream Jewish organizations offer platitudes about coexistence while condemning Israeli self-defense with the same breath they use to denounce terrorism.

We must act with the seriousness this moment demands. The specific actions and programs will not matter if we behave as before.

This means applying the lessons of the Holocaust that Begin shared with a group of young Jewish leaders in 1981:

“First, if an enemy of our people says he seeks to destroy us, believe him. Do all in your power to deny him the means of carrying out his satanic intent.

Second, when a Jew anywhere is threatened or under attack, do all in your power to come to his aid. Never pause to wonder what the world will think or say. The world will never pity slaughtered Jews. The world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.

Third, a Jew must learn to defend himself. He must forever be prepared for whenever a threat looms.

Fourth, Jewish dignity and honor must be protected in all circumstances. The seeds of Jewish destruction lie in passively enabling the enemy to humiliate us.

Fifth, stand united in the face of the enemy…There are times when one must risk life for the sake of rescuing the lives of others. And when the few risk their own lives for the sake of the many, then they, too, stand the chance of saving themselves.

Sixth, there is a pattern to Jewish history. In our long annals as a nation, we rise, we fall, we return, we are exiled, we are enslaved, we rebel, we liberate ourselves, we are oppressed once more, we rebuild, and again we suffer destruction, climaxing in our own lifetime in the calamity of calamities, the Holocaust, followed by the rebirth of the Jewish State.”

Begin concluded by saying, “Yes, we have come full circle, and with God’s help, with the rebirth of sovereign Israel, we have finally broken the historic cycle: no more destruction and no more defeats, and no more oppression–only Jewish liberty, with dignity and honor.

Unfortunately, the malign forces -- unmatched in human history -- threaten to consume Jews once more. However, this time, we are winning. The question is, do we have the will to achieve victory? Rather than spending time and money on useless conferences, thanking politicians for condemning anti-Zionist and Jewish hatred, and warning our children to hide their Jewish and Zionist identity, we act with courage. Let us heed the words of Judah the Maccabee before his battalions went to war:

“Arm yourselves, and be valiant men, and see that ye be in readiness against the morning, that ye may fight with these nations, that are assembled together against us to destroy us and our sanctuary:

For it is better for us to die in battle than to behold the calamities of our people and our sanctuary.

As the will of God is in heaven, so let him do.”

Instead of trembling, we must make our enemies tremble.