500 Days

Five hundred days.

Five hundred days since October 7, 2023.

Five hundred days of innocent men, women, and children held captive in the suffocating tunnels of Gaza, tortured, starved, brutalized beyond imagination. Five hundred days of families waking up every morning in agony, not knowing if their loved ones are alive or dead. Five hundred days of hell.

Five hundred days of Israel under attack—physically, politically, morally. The Jewish homeland, our refuge after millennia of persecution, demonized for defending itself. Five hundred days of Jews being hunted in the streets, vilified on campuses, slandered in the media. Five hundred days of watching the world twist reality, as the greatest victims of terror are cast as its perpetrators.

Five hundred days, and still, the world refuses to see.

Where was this outrage when Assad massacred his own people in Syria? When the Houthis butchered civilians in Yemen? When genocide consumed Sudan? The silence was deafening. And yet, when Jews defend their homeland, the world roars with condemnation. The double standard isn’t just hypocrisy—it’s hatred.

The battle we face is not just for Israel’s survival. It is for the truth.

“From the river to the sea” is not a chant for peace—it is a call for the eradication of Israel and every Jew within it. That is ethnic cleansing. “Globalize the Intifada” is not resistance—it is a demand to bring terror to every city where Jews exist. And the world applauds.

They call us colonizers. But colonizers come from foreign lands. We are from this land. We have spoken Hebrew for thousands of years on this soil, prayed in this land, bled for this land. Even their own sacred texts acknowledge our history here. How many Muslim nations exist? 22. How many Hebrew-speaking Jewish states? One. And yet, it is we who are accused of colonization?

Every second that ticks by is another moment of unfathomable suffering. One of the freed hostages described it as 43 million seconds of horror. Can you imagine? Another survivor told his girlfriend he had prayed she would move on because he never believed he would make it out alive.

Five hundred days is an eternity in hell.

Enough. The time for patience is over. The hostages must come home. Hamas must release them. And if they will not, Israel must bring them back. Whatever it takes. Whatever the cost.

Because five hundred days is already five hundred too many.

And we will not wait another day.