The Star of David, in those days, at this time

There are many conflicts in the world, but the Arab-Israeli one is the only one in which one of the sides openly calls for the extermination of the other.

Iran and the Palestinian terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon, openly declare it and have it stated in their official charters as a declared objective.

Iran’s nuclear project was aimed at fulfilling that objective the day they were able to carry it out. In the meantime, they attempted to do so through the massacre of October 7th when Israeli civilians were killed, burnt alive, raped and kidnapped to Gaza, which was originally planned to be accompanied by a simultaneous attack from Hezbollah from Lebanon and a massive ballistic missile attack from Iran.

Fortunately, the coordination did not work as planned, and after the terrible massacre of October 7th, Israel managed to recover and largely dismantle the military power of Hezbollah in Lebanon and of the terrorist organizations in Gaza—although sadly, it has not yet succeeded in freeing the hostages still held in the underground tunnels.

Only a sick religious extremism mixed with unprecedented hatred could lead a country to want to wipe another off the face of the earth—one with which it shares neither a border nor any territorial dispute—and to spend billions of dollars on that instead of using it for the welfare and progress of its own people.

When your enemy threatens you, you are obligated to believe him.

Although it may seem like madness, hard to believe for any Western human being, Iran was truly preparing for this—a new Holocaust of the Jews in their ancestral land.

A few years ago, at the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, I saw a survivor sitting next to a young Israeli Air Force fighter pilot.

I was deeply moved by the symbolism of two very different Stars of David in just a few decades:

Mordechai Foucks, a survivor of the Treblinka extermination camp, wearing the terribly infamous yellow Star of David, and next to him, a combat pilot of the Israeli Air Force with the Star of David on his pilot wings—the defenseless Jew of Europe alongside this young representative of the new generation of Jews in their reborn sovereign country, a guarantee that the Holocaust will not be repeated.

The events of recent weeks have shown that the feeling I had upon witnessing and capturing that moment in a photograph is absolutely real.

Alongside the Star of David on the pilot’s wings are, though unseen, the Stars of David of all the Mossad agents who made this possible.

And today, the stars on the flag of the United States are also part of that.