[Order Anni Cyrus’ new book, The Architecture of Jihad: HERE. And register for Anni Cyrus’ May 27th Evening Reception and Talk in LA: HERE.]
May 14, 1948 (5 Iyar 5708) – Friday – Tel Aviv Museum.
37 Jewish leaders gathered at the Dizengoff House, the Tel Aviv Museum.
Golda Meir is there. David Ben-Gurion stands at the wooden table. The others are signatories to a declaration that will either birth a nation or become a death warrant.
The room is small, crowded, heavy with the weight of every name that isn’t in that room.
They all know the facts: the British Mandate expires at midnight, Arab armies are mobilizing at the borders, and there is no backup plan.
This is not a celebration in the way the world understands celebrations. These are the people who have been scattered, slaughtered, and told they have no right to exist, finally saying otherwise. The joy in that room is real, but it sits atop fresh graves. Six million dead. Entire communities erased. Children who will never grow up.
And now, in this moment, the survivors are doing the one thing they have left: they are refusing to disappear.
Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Provisional State Council, declares Israel’s independence.
And outside the building, the world is already deciding whether to let them live or to finish what Hitler started.
The restored state was 24 hours old when Arab armies attacked. From May 15, 1948 forward, the pattern chose Hitler’s side.
The United Nations spent the next 8 decades condemning Israel for defending what it voted to create. More resolutions against Israel than against North Korea, Iran, Syria, and China combined.
The UN Human Rights Council, where Saudi Arabia and Venezuela sit in judgment, has condemned Israel more than every other nation on earth. Not proportionally more. More in total. While Assad gassed his own people, while ISIS burned prisoners alive, while China built concentration camps for Uyghurs, the UN was busy drafting another resolution about Israeli settlements.
Every Israeli defense was met with international condemnation. Every Israeli building was called an obstacle to peace. Every Israeli life lost was treated as a statistic in a both-sides narrative.
78 years of the same pressure. Same logic. Same outcome: Israel survives, and the world blames it for surviving.
The neighboring countries never stopped. Egypt and Jordan made peace only after losing multiple wars. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Islamic Republic of Iran still refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Not arguing over borders. Refusing to acknowledge that Jews have any right to a state at all.
Hamas’ Charter calls for the elimination of Israel. Hezbollah exists to destroy it. The Palestinian Authority pays salaries to terrorists who murder Israeli civilians. This is not a conflict over land. This is a refusal to accept that Jews deserve to live.
And the United States, Israel’s so-called ally, has spent those same 78 years tying Israel’s hands. Aid with conditions. Weapons with restrictions. Pressure to negotiate with people who openly call for its destruction. Every time Israel defends itself, America demands restraint. Every time rockets are fired from Gaza, the US calls for de-escalation. When Israel builds homes in Jerusalem, its own capital, the State Department condemns it as an obstacle to peace. But when Hamas fires 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities, the response is measured concern and both-sides diplomacy.
Israel has never been given peace as an option. Only constraints. And no nation on earth is forced to justify its right to exist the way Israel is.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that beheads dissenters and treats women as property. No one suggests it has no right to exist.
The Islamic Republic has spent the last 47 years massacring dissidents, crushing protests, and killing its own people, with estimated deaths reaching well over 100,000. Yet the world reserves its obsession for Israel’s government.
China occupies Tibet, built concentration camps for Muslims, and harvests organs from prisoners. Turkey occupies northern Cyprus. Pakistan was created through partition and mass displacement. Qatar funds Islamist movements across the region.
The UN does not spend its time demanding that those nations justify their existence or dismantle their borders.
But Israel, a democracy where Arabs serve in parliament, where Muslims have more rights than in any Muslim-majority country, where the rule of law applies equally, is told it is an illegitimate, apartheid, colonial state with no right to defend itself.
The smallest minority on earth is under constant attack while the actual villains walk free. Iran publicly hangs people from cranes. The Taliban enslaves women. Boko Haram kidnaps schoolgirls. ISIS crucifies Christians. And the list goes on.
This is not about human rights. This is about Jews.
I know because I was raised to hate them.
Growing up in Iran, I was taught to chant “Death to Israel” before I knew where Israel was. I was told Jews were the enemy. I was never told why. It was just understood. Hatred without reason. Blame without cause. It was normal.
Then, when I came to America, I studied, read history, and learned what I had been taught was a lie. And now I see the same irrational hatred I was raised with spreading in the West, dressed up as progressive activism, as concern for human rights, as solidarity with the oppressed.
It is the same lie. Just better marketing.
Today, on May 14, 2026, Antisemitism is at a record high in Western democracies. On American college campuses, students chant for intifada. In European cities, synagogues require armed guards. And in churches across the West, pastors preach against Israel using the name of a Jewish Messiah who commanded His followers to love the Jewish people.
Jesus was Jewish. He kept the Law. He taught in synagogues. He celebrated Passover. He called the Jewish people His own.
In John 4:22, He said, “Salvation is from the Jews.”
You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.
Paul wrote in Romans 11 that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable, that Israel is beloved for the sake of the patriarchs, that Gentiles are grafted into the covenant, not replacing it.
Yet many modern churches vilify Israel in His name. They call it justice. They call it standing with the oppressed. They invoke Jesus’s words about loving your neighbor while ignoring that His neighbors were Jewish, that His apostles were Jewish, and that the entire foundation of their faith is Jewish.
This is not discipleship. This is theological betrayal.
Christians who claim to follow Jesus cheer movements openly calling for the annihilation of the very people He came from. Activists who claim to care about human rights ignore every atrocity except the ones they can blame on Jews. The UN, which was created in the shadow of the Holocaust, spends more time condemning the Jewish state than any regime on earth.
This should be indefensible. It should be impossible to justify. Yet it has become fashionable.
78 years after the Declaration, the pattern has not changed. The hatred is the same. The scapegoating is the same. The double standard is the same. Only the rhetoric has been updated.
And Israel is still here, because this is not hope. This is the Lord’s promise.
Hallelujah.
The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
—Genesis 12:7
That’s where this starts. Not 1948. Not the British Mandate. Not the UN vote, the Arab armies, or the midnight deadline.
This starts with God’s covenant to Abraham, a promise made thousands of years before anyone drew a border on a map, before the British carved up the Middle East, before the Ottomans, before the Crusaders, before Rome burned the Second Temple and scattered the people who built it.
The covenant was made with Isaac. The inheritance was passed to Jacob, who became Israel. His descendants carried that name through exile, through slavery, through every empire that tried to erase them. They carried it because it was promised. Not granted by man; promised by God.
This is not modern politics.
This is the Lord’s will, and it is not up for negotiation.
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