Today Ariel Bibas is 5 years old. He should be waking up early, filled with excitement. His brother Kfir, who turned 1 on January 18 is awake with him and they should be waking up their parents with giggles, laughter and screams of joy. Instead, the entire Bibas family remains hostages, nearly 10 months after being kidnapped by Hamas. Kfir celebrated his birthday in captivity and now, unfortunately, so does Ariel. I slept poorly last night, thinking about these beautiful children and this beautiful family and what they are enduring.

As the world waits with anticipation for a possible/probably attack by Iran on Israel, the possible start of World War III, I find myself thinking deeply about how we got here. Hindsight is always 20/20 although in this case, so much of how we got here was predictible at the time of the decisions being made.

The Iranian regime is evil. It has oppressed the Iranian people since the 1979 revolution. They took and held American hostages for 444 days. I remember following the news at that time hoping for some resolution every day. I remember hoping that the hostages would still be alive and would be released. I remember staying home from school on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated because that was the day they were released. I remember tracking their progress as they left Iran through TV news (there was no internet to get real time reporting) and being so excited when they finally were free.

The Iranian regime has only gotten more powerful, more evil, and become a bigger global threat since then. When the JCPOA was approved, it gave Iran the ability to grow financially and fund more terror, all while breaking the agreement from day one. The flawed belief at that time was that the Iranian regime was like us. That they would keep their word. That they cared about their people and the future of the country. They proved us wrong.

Yet the Biden administration doubled down on this false belief in removing sanctions from Iran. Giving them access to billions of dollars allowed them to increase their funding of terror. Despite the constant promise that there will never be a nuclear Iran, Secretary of State Tony Blinken recently stated that Iran is only 1-2 weeks away from nuclear breakout to having nuclear bombs. While he blames us leaving the JCPOA for this situation, Iran was already violating the agreement without consequence.

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and took hostages, there was immediate equivocation. Immediate excuses. Immediate denials of what happened. Hamas, like Iran, was treated as an entity that valued human life, that would want peace, and that would negotiate in good faith. Despite all proof to the contrary, that is how the United States and Europe treated them. The demands continued to be on Israel to do something rather than on Hamas to release the hostages. As a result, 303 days later, we still have hostages in Gaza. 304 days later, children like Arial and Kfir Bibas remain hostages. Kfir has now spent most of his life as a hostage in Gaza yet there is no outrage about this. No demand that these children, these babies, be returned.

The demand was that Israel minimize civilian casualties while Hamas worked to maximize civlian casualties. There was never a demand that Hamas change their ways, only that Israel does. The facts that the worldwide accepted civilian to combatant ratio is 9 civilians killed for every combatant and that Israel was below 1.5 civilian casualties for every combatant didn’t matter. The fact that Hamas uses schools, hospitals, medical clinics, and mosques as military bases didn’t matter. The fact that Hamas built terror tunnels longer than the NY subway didn’t matter. The US and the western world only held Israel accountable, allowing the terrorists to do more damage.

When the death toll of women and children is reduced by the UN by half, the world remains silent, hoping nobody will notice. When Israel is told there is no way they safely evacuate the people in Rafa and they do it anyway, the world doesn’t take notice. The emboldening of Iran and the terrorists grows.

When Hezbollah fires thousands of rockets into the north of Israel, when more than 60,000 Israelis have been evacuated from the north and have been living in hotels for nearly 10 months, the world is silent. I met some of these families in Jerusalem. They were from a religious community in the north. This means they are families of 7+ people, living in a single hotel room for almost 10 months.

Israel was required to provide food, water, medicine, power, internet and more to their enemy who was trying to kill them. Yet when UNRWA and Hamas steal the food, don’t deliver the food, and sell the food on the black market, the blame is put on Israel. When there is proof that more than enough food is getting in to Gaza yet the food crisis remains, the world is silent.

We don’t have to be silent. I choose not to and I encourage you to be a loud voice as well. In July, while in Israel, I began singing the Achinu prayer daily. I have continued to sing it every day. It’s not long and it both centers me, fills me with gratitude, and reminds me of the hostages who remain in captivity. I also long for the day when I no longer need to sing it every morning.

We don’t have to be silent about what is happening. We don’t have to accept what others say. The protests in the streets of Philadelphia, Seattle, Brooklyn, Manhatten, Middlesbrough UK, Montreal, London, Washington DC, and many other locations are turning violent. Chants of ‘Intifada Revolution’ are occuring in the US, Canada, and Europe. We can choose to accept this as the new normal, as many in Germany did with Kristalnacht, or we can fight back. We can hope it will go away and hide until is does or we can learn from history that it never goes away and that staying silent always ends poorly for us and choose to speak up and speak out.

As Jews we are taught to want the world to be better. We are taught that it is our responsibility to make the world better. We want a better world not just for our children and grandchildren but also for everybody who lives in the world. This often blows up in our faces as we do things to harm ourselves. We make assumptions about others that are false. In the recent debate on Is the Two State Solution Viable, my friend Fleur Hassan-Nahoum made two powerful statements about the desire for a two-state solution and an end to the conflict.

“The problem isn’t that there isn’t a Palestinian State. The problem is that there is a Jewish State.”

“It is not their dream. It is our dream”

I told Fleur I wasn’t sure which was more powerful to me. We often want things so much that we pretend the other side wants it as well. I remember talking with my friend Mahmoud in East Jerusalem in May. He talked mostly about a 1 state solution which would mean the cost of peace is that Israel isn’t a Jewish state any longer. I have thought long and hard about our conversation and hope to spend more time with him in September as I have so many new questions for him.

I am tired of our leaders lying about what’s going on. I’m tired of our leaders not standing by our allies. I’m tired of having leaders without morals and ethics, people who don’t follow what they say or agreements that they sign. I’m tired of the encouragement of hatred from the left and the right that divide our country and our world.

Our literature is filled with those who do whatever is necessary to defeat evil. Harry Potter uses the unforgivable curse, Avada Kadavra, to finally rid the world of the true evil of Lord Voldemort. In Lord of the Rings, the evil Sauron is finally destroyed. In Star Wars, the evil Emperor Palpatine had to be killed by Darth Vader. In real life, we see what happened when the evil of Adolph Hitler (11 million murdered in the Holocast), Joseph Stalin (6 million people murdered), and even today with Bashar Assad murdering over 500,000 people and still counting are allowed to do what they want without consequence. Iran is the evil we face today. Iran is the largest state sponsor of terror. Iran is responsible for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Iran funds hate. Should Iran actually get a nuclear bomb, they can be expected to use it. Yet we continue to appease them. We continue to think we can negotiate with them. We continue to think they share our values. We will continue to do this until they use a nuclear weapon in Europe or the United States. It’s time to fight the real evil and defeat it. It’s time to lead through action and do what is needed, even when it’s hard.

I’m tired of the hostages being in captivity and forgotten by our leaders. I’m tired of the mobs in the streets calling for intifada, revolution, also known as the elimination of the Jews. I’m tired of the rockets being fired at Israel and the people in the north having to be refugees. I’m tired of my friends being recalled to the IDF and put into harms way over and over again. My heart aches for those murdered on October 7th at the Nova Music Festival, Kfar Aza, Kibbutz Be’eri, and everywhere else.

I’m tired of our leaders not leading and I’m tired of them not clearly seeing that the evil and the problem is Iran. To paraphrase James Carville during the 1992 Clinton campaign for President, “It’s Iran, Stupid”. If our leaders wise up and get on track, they’ll realize that Iran is the cause of the world instability. The Iranian regime is core evil and needs to be eliminated. At all costs. During the hostage crisis in 1979-80, I remember a poster my cousin had in his room. It expressed our feelings then and expresses my feelings now.

Having been to Israel in May and July, having talked to my Israeli friends non-stop since October 7th, I know they are exhausted. Not just by what I am exhausted with but also with the nonstop bombs they face, the constant call ups to reserves, the funerals that seem to never end, the protests against the government, for the hostages, and to end the war. There is no end in sight. Yesterday all I wanted to do was to be back in Israel, with my Israeli brothers and sisters, knowing the war with Iran is coming yet knowing we were all together. As a passionate Zionist, a Jew who loves Israel and one who has Israel a permanent part of my soul, it’s hard not to be there at this time of need.

I write a lot about leadership and the lack of it. I write a lot about Israel and how important it is. I write a lot about my fears for the world. So, in summary, to all our leaders, I say once again, “It’s Iran, Stupid”. Bring them home now.