Operation Rising Lion

In the early hours of June 13th, the world changed.

Israel, against all odds and expectations, launched one of the most daring operations in modern military history—a massive, coordinated surprise attack deep inside Iran. Hundreds of aircraft, Mossad agents, and cyber operatives executed a precise and devastating strike across multiple Iranian military targets. Revolutionary Guard command centres, nuclear facilities, anti-air batteries, and ballistic missile systems—all of them aimed at Israeli skies and civilians—were decimated in a matter of hours.

Dozens of Iran’s highest-ranking military figures were killed. The regime found itself completely unprepared. What followed were days of continued operations, as Israeli forces struck again and again, overwhelming Iran’s air defences and unravelling the myth of its invincibility.

The reason for the strike was not revenge. It was survival.

Israeli intelligence had confirmed that Iran’s regime was entering the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon. And Israel, faced with this existential threat, understood one thing with unflinching clarity: Now or never. Wait, and Tel Aviv may burn. Act, and there is still a chance to live.

So Israel acted.

And in doing so, it may have just carried the weight of an entire civilisation on its shoulders.

Make no mistake: these nuclear weapons were not being built for “peaceful purposes”. They were being built for the explicit, stated purpose of erasing the Jewish state. The Iranian regime has proudly and repeatedly stated its intentions for decades. It is not speculation. It is doctrine.

What Israel carried out was not an act of aggression—it was one of the most glorious operations of self-defence ever conducted. It was necessity, courage, and moral clarity fused into one act of righteous strength. It was an extraordinary display of determination.

The message could not be clearer: Israel will do whatever it must to defend itself, even in the face of immense risk. Even when it stands utterly alone, it will not bow. It will not break. It will fight—and it will fight like a lion.

The name of the operation? Rising Lion. There has never been a more fitting title.

For decades, the West has negotiated with evil, appeased tyrants, and wrung its hands over “restraint”. Israel has reminded the world what civilisation looks like when it remembers how to defend itself. While Western capitals issue condemnations and beg for ceasefires, Israel rises.

And what do the so-called leaders of the West say in response? “De-escalation.” That is the only word they know. The Prime Minister of Britain, the President of France—men who preside over crumbling nations, over streets surrendered to Islamist mobs, over failed assimilation, over a loss of confidence so deep they no longer believe in their own right to exist—dare to lecture Israel on restraint. These pathetic creatures, hollowed by cowardice and cynicism, have nothing left to offer the West. They do not defend their borders, their values, or their people. They have become irrelevant.

Their nations, once proud, have already succumbed to the same enemy Israel now fights alone: theocratic barbarism, jihadist expansion, and the moral rot of appeasement. They have capitulated. But Israel has not.

Israel is not merely defending itself. It is leading.

Let this be said without apology or hesitation: Israel is the Atlas of the West. The last stronghold that still remembers what the West once stood for—freedom, courage, moral confidence, and the right to exist. Israel now fights on the front lines of Western civilisation. And anyone who cannot see that… has already surrendered.

Israel Stands Alone—And Fights for All

Israel did not ask for this burden.
But it has carried it nonetheless.

For years, the Iranian regime has declared its intent with religious fervour: the destruction of Israel. It is not a secret. It is not subtle. And yet the world has yawned.

Western powers—those who once knew the price of silence—have spent decades appeasing Iran. Negotiating with evil. Signing deals with tyrants. Winking at “death to America” chants and “death to Israel” missiles. All in the name of diplomacy. All in the hope that the crocodile might eat them last.

But Israel had no such luxury.

We are the ones who would be eaten first. And we knew it.

So when the West looked away—we acted.
When the diplomats hesitated—we flew.
When the think tanks wrote essays—our pilots destroyed nuclear facilities.

And we did not do it for applause. We did it because we still believe in something worth defending.

Because this war is not only ours, it never was.

The war we are fighting began long before June 13th. It began in 1979, when the Ayatollahs seized Iran and declared a holy war not just against the Jews, not just against the Americans, but against the entire secular, liberal, modern world.

The Iranian Revolution was not a local event. It was a blueprint. A global inspiration. It showed the Muslim world that it was possible to overthrow Western-backed regimes, to reject modernity, and to wage jihad under the banner of “resistance”.

From that moment, Tehran became the ideological command centre of the global Islamist movement.

Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hamas in Gaza.
The Houthis in Yemen.
Shi’a militias in Iraq.
Terror cells in Europe.
Proxy arms, money, propaganda—all roads lead back to Tehran.

And at home, the regime rules through terror.

It flogs women for showing their hair. It jails artists, censors thought, stones the defiant, and murders teenagers who dare to want a different life. It is a government built on blood, superstition, and the fear of freedom.

And make no mistake: this is not a reaction to any Israeli wrongdoing.
It is a reaction to Israel’s existence.

Just look at what they choose to attack.

One of Iran’s ballistic missiles in this war struck the Weizmann Institute of Science—a world-renowned centre for scientific and biomedical research. A place where Israeli scientists work to extend human life, develop treatments for cancer and genetic diseases, and advance medical knowledge for the benefit of all mankind.
That is what Iran aimed at.

This is the contrast in its purest form:
They build nuclear facilities to annihilate.
We build research institutes to heal.

They chant death.
We extend life.

That missile told the truth of this war better than any speech ever could.

For centuries, Jews lived as dhimmis in Islamic lands—second-class, taxed, often humiliated, but tolerated. Far more tolerated than in Europe, which ultimately gave the world Auschwitz and Treblinka. But the war against Israel is not about historical grudges. It is not about Zionism. It is about fundamental values.

Israel is hated by radical Islam not because it is Jewish, but because it is free.

Because in Israel, women walk unveiled.
Because in Israel, art is made, music is played, films are screened, and opinions are spoken.
Because in Israel, gays live openly, entrepreneurs build freely, and people worship—or don’t worship—without fear.

Israel stands for the things they despise:
Life before death. The individual before the tribe. This world before the next.

That is why Israel is not simply a target—it is the target. The symbolic opposite of everything the mullahs revere. In Israel, there are symphonies and cafés, universities, and startup hubs. In Israel, joy is not postponed to the afterlife. It is lived now.

And for those who believe paradise comes after the bomb belt, that is an abomination.

This is what the West has forgotten: that Israel is not just a Jewish state.
It is a Western state, planted like a vineyard in the soil of the Middle East.

It is the last outpost of reason, freedom, and civilisation in a region being swallowed by darkness.

And when it rises—when it acts—it is not merely defending itself. It is defending the entire Western civilisation.

What the West Owes Israel

There was a time when the West at least pretended to stand with Israel.
That pretence is gone.

In the wake of the most horrific massacre of Jews since the Holocaust—on 7 October, when babies were butchered, women raped, entire families set alight—what did the West do?

It flinched.
It equivocated.
It reached for the word it always reaches for when Jews defend themselves: restraint.

No nation on Earth would have been asked to pause.
No people would have been told to “de-escalate” while missiles were still falling, while hostages were being dragged into tunnels, while its borders were being torn apart by a genocidal death cult.

But Israel was told. Again and again. From Paris. From London. From Berlin. From Washington.

As if the real tragedy wasn’t the massacre itself—but the fact that Jews dared to respond.

This betrayal did not happen in a vacuum. The West has been rotting for years.

European capitals have become hubs for Islamist incitement and antisemitic hatred.
British and American universities—once proud institutions of learning—now serve as breeding grounds for terrorism apologetics and blood libel slogans.
Synagogues across Europe have had to cancel events, increase security, or shut down entirely.

Let us speak plainly: the West has turned on the Jewish state at the moment of its greatest existential crisis since its founding.

And Israel notices. Israel remembers.

The same Europe that served as the largest graveyard for Jewish blood in history now dares to lecture Israel on morality. The same Europe, once responsible for herding millions of Jews into cattle cars, now chastises the descendants of the survivors for their refusal to die in silence.

And today, the West is doing everything it can—politically, diplomatically, and culturally—to limit Israel’s right to act. To tie its hands. To shame it into silence. To ensure it does just enough to bleed, but never enough to win.

Well, we have heard enough.

Israel does not need lectures.
Israel does not need conditions.
And Israel most certainly does not need to be told to “de-escalate” by those who have already surrendered their own capitals to the same enemy we are now fighting alone.

If you cannot help us, get out of the way.
If you will not fight, do not tell us how.
And at the very least—keep your Jews safe, damn it.

And one more thing:
Why don’t you fix your own broken countries before trying to fix ours?
Why don’t you clean your filthy streets, your dangerous train stations, your no-go zones and your crime-ridden migrant neighbourhoods before lecturing us on restraint?
Why is it always the “Jewish problem” you feel most urgently called to solve?
Haven’t you had enough of that obsession?

Because we are not only fighting for our survival, we are doing what you should have done. We are fighting your war.
Iran has murdered Europeans and Americans, too. Iran funds the networks that have poisoned your streets. Iran’s proxies chant “death to America” as easily as they chant “death to Israel.” And yet when we strike, you flinch.

No more.

You owe us thanks.
You owe us silence, if thanks is too much.
But what you absolutely do not owe us is your cowardly, hypocritical restraint.

Say thank you, and shut up.

A Message to The Iranian People

Much has been said in Israel and around the world about how, unlike in Palestine, the Iranian people do not support their regime. That they are hostages, not accomplices. That many of them admire the West, and seek freedom.

Indeed, we have seen moving images in recent years: women burning their hijabs, crowds chanting for liberty, brave souls demanding justice for those murdered simply for wanting to live in dignity. For that, I salute you.

But there is one thing I have not seen.

I have not seen mass protests against the most monstrous goal your regime has openly pursued for decades: the nuclear annihilation of the State of Israel. This aim is not hidden. It has been declared again and again—by your Supreme Leader, your presidents, your generals. “Wipe Israel off the map.” That is their dream.

Where are the protests against that?

I understand the price of defying your regime. I do not minimise your fear. But if you truly believe in freedom—if you are not merely victims but moral beings—then silence in the face of genocide is complicity. If you can protest a hijab, you can protest a bomb. If you can risk your life for dignity, you can risk it to stop mass murder.

And let us ask the most terrible question of all: Had the Iranian regime succeeded—had their nuclear weapon reached Tel Aviv, had a million lives been turned to ash in an instant—would the world still say, “But the Iranian people didn’t mean it”? Would they point to photos of Persian poets and Westernised students as proof that this was not your will? Would they still insist that the people and the regime are separate?

No. The dead would not care for such abstractions. History would not care. And neither should we.

For where were the protests against the bomb? Where were the voices of the so-called good Iranians when their government made the eradication of Israel its highest ideal? You did not build the bomb, but you built the silence in which it was assembled. And silence, at this scale, is complicity.

And what of October 7? What of the slaughter? When one of Iran’s many proxies—Hamas—unleashed the most barbaric massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, where were you? When Hezbollah opened fire from the north, when missiles flew from Yemen, when Iraq and Syria lit up with coordinated aggression—where were your protests? Did you speak out against this orchestration of death? Did you cry out against this seven-front war launched from your soil, with your regime’s blessing, in your name?

You did not.

And now, in the wake of war, Israel has done you a favour greater than any nation has ever done another. Our soldiers, our Mossad agents, our pilots and warriors—they have pierced the heart of your tyrants’ ambitions. They have shattered the illusions of your jailers. They have put their lives on the line, not only for the Jewish people but for you.

We have done what the world should have done long ago. What you should have done long ago.

And if your response now is not gratitude, but complaint—if you choose to condemn not your regime, but our resistance to it—then you are no different from those in Gaza who dance when Jews are murdered. You are no different from the Lebanese who host terror with silence. You, too, will have earned your rulers.

But if you are truly better—if the world is right to believe in the decency of the Iranian people—then now is the time to prove it.

Rise. Rebel. Tear down the tyrants who use your nation as a weapon against ours. Stop being proud of your poetry, your civilization, and your past, while remaining silent in the face of your country’s present evil.

You want to be free? Earn it.

And if you do not know this: Israel will never wait again. We will defend ourselves. We will not risk another Holocaust on the hope that you will rise. The burden is on you now.

Prove that you are good. And if you will not thank us, then do not dare condemn us.

Israel, Atlas of the West

There is an image the West no longer understands:
A lone figure, bearing the weight of a crumbling world on his shoulders.
That figure is Israel.

While others preach peace, Israel lives in war.
While others build careers, Israel builds bomb shelters.
While others write policy papers, Israel writes funerals.

And yet—Israel endures.

We endure not because we are stronger, but because we are clearer.
Because we know who we are.
Because we still believe in good and evil, and in the right to strike evil down.

Atlas did not shrug. And neither have we.

The West is collapsing not because it lacks strength, but because it has lost its spine.
It no longer knows what it stands for.
It doubts its own virtues. It apologizes for its own past. It debates its own right to exist.

But Israel still believes in civilization, not as a museum, but as a living force.
A force worth fighting for.

We still teach our children that there is such a thing as truth.
That freedom matters. That art matters. That life on Earth matters.
We still build. We still love. We still sing. We still fight.

And so, when the world asks—Who will stand?
It is Israel who answers. Alone, if necessary.

But let us go further.

When European youth take to the streets, it is to march with jihadists and scream for the death of the Jew.
When Israeli youth take to the skies, it is to fly fighter jets into the heart of enemy territory and defend life.

What has Europe invented lately? A plastic bottle cap that doesn’t fall off.
What has Israel done? Reinvented drone warfare, revolutionised cyber defence, produced Nobel Prizes, world-class medicine, and the Iron Dome—all while fighting seven fronts at once.

Europe no longer has children. It no longer has entrepreneurs. It no longer has courage.
It has policies. Israel has people.

Israel is a nation of under ten million, facing enemies many times its size. (Iran alone is 80 times larger by landmass.) And yet, in the face of it all, Israel has just carried out one of the most daring military operations in the modern history of warfare.

There is no precedent for this. Not in recent Western history. Perhaps not ever.

Perhaps the question is no longer whether Israel belongs to the West—
Perhaps the question is whether the West still deserves Israel.

Because Israel does not merely carry the West.
Israel is becoming the thing the West once aspired to be.

Heroic. Entrepreneurial. Free. Joyous. Alive.

In an age of cowardice, Israel is a nation of lions.
And that, more than anything else, is why it is hated.

Israel Shall Rise Without You

Israel is not a burden to the West.
It is its last hope.

And more than that, it is a model for what the West could become if only it remembered what it means to be alive.

Look at Israel—not as the media paints it, not as the UN condemns it—but as it is.
A nation of builders and warriors. Of poets and pilots.
A people forged in exile, reborn in fire, and unafraid to stand alone.
A country that faces the gates of Hell every morning and still sends its children to school.
Still plants trees. Still launches rockets into space and into enemy territory in the same breath.

That is not a country to scold.
It is a country to learn from.

So to the West, we say: Discard your cowardice.
Throw away the poisons you have swallowed for too long:

• Your obsession with “decolonization”, as if freedom were shame.
• Your green death cults that worship polar bears over man.
• Your multi-culturalist delusions that welcome jihad in the name of tolerance.
• Your postmodern relativism that denies truth and punishes excellence.
• Your soft spot for jihadists in universities and parliaments.
• Your envy of achievement. Your fear of strength. Your addiction to guilt.

Burn it all.

And look here instead—to Israel.

A small nation, less than ten million strong, surrounded by enemies, outnumbered in every direction—and yet it stands.
It does more than stand: it leads.

While you debate what gender your god is,
we send agents into enemy capitals.
While your youth weep over pronouns,
ours fly F-35s through flak to keep our people alive.

You may ignore us. You may resent us.
You may even hate us. That’s fine.

Because we are not waiting for you to save us.

We have seen what happens when Jews wait for Europe.
We have seen what happens when Jews wait for America.
We waited once, and the trains came.
We waited once, and the gates opened at Auschwitz.
We waited once, and the world turned away.

We do not wait anymore.

So if you will not fight beside us, stand back.
If you cannot say thank you, say nothing.
But if there is any spark left in you, rise.

Be like us.
Be like the lions we have become.
Build like us.
Fight like us.

And to our pilots,
who slice the night sky with steel and certainty—
To our Mossad heroes,
who walk among enemies with courage cold as fire—
To every soldier, every mother, every engineer, medic and fighter in this war—

You are the glory of our people.
You are the roar in our lungs.
You are the Atlas.
You are the Lion.

Am Yisrael Chai!

{Reposted from the author’s blog}