Mr. Prime Minister,
Before I say anything, let me be clear about what this letter is not. It is not political. It has nothing to do with elections, coalitions, or which camp I belong to. I am not writing as a partisan. I am writing as a citizen. A Jew who moved from New York and made his home in Judea, in the hills where David wrote his Psalms, speaking plainly to the man currently responsible for the future of the Jewish people in our land.
A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of meeting you at a private event. I told you I had a message from my wife. The message was simple: we support you. We stand with you. We know that none of the decisions you are making are easy. And we bless you to keep going, to make us safe, once and for all.
That blessing still stands. But it was never unconditional. It came with a belief that you understood what this moment required. That you would see it through.
So I am writing now to remind you of what that means.
Every siren that jolted your people out of sleep at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., and again at 4 a.m.
Every night of parents lying awake running through scenarios no parent should have to think about.
Every family that sat shiva and tried to make sense of something that will never make sense.
Every mother who folded her son's uniform and didn't know when she'd see him again.
Every father who held it together in front of the kids and fell apart in the car alone.
Every wedding postponed.
Every birth a father missed.
Every child who drew a picture for a parent who was somewhere they couldn't talk about.
Every ordinary moment that became unbearable because the weight of all of it was sitting right there at the table with you.
This is the bill. This is what we have paid. This is what we are still paying.
And we have paid it before. Every generation of our people has paid some version of it. The Maccabees paid it. The fighters of '48 paid it. '67. '73. Lebanon. Gaza. Again and again, we have bled for this land, buried our sons and daughters, rebuilt our lives, and told ourselves, prayed, that next time will be different.
But it never was. Because we never finished it. And the Torah records what happens when we don't.
Hashem commanded Shaul to finish Amalek, completely, without exception, without mercy. Shaul almost did. He destroyed the nation but spared Agag, the king. One man. A political calculation. A show of magnanimity to the watching world.
Shmuel looked at Shaul and said the words that should echo in every war room in Jerusalem today: "Because you rejected the word of God, He has rejected you as king."
Agag lived one extra night. In that night, according to our sages, he fathered a child. From that child came Haman. The spirit of Amalek was not destroyed, it was deferred. And every generation since has paid the price of that single act of incompletion.
That spirit did not die with Haman either. It mutated. It traveled. Today it sits in Tehran, wrapped in the ideology of the Islamic Revolution, funding every proxy that fires rockets at our children, and declaring openly - as Amalek always has - that its singular purpose is the annihilation of the Jewish people.
Khamenei was not just a geopolitical adversary. He was Agag with nuclear ambitions. Haman with missiles instead of gallows.
Every war has led to this moment
Every war we have ever fought has led to this moment. Every sacrifice, every grave, every torn family - it was all prologue to what is happening right now.
This is not just another campaign. This is the war that was always coming. The one that you stood before the UN with cartoon drawings of bombs and red lines and warned the world was coming, while they laughed.
They are not laughing now.
And the price we have paid, the shiva houses, the empty chairs at Shabbat tables, the sirens, the trauma, that price is only bearable if this is the last time. If this generation is not just the latest to go through it, but the last.
That is the only accounting that makes any of this mean something.
Mr. Prime Minister, our enemies are not confused about what this war is. Hamas does not see this as a border conflict. Hezbollah does not see this as a territorial dispute. Iran does not see this as a regional power struggle. They have said clearly, openly, and repeatedly: this is a religious war. A war against the Jewish people on the land God gave them. And they are fighting it as such.
It is time we governed it as such.
This land is not ours because of a UN resolution. It is not ours because of a Balfour Declaration. It is ours because God said so to Avraham, to Yitzchak, to Yaakov, and because every generation since has fought and bled to return to it and hold it. We are not here by accident. We are not here by politics. We are here because this is where we were always supposed to be.
You know this more personally than most. Your brother Yoni did not die at Entebbe defending an abstraction. He died because he understood, in his bones, that the Jewish people in their land are worth dying for. That the mission does not end until the enemy is finished. He did not stop at the threshold. He went all in for his people and he completed that mission.
You have carried that loss for fifty years. You have carried it into every cabinet meeting, every security briefing, every impossible decision. I am not invoking his memory to wound you. I am invoking it because I believe it is the truest thing in you, truer than any coalition pressure, any diplomatic calculation, any poll.
Bring God into the war
Lead from that place.
Bring God into this war. Not as a slogan on a campaign poster. As a genuine, unflinching recognition of what is at stake and what we are being asked to do. Lead with the understanding that the outcome of this war matters not just for Israeli security briefings, but for the eternal story of our people and our land.
Our enemies already know it is a holy war. The question is whether we will fight it like we do too.
The world will pressure you to stop short. It already is. There will be frameworks and proposals and language crafted to sound like resolution while leaving the threat alive. History will call it diplomacy. But we will call it what it is; the same mistake we have made before, dressed up in new clothes.
We cannot do it again.
We don't get to put this down halfway through and call it something it isn't. We don't get to negotiate our way back to October 6 and pretend. The only version of this that means anything, the only version where all of that pain points somewhere, is the one where we finish it. Once and for all.
If we take this to the end, it was all worth it.
If not, we are just the latest generation. Not the last.
My wife's blessing still stands, Mr. Prime Minister.
Now lead like you believe it.
With faith, with frustration, and with a deep, deep love for this land and our people,
The writer is an American-born entrepreneur who made aliyah and lives with his family in Tekoa, in the hills of Judea. He writes on Jewish identity, Israel, and the meaning of this moment in history.