Today, two and a half years after October 7th, in the midst of a war with Iran, another war with Hezbollah, and a world that feels increasingly unstable, we sit down at the Seder table and try to make sense of it all.
It feels different this year. Not just because of the wars, or the headlines, or the constant tension that has become part of our daily lives, but because something has shifted—both inside us and around us.
I find myself going back to something I wrote on Pesach 2022—what I called my Zionist Haggadah.
Let my people go. Freedom. In every generation, they rise up to oppress us. From slavery in Egypt to the land of Canaan (Israel). From the Holocaust to the State of Israel.
The Four Questions
And then I asked a set of questions.
Why is Israel treated differently to other nations?
Why are we still suffering terror and discrimination?
Why the lies, the distortion of facts and history?
Why can we not live in peace?
And a fifth question—what do we need to overcome all of this?
I remember writing that these were the questions I ask myself on Seder night as I reflect on our remarkable yet very troublesome story.
And then, almost in passing, I added something that, at the time, I didn’t fully think through: if God wants a better world—a world where Israel fulfils its chosen mission—then He has a strange, and at times very difficult, way of bringing it about.
At the time, those questions came from a place of confusion and frustration. Today, they feel different. On the one hand, there is more clarity than I think we have ever had. We have seen things we cannot unsee. We understand more clearly that this is not just about land or borders, but about identity, belief, and the very right to exist.
And yet, at the same time, something doesn’t make sense. Because if there is more clarity, there is also more hatred. Not less. Across the world, we are seeing things many of us thought we would not see again. And even after everything—the brutality of October 7, the ongoing war, the threats from Iran and Hezbollah—the response has not been what one might expect. Not clarity, but confusion. Not moral certainty, but distortion. At times, even a complete inversion of right and wrong.
So, I come back to those questions.
Take the first one—why is Israel treated differently from other nations?
In 2022, I asked this from a place of frustration. It felt like double standards, like we were being judged by a different set of rules. Today, I think the question is deeper. Perhaps Israel is not treated as a normal nation because it is not seen as one. It is judged as something more—a symbol, a test case, in many ways the Jew among nations. And if that is true, then the discomfort with Israel is not only political. It is something deeper that we are only beginning to understand. Is it just a more modern version of Anti-Semitism dressed up as Anti-Israel or anti-Zionism?
The second question—why are we still suffering terror and discrimination—also feels different today.
Back then, I saw it as part of our long history, a tragic but familiar pattern. But October 7 changed something. It removed any illusion that this was random or spontaneous. What we saw was organised, planned, ideological. But what I struggle with even more than the terror itself is the response—the willingness in many parts of the world to justify, explain, or contextualise it. So, the question becomes not only why terror exists, but what kind of world allows it to be understood or even supported.
Then there is the third question—why the lies and distortion of facts and history.
In 2022, I thought this was mainly about media bias. Today, it feels more deliberate. This is a battle over narrative. Words are used not just to describe reality, but to redefine it. And over time, repetition turns into accepted truth.
And then I wrote, almost as a continuation of that frustration:
Let’s look at some ‘Facts”
Palestine is now the “Universal Cause’ To what does Palestine owe this privilege?
Israel’s right to Defensible Borders
The role of Amnesty International. I am now adding the UN, UNWRA, WHO, et al..
Why do we allow these lies to be repeated?
And this is reported even in our media as FACTS. Why do we allow this as NEWS? There should be a disclaimer. What are we so blind? Why help them spread their lies?
At the time, I wrote this out of frustration. Today, I read it differently. These are no longer just complaints—they are part of a much bigger reality.
And it takes me back to when I first came to Israel. Shortly after making Aliyah in 1995, I was working at a sugar trading company and was invited by one of our customers to Nablus—Shechem, a place mentioned in the Bible. There was a sense then that maybe things could be different. We had hopes of peace and a better future. I even dreamt that Hebron could become an international city of peace, with tourists filling the streets, learning about Abraham, our shared forefather.
At the time, that didn’t feel unrealistic. There was a belief that with enough goodwill, cooperation, and economic opportunity, something could change. You meet people, you see normal life, you allow yourself to believe.
But reality has a way of correcting you. Looking back now—after Gaza, after years of terror, after October 7—it becomes clear that what I thought was a shared vision was not understood in the same way by everyone. And that is perhaps one of the hardest realisations. Not just that peace hasn’t happened, but that we may have misunderstood the nature of the conflict itself.
Which brings me to the fourth question—Why can we not live in peace?
This is the one that has changed the most for all of us. Because we believed in it. We believed that with enough effort, enough goodwill, something could be built. It felt logical. It felt achievable.
Today, we are all less certain.
Because if this were only about land, then surely by now we would have seen a different outcome.
And that takes me back to something else I wrote in 2022—when I included an article in my Zionist Haggadah questioning the two-state solution. At the time, it felt like a concern. Today, it feels like clarity.
Because after everything we have seen—October 7, Gaza, Hezbollah, and now Iran—it is harder to argue that this is a conflict about land.
The two-state solution assumes there is a point where demands end, where peace begins. But history has shown the opposite. Concessions were made. Gaza was given. And instead of peace, we saw escalation. We got October 7th.
It is not just that the solution has failed. It may misunderstand the problem.
Because if the issue is territorial, then drawing borders would resolve it.
There is also a deeper problem. Over time, the two-state solution has become more than a policy—it has become a narrative. A way of explaining the conflict that places responsibility almost entirely on Israel. If only Israel would give more, do more, concede more—then peace would follow.
But that ignores rejection. It ignores ideology. And then, as well as today, it ignores Iran.
Because Iran is not peripheral. It is central.
It funds, arms, and directs forces across the region. This is not a local dispute. It is part of a wider strategic and ideological struggle. And in that context, the idea that a line on a map will bring peace feels increasingly detached from reality.
So, what was once presented as the solution now feels like something else. A framework people hold onto because it is familiar, because it avoids harder truths, and because it keeps the focus on Israel rather than on the forces driving the conflict.
In 2022, I questioned it. Today, we see it with more clarity. The Palestinians want it all – from the river to the sea. This statement rejects any two-state solution. They see our willingness to share the country as a weakness.
I’m sharing an extract of what Caroline Glick wrote in 2022. Even more relevant today.
‘In truth, the main reason that the fake policy of “two-state solution” keeps going is that some Jews of Israel have yet to accept the truth about the Palestinian Arab conflict with Israel and what that means. The two-state solution is inherently and necessarily anti-Israel. In a situation where the majority of Arabs living west of the Jordan River (whether in Gaza, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, the Negev, the Galilee, the Dan Region or the Sharon) are unwilling to accept the Jewish state’s right to exist in any borders, you can’t be pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian. You have to choose.
The proper and indeed only adequate response to the anti-Israel two-state solution is Zionism. To contend with the Palestinians, the Iranians, the Americans, and everything in between, Israel must adopt and maintain Zionist policies across the board, whether in military policy, foreign affairs and public diplomacy, in the legal system, in economics or in social affairs. Without Zionism, Israel will be incapable of defeating the new terror onslaught. It will be unable to block Iran’s path to nuclear-armed regional hegemony. And it will be unable to contend with the Biden administration, which is facilitating both.”
How much more relevant are these words today?
And then there is the fifth question—what do we need to overcome all of this?
In 2022, my answer felt quite straightforward. Faith. Tradition. A belief in our right to be here.
And that still holds.
But today, it feels incomplete on its own.
Because today we also need clarity.
Clarity about who we are—not just politically, but as a people with a history and a purpose.
Clarity about right and wrong—without hesitation, without confusion.
And clarity about the reality we are living in—not as we wish it to be, but as it is.
And yet, even with all this clarity, some questions remain.
I still find myself asking—God, where are You? But maybe the question has shifted. Not only where are you, but what are you asking of us now?
And then I look around.
I am privileged to live in Jerusalem and sit at my Seder table in Jerusalem, and I reflect and think about the words we say every year—Next year in Jerusalem. But I am here. I am home.
And Jerusalem today is not perfect. It is buzzing with construction, messy, sometimes frustrating, and inconvenient. Roads are dug up, there is noise, and disruption everywhere. But then I think—this is what building looks like. We are building for future generations. It is not meant to be neat or easy.
And maybe what we are going through now—the war, the uncertainty—is also part of that building. Not just for ourselves, but for what comes after us.
Maybe this will lead to a different kind of peace. Not immediate, not simple, but something more real.
And maybe the world will come to see that we, the Jewish people, living in our ancestral land, are not just fighting to survive, but trying to build something—a society, innovation, a sense of purpose—not only for ourselves, but also for the world.
And sitting here in Jerusalem, in all its messiness and complexity, I realise that maybe “Next year in Jerusalem” was never only about arriving.
It is about what we do once we are here.