OPINION: The fighting has stopped but the struggle for our future goes on

For the last two years, the Jewish people have shed tears together. On Monday, finally, they were tears of joy as hostages reunited with their families. As they rebuild their lives and begin a new chapter of healing, it is a chance for the Jewish people to begin healing too.

We wanted this moment for so long. Israelis never chose this war and poll after poll showed that a big majority wanted it to end. Led by hostage families themselves, hundreds of thousands filled the streets every week. Jews around the world supported them, campaigned for them and made your voices heard too. President Trump heard the message, and acted on it.

The fighting has stopped but a ceasefire deal is not peace just yet. The struggle for a better future goes on. The hostages have been freed from Hamas captivity. Now we need to free the entire Middle East from Hamas, its Iranian backers and their evil ideology.

That is true beyond the Middle East too. Jews everywhere have faced a global

Noa Tishby

surge in antisemitism, fuelled by that same ideology and those who support or excuse it. When Jews are murdered at a synagogue in Manchester, a city I visited last year to speak to your amazing community, we feel the pain in our hearts wherever we are. Just as you feel it when Jews are murdered in Colorado, Washington DC or anywhere else.

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And whether it’s at Oxford University or Columbia, we know what it means when radicalized useful idiots chant “globalize the intifada” and we know where it leads. If the last two years showed us anything it is that whether we’re in Israel, the US, UK or elsewhere the challenges facing the Jewish people are interconnected and our futures are intertwined. We face the future, together.

In Gaza, Hamas is terrorising its own population. That’s how it came to power, and how it plans to cling to it, brutally executing opponents in the street. And it is already violating the terms of the ceasefire, failing to return the bodies of deceased hostages. We have to get them home too for their families to give their loved ones the dignified burial they deserve.

Upholding the terms of the deal and keeping Hamas away from power is vital. We should be clear-eyed about the challenge as we strive for secure peace in the region which ultimately, has to be the goal.

No one should think it will be easy. But the job of leaders is not just to describe reality, but to create it. Decades ago, Shimon Peres had a vision of a new Middle East. President Trump might just have taken a big step towards it. He seized an opportunity – now the people of the region need to build on it. The Iranian regime and the terrorists it uses to spread violence, hatred and chaos have been severely weakened and we pay tribute to the ingenuity, courage and sacrifice of the brave men and women of the IDF. But we cannot allow the extremists to rebuild their strength – they offer nothing but evil.

Israelis want to live in peace. Hamas have brought Palestinians nothing but suffering. Arab states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan know very well that the evil of Hamas doesn’t just threaten Israel but will come for them too and by now the West also needs to understand this.

And for the Jewish people, after two years of pain and trauma, we can begin to envision a better future. We face it together, strengthened by each other, proud of who we are and what we stand for, and determined not just to understand the challenges but to overcome them.

Noa Tishby is a two-time New York Times best-selling author and served as Israel’s first-ever special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimisation. She recently founded Eighteen, an institute to combat antisemitism and inspire Jewish pride.