In late February, We Believe In Israel held a gathering in London, ostensibly a fundraising evening—but in truth, it became something else. Something elemental. Something akin to moral surgery. That evening, we invited Itai Reuveni, a reserve officer in the Israel Defence Forces and a veteran of Israel’s northern front, to speak. What he gave us was not a speech. It was a testimony—a dispatch from the edge of civilisation.

Let us be clear. We live in an age of narrative manipulation, of moral confusion elevated to virtue. Where Hamas—the very embodiment of fascistic theocracy—is lionised as a liberation movement, and Israel—the one democracy in a sea of despotism—is cast as apartheid’s heir. In such a time, the truth must no longer be defended politely. It must be dragged back into the public square by force, if necessary.

And that is precisely what Reuveni did.

He showed us footage—real combat footage—from the hills of southern Lebanon. Grainy images, not yet sanitised by newsroom editors or weaponised by Twitter. The kind of material that doesn’t ask for interpretation, because it speaks in the language of survival. There were no slogans. No virtue-signalling hashtags. Just the sound of gunfire, radio static, the echo of breath in the moments before contact. The kind of silence that comes only when history itself is watching.

He described the morning of October 7, the day the mask dropped. The day Hamas breached the border in the south—and Hezbollah signalled it would do the same in the north. That day, the fantasy of coexistence evaporated. That day, Reuveni and his brothers-in-arms realised they were not defending a line in the sand. They were defending the right of a people to exist.

He did not speak like a soldier. He spoke like a man who had seen something irretrievable and survived to tell of it. He told us about the enemy—disciplined, well-funded, theological in their hatred and meticulous in their barbarity. But he also spoke of resolve. Of the fierce, quiet dignity of Israeli troops, many barely past twenty, who stand between a nation and its erasure.

But it was not only about the battlefield.

Reuveni warned us—warned all of us—that Israel fights on another front. One more insidious than Hezbollah’s rockets. More corrosive than Hamas’s tunnels. He spoke of the war of narratives. The battle for meaning. For truth. And how Israel—precisely because it is democratic, self-critical, and transparent—is at risk of losing that battle.

“We are winning the war on the ground,” he said. “But if we lose the war for the story, we may lose everything.”

He spoke of Western media outlets so wedded to a fiction that they report atrocity as equivalence. Of university campuses where “from the river to the sea” is not a call to genocide, but to “justice.” He spoke of human rights organisations that call self-defence a war crime, and parliaments that debate ceasefires while hostages rot in tunnels.

And he was right.

Because there is no greater obscenity than moral symmetry in the face of evil. And yet that is what Israel is subjected to daily. A country that warns civilians before striking is equated with a death cult that uses children as shields. A country that treats enemy combatants in its hospitals is compared to a regime that executes collaborators without trial. It is not analysis. It is theatre. And it must end.

The room that night fell silent—not the silence of boredom, but of bearing witness. People wept. Not theatrically, not for effect. Quietly. Because what Reuveni offered us was not just a message—it was a mirror. A mirror held up to a West that no longer knows how to name evil. A mirror to our own cowardice.

“The IDF can defend our borders,” he said. “But we need you to defend our name.”

That line will stay with me.

It is a call to arms—not with rifles, but with words. With clarity. With moral resolve. Because Israel is not fighting alone. Nor should it. This war—on the ground and in the mind—belongs to every democracy that still remembers what it is to stand for something.

The fundraiser ended. The lights came up. People stood, not because they were asked to, but because they had to. Because standing was the only response worthy of what they had just heard.

And as for me? I left with one thought: that truth does not need to shout, but it must never be silent. Not now. Not when the lie is so loud, so brazen, so rehearsed.

Itai Reuveni reminded us that night that Israel is not just a country. It is a front line. And those who care about freedom, about decency, about truth itself—we are all Israelis now.