Rotem Oreg-Kalisky is the founder and director of LIBRAEL-Liberal Israel.
(Oct. 21, 2026 / JNS)
When U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently stood before the Acropolis in Athens and called on the West to rediscover its greatness, he offered a powerful Athens-rooted vision of Western civilization: He celebrated ambition and courage, warning that a civilization ashamed of its achievements risks losing its ability to defend itself.
But that is only half of what makes the West what it is.
Western civilization, in the sense of liberal democracy, does not stand on Greek ambition alone. Rubio is right that democracies need strength to defend themselves. But they also need the humanism rooted in Jerusalem.
Athens gave the West much of its intellectual heritage: the celebration of ambition, discovery and individual excellence. The tradition rooted in Jerusalem offers a complementary principle: Every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth. Adam, the first human—not the first Hebrew or the first Jew—is created in the image of God. This principle places limits on power and affirms that every human life has value regardless of status, identity or achievement.
Over centuries, these traditions interacted with other intellectual and religious movements to shape modern liberal democracy. Equality before the law, freedom of thought and conscience and the protection of the vulnerable are not obstacles to Western strength. They are its foundations.
Consider the American Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. While these ideals have never been fully realized, they have served as a compass for the nation and a language through which generations have demanded that America live up to its promises.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence draws on a similar moral ideal: It promises social and political equality to all inhabitants, regardless of religion, race or sex, and pledges freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture that respects individual differences. These commitments reflect both the Jewish people’s historical experience and the influence of democratic ideals.
Israel, like America, has often fallen short of its founding promises. But those promises remain a national compass, affirming that national self-determination and individual liberty should reinforce, not undermine, each other.
Those shared promises give Israel and America a common standard for how democratic power should be used. After all, a West that forgets its humanistic foundations risks losing sight of what it is fighting for, even when it wins.
As an Israeli, I see this as a challenge for my own country. Israel rightly insists on its security and its place in Western civilization, but tolerating attacks on Palestinian civilians or treating minority rights as expendable contradicts the very tradition we claim to defend. Security matters, but so does the humanity that gives security its purpose.
The answer is not to choose between Athens and Jerusalem. The West needs both: The courage to defend itself, including through war when necessary, and the moral clarity to remember whom and what it is protecting—and why.