JJ Gross, a veteran of the New York advertising world, writes and lives in Israel. His columns often explore the intersection of Jewish theology, modern Israeli life and personal narratives.
(Oct. 21, 2026 / JNS)
This week’s Torah reading is Lech Lecha (Genesis 12-17). In it, we read: “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will be blessed in you” (Genesis 12:3).
This seems a rather paradoxical statement. If all the families of the earth will be blessed in the descendants of Abraham, then what about those who cursed them? This is repeated in the powerful prophecy of Balaam (Numbers 23-24). “It is a nation that will dwell alone. It will not take heed of other nations” (Numbers 23:9) and “Blessed are they who bless you, accursed they who curse you” (Numbers 24:9).
Contemporary history can help make sense of this paradox.
Indeed, we seem to be living through its inflection point at this very moment. God is making an end-time declaration: “Those who bless you will be blessed, and those who curse you will be cursed.”
Note that Genesis 12:3 does not say that all the “nations” will be blessed through the Jews, but all the “families.” That’s hardly the same thing.
We who live in Israel are experiencing our isolation as a nation alone. Yes, we enjoy some grudging and conditional support here and there. Nevertheless, we have been on our own in a war against an Islamist juggernaut whose grand goal is vastly greater than the mere destruction of Israel. Moreover, we continue to confront a global tsunami of hatred that accuses us of genocide.
Through it all, we continue to gift the world with our advances in medicine, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, technology, cinema, dance, art and literature.
Islamist animosity toward Israel—and, by extension, all Jews—is so powerful it has succeeded in ameliorating, at least at times, the murderous mutual hatred between Sunni and Shi’ite. They find common cause in attempting to eliminate the single non-Muslim presence in the Middle East before moving on to the conquest of the West that is already underway.
Islamism wages its war by tapping into the ever-simmering, pervasive antisemitism that blinds the hater.
The riots taking place in France at this very moment are ample evidence. It is hardly surprising that the epicenter of the pillage and mayhem is Marseilles, France’s second-largest city, where the Muslim population is estimated to be as high as 40%.
The war against Israel enables Muslim Jew-hatred to shanghai the progressive-intersectional mob, already predisposed toward antisemitism, into a global brigade of useful idiots. Islamism wages its war by tapping into the ever-simmering, pervasive antisemitism that blinds the hater.
Besotted with a delirium of anti-Israel passion, Western society increasingly blinds itself to the metastasizing reality of its own Islamification. It’s no longer just Paris, London, Amsterdam and Brussels. Even New York willingly elected an unabashedly Islamist mayor and his hate-driven first lady.
Who cannot see the devastation being wrought by this? And yet, so embedded is the 2,000-year-old Christian culture of Jew-hatred that many in Europe willingly risk their own security and future by allying themselves with the war against Israel—a war not for the establishment of a Palestinian state, but, as is now apparent, against the existence of the Jewish state.
Under such circumstances, Israel is very much “a nation that dwells alone.” Its strategy must be to ignore the advice, exhortation and threats of its Western “allies.” (“It will not take heed of other nations.”)
Israel is the only country in the world besides the United States that has fought head-on against the Islamist enemy of the free world that is Iran and its network of proxies. It did so despite the constant warnings and outright threats from the capitals of the free world and, of course, the United Nations.
That the pundits of Paris and London, Berlin and Brussels, Dublin and Madrid, Ottawa and Canberra insist on preventing Israel from thwarting an evil that threatens their own societies is astonishing. Meanwhile, they allow their Muslim populations to increase exponentially through family unification, liberal immigration policies, Qatar-funded “student” visas that somehow become permanent and, of course, a staggering birthrate largely funded by local taxpayers.
So, Israel, at least for now, must go it almost alone. For its sake and for the sake of the free world, it must ignore the sage advice of France, Norway, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Canada, Australia and others.
When the dust settles (and this is a question of when, not whether), Israel will still be here. Iran will have become a bulwark of freedom and creativity. The Jew-haters of the West will again go dormant (if never extinguished).
The “families” of the world—those good people who have and continue to support us in our darkest hour—will share the blessings of victory against an Islamist tsunami that threatened to engulf us all.