Shimon Refaeli, Deputy Chairman of the Institute for Security Policy at the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), and former Policy Assistant to the Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer
The scene in the United Nations General Assembly Hall this week, September 2026, provided an accurate and disturbing reflection of the moral crisis afflicting the international community. Speech after speech, world leaders turned the UN podium into a tool of one-sided propaganda, pointing an accusing finger at the State of Israel and openly and unequivocally adopting the terminology of alleged “crimes” committed by it. Outgoing Secretary-General António Guterres, in his farewell address, chose to devote a significant portion of his remarks to harsh criticism of Israel, accusing its settlement policy in Judea and Samaria of carrying out “ethnic cleansing.” Brazilian President Lula da Silva went even further, describing what is taking place in Gaza as “a murderous consciousness that is never satiated by killing,” while speaking of trauma that will accompany generations of Palestinians. Turkish President Erdoğan called Gaza a “concentration camp,” the King of Jordan called for considering sanctions against Israel, and the Emir of Qatar and French President Macron, each with his own accusation, joined the chorus of lies and condemnations.
This display of hypocrisy, in which more than twenty leaders turned the United Nations podium into a platform against the State of Israel and the Jewish state, is not merely a diplomatic or public diplomacy incident. It is a modern expression of an ancient pattern: the cynical use of moral language to sever the Jewish people from their historical justice and their right to defend themselves.
The Moral Inversion
The general debate of the 81st session of the United Nations illustrates how the international system is no longer a mouthpiece for objective justice, but rather a stage on which the spirit of the age determines what will be considered “truth.” Lofty concepts such as “human rights” and “self-defense,” or concepts that have become sacred to the Jewish people such as the “Holocaust” and “concentration camps,” are emptied of their original meaning and moral weight and mobilized as political weapons, directed precisely against the people who set out to defend themselves against genocide and who rose from the ashes of the Holocaust, while authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations benefit from systematic disregard.
The phenomenon displayed at the UN General Assembly represents the greatest danger facing the modern society in which we live. A society that has lost the ability to distinguish between victim and aggressor is a society that has lost its moral conscience, its values, and consequently its identity. This is precisely the picture that emerges from an institution in which an automatic majority can legitimize falsehood and grant legitimacy to the attempt to erase the Jewish people’s right to live in their land as a sovereign and free people.
Sukkot: Memory as the Foundation of National Existence
Against the lies voiced from the UN podium stands the holiday of Sukkot, offering a far deeper conceptual alternative: historical memory as a condition for survival. The Torah commands: “You shall dwell in booths for seven days… so that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 23:42-43). Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, the former Chief Rabbi of Britain, wrote extensively about the uniqueness of Judaism as a civilization that placed memory, and not merely dry history, at the center of its national life. Unlike great empires that were erased from the pages of time, the Jewish people survived for thousands of years precisely because of their ability to carry their story and their books with them, to know where they came from, and not to relinquish their identity even under conditions of exile and rupture.
Dwelling in a fragile and temporary sukkah is not merely an agricultural or seasonal ritual. It is a deliberate act of education in national memory. It reminds us, year after year, that our security does not rest solely on concrete buildings, nor on the approval of international institutions that present themselves as the conscience of the world, but on deep roots and faith in the justice of our path.
Political fashions at the UN change from generation to generation, but the historical truth of the Jewish people in their land is as firm as a rock. The national memory that we revive every Sukkot inoculates us against attempts to rewrite history, whether through denial of the Jewish connection to the land or through obscuring the circumstances of the war forced upon us by the murderers of October 7.
We, at the Israel Defense and Security Forum, have placed at the heart of our mission the understanding that standing firm in the face of international pressure requires not only diplomatic and military tools, but first and foremost a strong cultural and spiritual foundation. The holiday of Sukkot provides precisely this perspective: one that knows how to look beyond the background noise of global diplomacy and recognizes that the Jewish people’s right to their land is rooted in the Eternity of Israel, which does not lie and does not deceive.
