Why Israel Believes the West Is Under Attack | CPAC 2025

So, good afternoon CPAC. I'm not sure how many of you saw the images this morning, but we do have to start a somewhat somber note. There were these terrible images of babies being returned in coffins from Gaza to Israel this morning there, and I want to toss it to the Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism, Amichai Chikli, who's going to lead us in a moment of silence for these deceased hostages. So, we have experienced one of the most toughest days since the beginning of the war. It is an extremely difficult day in Israel with the returning of the bodies of Shiri, Kfir, Ariel, Bibas, two little children and their mothers, along with Oded Lifshitz from Kibbutz Niroz. And I think if we can take a moment of silence before we begin. Thank you. So, tragically, these images this morning really do set the scene for our broader conversation here. And first of all, let me just make a brief point. You guys all heard from Vice President J.D. Vance this morning. Vice President J.D. Vance said it very well about a month and a half, two months ago, where he said the message should not be bring them home for the hostages. The message should be let them go. Let them go. Absolutely. That's a major shift that the new administration is coming with a new spirit. You know, for decades, we've heard this sentence, Israel has the right to defend itself. But this is obvious and no other state needs to mention that they have the right to defend itself. And this administration is coming with a different message that Israel has the right and it's obliged to eliminate its enemies, to eradicate evil, as Marco Rubio said. And this is a totally different approach. And this is how you win wars. Well, in many ways, Amirhai, I think Israel is teaching the West how to win a war, which the West has not really done, frankly, since World War Two. But I want to briefly talk about the broader war, which is the war for Western civilization actually itself. What is Western civilization? We talk about it here. To me, Western civilization is basically synonymous with the Bible. It all ultimately goes back, as we two Jews know all too well, to God's revelation to Moses at Mount Sinai. I mean, when we talk about defending the West, guys, Jews and Christians alike, we're talking about defending those very values and that very way of life. And Israel is not just the canary in the coal mine for all of these fights. But anti-Semitism is itself, as you know in your role, it is a direct attack not just on the Jews, but on all of this, on all of Western civilization. Absolutely. I think that, you know, President Reagan ended the Cold War and we thought that this war ended, but it never ended. We just wear a different face. And we saw it in universities all across Europe. We saw it in universities here in America. And the woke progressive movement is just another face of the Marxist movement. And in its root, this is a godless philosophy that denies the idea of truth. And when you deny the idea, the concept of truth, there is no good and bad. There is no right and wrong. There is no option for moral clarity. And this is how you can defeat the West from within. That is the effort that made by the woke progressive movement. And this is a threat not just for the state of Israel. This is a threat for America and this is a threat for Western civilization. And I think that we need to restore those very basic values. And as President Trump says, we want to put God back on the stage because without God, what is truth? What is right and wrong and good and bad? And it all comes from our common values and our common tradition. And that is, I think, a new era. And that with moral clarity, we can achieve amazing things together, Israel and the United States, and lead the free world into a better future. So one of the things that we were talking about backstage a little bit is that, you know, we in the United States, we in the West more broadly, I think, have forgotten what actual evil looks like. We have forgotten that evil exists. Personally, I became a conservative at 12 years old on 9-11 because I saw the smoke from the Twin Towers with my own eyes. And I think many people in this post-October 7th environment are arising to that same realization. But we can't talk about evil, I think, specifically without talking about the Iranian regime, which is really kind of the roots of the overwhelming majority of evil, not just in the Middle East, but frankly, around the world more broadly. You could just talk a little bit about the specific threat from the Iranian regime and its proxies. And I think you might have a bit of a revelation for us when it comes to Iran. I came with some news. But before, one word about the concept of evil. I think that, you know, it's frightening to expose our kids to the fact that, yes, the monster beneath the bed really exists. There is evil in this world. And we want, you know, to push away our children and the younger generation to believe that evil does not exist. We in Israel, unfortunately, even those of us who thought that there is no evil, met evil on its worst option on October 7th. We saw evil today in Gaza with the horrors of how the Hamas celebrated this moment of bringing the Bibas family and Oded Lipschitz. And I think that we have failed in the recent decades on educating our kids that evil exists and we need to confront and we need to fight and we need to sacrifice, just like as we've done in the past decades. And this is something that is also changing and I'm also optimistic regarding to it, although it costs at a very high price.