It’s July 7, 2025, as I write these words.
Exactly twenty years ago today, London was torn apart. Four coordinated suicide bombings ripped through the heart of the city’s transport network during the morning rush hour. Fifty-two innocent people were murdered. Over 700 more were wounded.
It was the deadliest single terrorist attack on British soil since the Second World War. It was carried out by homegrown Islamic extremists, young men radicalized into a death cult that targets the West, democracy, freedom, and Jews.
I remember that day with vivid clarity, not just because of the horror on the ground, but because my family and I were in the air. We had left Heathrow Airport barely thirty minutes earlier, on one of the last planes to take off before the entire airport was shut down in the chaos that followed. Our destination was Israel, where our son was representing Great Britain in the Maccabiah Games.
So even as London descended into carnage, we landed into a world of Jewish pride and international unity. The contrast could not have been more jarring. From the flames and smoke of an Islamist terror attack in one of the world’s great capitals, we arrived into a vibrant celebration of life and identity – a coming together of Jews from over fifty countries, proudly competing, sharing, rejoicing. It was a moment of triumph and belonging. We watched our son compete with immense pride, surrounded by a community that knew the meaning of survival and strength.
And even then, I asked myself: who are the people building beauty, and who are the people sowing destruction? Who celebrates life, and who glorifies death? Who embraces diversity, and who worships hate?
Two decades on, those questions haven’t faded – they’ve only become more urgent.
Because here's what I can’t comprehend, what I refuse to stay silent about: on those very same streets in London today – yes, today – tens of thousands march weekly in support of the same twisted ideology that led to the 7/7 bombings two decades ago. These are not marches for peace. These are chants for “jihad,” for “intifada,” for the destruction of Israel, for the downfall of the West. British police allow them. British politicians excuse them. British universities defend them. How is this possible?
How have we come to a point where the very ideologies that murdered commuters on the Piccadilly line now parade openly down Oxford Street?
Have we learned nothing?
7/7 wasn’t a one-off. We had 9/11. We had the Manchester Arena bombing. We had Charlie Hebdo. We had the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket massacre. Brussels. Nice. Bataclan. The list of victims grows, yet the world remains willfully blind. The slogans have changed, but the hatred is the same: Islamist supremacy, Jew-hatred, contempt for women, loathing for freedom. The same ideology that has led to 207 honor killings of young women in Turkey – so far this year. That’s more than one every day!!
And yet, somehow, it’s Israel that gets boycotted. Israel that gets condemned. Israel, the only country in the Middle East where Muslims vote, women thrive, LGBT people are safe, and free speech still exists. Israel, the country that absorbed us with open arms when we landed that day in 2005, while London burned.
Let me tell you what else is burning.
Just this week, another synagogue was torched. This time in Melbourne, Australia. Another Jewish house of worship that they tried to reduce to ash. Another sign that the hatred is not confined to Gaza or London or Paris. No, it’s global. It’s growing. And still, the world sleeps.
Or worse, it enables.
Let me be clear: Israel is not just fighting for itself. We are the canary in the coal mine. When our synagogues burn, yours will follow. When we are targeted, you are next. When our cities are under rocket fire or invaded by butchers from Hamas, it is your values, your liberalism, your freedom, your way of life, that they are marching to destroy.
We in Israel are not perfect. We have our political turmoil, our divisions, our sins. But we are standing against a monstrous ideology, an ideology that doesn’t just want to wipe Israel off the map, but wants to drag the entire West into the darkness. We know it. We live it. We bury our dead because of it.
Why won’t you see it?
Why does the world clutch its pearls when we defend ourselves, but shrug its shoulders when Jewish blood is spilled on foreign pavements? Why do Western leaders line up to shake hands with the sponsors of terror, while issuing sanctimonious lectures to the Middle East’s only functioning democracy?
Have we not had enough of the moral inversion?
Have we not had enough of watching the victims become the villains in the eyes of the world?
Have we not had enough of synagogues burning, flags being torn down, Jewish students being threatened on campuses, and politicians telling us to be “measured” in our response to people who would slit our children’s throats in their sleep?
Today, as I write on this solemn anniversary, I remember the victims of 7/7. I honor their memory by calling out the madness. This isn’t just about remembering the past – it’s about protecting the future.
Because if we continue down this path, where evil is excused, and those who resist it are condemned, then the next 20 years will make the last 20 look like a prologue.
I flew from Heathrow to Ben-Gurion 20 years ago and saw the two worlds with my own eyes: one that revels in destruction, and one that builds a future. One that murders innocents in the name of a perverted god, and one that raises athletes, dreamers, and survivors. One that plants bombs on buses, and one that builds hospitals that treat its enemies.
Make no mistake: this is the battle of our time. And it is still raging.
Wake up, world – before it’s too late.
The writer is a rabbi and physician who lives in Ramat Poleg, Netanya. He is a co-founder of Techelet-Inspiring Judaism.