Today I stood at the memorial of Kfar Etzion.
Not as a tourist.
Not as a casual visitor checking another site off a list.
I stood there as a Jew, as an Israeli, and as someone who understands that without the men and women remembered at this place, the Israel we know today might never have existed.
Many visitors come to Israel and rush from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, from Masada to the Dead Sea. They see the famous landmarks. They take the photographs. They return home believing they have seen Israel.
But if you truly want to understand Israel, if you want to understand the soul of this nation, then you must come to Kfar Etzion.
You must come to where heroes lived.
You must come to where heroes died.
And you must come to where heroes returned.
Long before the modern communities of Efrat, Alon Shvut, Neve Daniel, and the thriving towns that now fill the Judean Hills, there were pioneers.
The members of Kvutzat Avraham arrived here in the 1940s. They looked at these barren, windswept mountains and saw possibility. They saw destiny.
There was almost nothing here.
No modern roads.
No infrastructure.
No security.
Only rocky hills, isolation, and danger.
Yet they came anyway.
They built farms.
They planted trees.
They dug cisterns.
They established Jewish life in the mountains that had witnessed Jewish history for thousands of years.
These pioneers understood something that many people today have forgotten.
Jerusalem cannot stand alone.
The road to Jerusalem passes through these hills.
The mountains of Gush Etzion are the shield of Jerusalem.
Whoever controls these ridges controls the approaches to Israel’s eternal capital.
The pioneers knew it.
The defenders of 1948 knew it.
And every Israeli soldier who has served in this region understands it today.
When Israel’s War of Independence erupted in 1948, the communities of Gush Etzion found themselves surrounded.
Cut off.
Outnumbered.
Under siege.
For months they fought against impossible odds.
They were hungry.
They were exhausted.
They were isolated from the rest of the Jewish community.
Yet they continued to fight because they understood that every day they held these hills bought precious time for Jerusalem.
Every day they resisted, they protected the city.
Every day they stood firm, they served as the guardians of Jerusalem.
Then came the final battle.
Kfar Etzion fell.
Many of its defenders were killed.
Others were taken prisoner.
The surviving residents were expelled.
The Jewish communities of Gush Etzion ceased to exist.
For nineteen years these mountains were silent.
The homes were gone.
The fields were abandoned.
The synagogues were destroyed.
Yet something remarkable happened.
The dream never died.
The children of the survivors grew up hearing the stories.
They remembered.
They carried the names of the fallen in their hearts.
And when Israel reunited Jerusalem and liberated Judea and Samaria in 1967, they returned.
Think about that for a moment.
They did not return to a thriving community.
They returned to ruins.
They returned because memory demanded it.
They returned because sacrifice demanded it.
They returned because the fallen defenders of Kfar Etzion deserved to see Jewish life restored where they had given everything.
Today more than 750,000 Jews live throughout Judea and Samaria.
Children play in parks.
Families build homes.
Schools, businesses, yeshivot, vineyards, and communities flourish across these mountains.
The pioneers won.
The defenders won.
The dream won.
And that is why the memorial at Kfar Etzion is so powerful.
It is not simply a memorial to the dead.
It is a declaration that they succeeded.
It is not a monument to defeat.
It is a monument to victory.
Every stone speaks.
Every name tells a story.
Every visitor is reminded that Israel was not handed to the Jewish people by history.
It was built by people willing to sacrifice everything for the future.
Standing there today, looking across the hills of Gush Etzion, I realized that this memorial is not really about the past.
It is about continuity.
It is about remembering who built this country.
It is about understanding why Jews returned after two thousand years.
It is about recognizing that the pioneers of Kfar Etzion were not merely defending a tiny settlement in 1948.
They were defending the future.
They were defending us.
So if you visit Israel, come to Jerusalem.
Pray at the Western Wall.
Walk the ancient streets.
But then leave the city and drive south into the mountains.
Come to Kfar Etzion.
Stand before the memorial.
Look out across the Judean Hills.
Listen to the wind that blows across the same ridges where pioneers once worked and defenders once fought.
And understand that you are standing in one of the places where the modern State of Israel was forged.
Some places teach history.
Kfar Etzion allows you to feel it.
Some memorials remember the fallen.
Kfar Etzion reminds you why they rose.
And why, generation after generation, the Jewish people returned.
I sometimes think Kibbutzim would be a good thing in the US and UK, perhaps it would build better communities and make people more tolerant and willing to help.