Danny Seaman's inspiring New Year Message for 5786: "A Year of Fire" lies behind us

This is the transcript of Straight up with Danny Seaman, JNS TV, YouTube, 16 Sept 2025. Shana Tova to all my Jewish and Israeli readers, friends and colleagues.

It has been a year of fire, a year of destruction.

Just a year ago this week, things were very different. Iran's meticulously-designed Axis of Evil, built with the sole purpose of destroying Israel, was operating at full capacity. Israel was locked in a multi-front war with Israeli civilians under relentless rocket and missile fire from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Islamic terror groups operating out of Syria and Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and even directly from Iran itself. Hamas still held over 100 Israeli hostages. Israel was slowly dismantling Hamas in Gaza, having just completed the takeover of Rafah, and cutting off the Hamas arms lifeline coming in from Egypt.

Yet there were those in Israel who were growing impatient. Why were we not taking care of the threats from Hezbollah, Syria, Iran. The so-called "experts" in the Israeli media were confident that Israel could not defeat Hezbollah, let alone Iran and all its nuclear facilities. Adding to all of this, just last year, the US Biden Administration was restraining Israel, and as we later discovered, activating a de facto arms embargo on us, limiting our abilities in the battlefield.

Feeling confident, our enemies were boasting. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Forces, warned that any Israeli aggression against Iran would bring the wrath of Iran upon us. Hamas leader Sinwar was convinced that they were witnessing the disintegration of the Zionist entity, adding that the Zionist enemy is significantly exhausted. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah reiterated his belief that Israel was actually weaker than a spider's web. As he said, Israeli society is war weary. He added that we lack the resilience to endure a bloody conflict or suffer casualties. He says Israel may appear strong from the outside, but it is easily destroyed and defeated. Little did they know then that within days, this would be the year in which everything changed. It was the year the Middle East was introduced to the Netanyahu doctrine.

Hi, I'm Daniel Seaman, and you're watching Straight Up on J &S TV, brought to you from Jerusalem, Israel. As we approach the closing of the Jewish calendar year 5785, I thought this would be an appropriate opportunity to take a look back and reflect on the events that have shaped Israel over the past 12 months and to offer some perspective, and perhaps insights, on the broader picture that is unfolding before us. This has indeed been an historic year. So many monumental events took place. So let's just go through it all in a few moments.

September 17th marks the anniversary of one of the most spectacular intelligence operations ever carried out against terror operatives. As Michael Duran describes it, it's the reworking of the story of the Trojan horse for the digital age, indeed one for the ages. An estimated 3,000 Hezbollah terrorists were killed, and estimates of up to 8,000 were made inoperative as pagers and other electronic devices they carried were detonated by the Israeli Mossad. Within hours, thousands of Hezbollah strategic missiles in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq were taken out by the Israeli Air Force. Israel moved into Lebanon, destroying the Hezbollah terror infrastructure, and took over strategic locations that overlooked Israeli towns and communities. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah was dead within the month in a massive precision bombing of his headquarters in the middle of Beirut. His replacement, I don't even remember his name, lasted just a few days before he, too, was eliminated. Hamas leader, and the man most responsible for the atrocities of October 7th, Sinwar, was killed within weeks.

Three weeks after Hezbollah was debilitated, Syrian opposition forces, who for years had been held at bay by them, began moving in on the Assad regime, leading to the toppling of the Syrian government. Israel wasted no time and used the opportunity to systematically destroy Syrian air, sea, and ground forces, and take over strategic locations in Syria that pose a threat to Israel.

In June, Israel engaged in what self-proclaimed experts said was the impossible, the destruction of the Iranian nuclear threat, and its abilities, taking out almost the entire Iranian leadership. In August, we did the same thing to the Houthi leadership in Yemen, and just last week attacked the Hamas leaders who seek refuge in Qatar. Throughout the year, Israel has been engaged in fighting Hamas, Islamic jihad, Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine], and PLO terrorist cells in the PA-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria. These are the events that Israel addressed and dealt with over the past year.

To deal with all of this, it is the Netanyahu doctrine that has taken centre stage. And with it, a clear message. We're done speaking the language of Western liberalism that's been used to pacify us for decades. The illusion is no more. We now understand, no matter how many peace overtures we extend, no matter how many concessions we offer, they will always seek our destruction. We've often heard people say that Israel has to start speaking Arabic, that we must conduct ourselves in a way that is understandable to the Arabs, so that they understand the consequences of their actions in a way they comprehend. That Israel was speaking Western liberalism for too long.

Netanyahu apparently heard this and decided to take it one better. We are now speaking Israeli. What speaking Israeli means is to make the impossible possible. Or as the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl himself put it, "If you will it, it is not a dream".

For years, the words of our enemies and their war plans intimidated even the top military branch and the political leaders. They feared we couldn't match the enemy's strength, that we were doomed to pay a heavy price. That fear weakened their resolve, and with it came the faint of heart, those who lacked moral clarity and doubted the justice of our cause. They sought to pacify our enemies with concessions.

But Netanyahu didn't flinch. He took his belief, his determination, and in days he dismantled their plans. His doctrine allowed Israel to fight a war on seven fronts for two years, with minimal economic disruption. He worked for this over the years of his being in office. He worked to make Israel financially sound and independent. Foreign currency poured into our economy, while the world experienced economic crises in the year 2008, and then again during the COVID pandemic, Israel's economy remained stable and sound. And while most Israelis didn't notice, this was nothing short of a transformative moment.

We have been fighting, as I said, for two years now, on seven fronts against seven threats. We did so with one doctrine: Through strategy, wage your war. And we did. Hezbollah, Hamas, Iranian leadership, Syrian air defences, Houthi commanders, and yes, even the nuclear threat. We addressed them one by one. We achieved total air superiority throughout the entire Middle East, intelligence dominance.

And while the world wasn't watching, we began reshaping the Middle East, empowering Lebanon, protecting the Druze minority in Syria, giving hope to the Iranian people. With the Netanyahu doctrine, Israel no longer responds. It puts its enemies on the defensive when they're not knowing when or where we will strike. There is no immunity for those who seek our destruction. There's a new sheriff in town, and his name is Benjamin Netanyahu, and he's not here to play by the old rules.

So here's the deal Israel is now offering. Live with us and prosper or fight us and be doomed. And as Netanyahu has shown, this is not rhetoric, but the new reality. Peace will come not through naivete or empty dialogue, but through strength, through superior firepower, and through the unshakable will of a people who refuse to be erased.

We are speaking Israeli, because we're not the same people we were for 2,000 years. We are no longer that scattered, fearful, persecuted nation of refugees, subjected to a world that never cared about us. As Ezekiel prophesied, we were dry bones, buried in the exile. But we have risen upon our return to our homeland in Israel. We didn't ask for pity. We rebuilt the Jewish empire of old, and we rose, restored, empowered in our homeland.

As promised, we took a desolate, swamp-ridden, desert country that was uninhabitable for 2 ,000 years, and through grit, ingenuity, and the Spirit of God, we turned it into a flourishing nation. As it says in Zechariah 4, "Not by might, nor by sword, but by my spirit, saith the Lord." And this generation has proven that spirit is undefeatable, making the impossible possible.

The game has changed. The tough-talkers are out. All the speeches meant to belittle and threaten us proved empty. Netanyahu followed the Western playbook for years, but after October 7th, he flipped the script. He's putting the fear of the Jewish people into the jihadist murderers who thought we'd just roll over. There is of course no vacuum. The world is dynamic. The war in Gaza will come to an end very soon.

The focus will remain there, while other things are brewing and happening in the background. Turkey and Egypt, for example, linger. Egypt has been the quiet partner in the region, Signing peace, keeping borders stable, and playing the middleman when the West needed a moderate Arab voice. But beneath the surface, Cairo has its own agenda.

Its silence during October 7th was deafening. Since then, it has been ambiguous at best, obstructive at worst. It fears unrest, it fears its own collapse. Inflation there is soaring. The Suez Canal is under threat from the Houthi attacks. Foreign debt is mounting, and yet Egypt is playing hardball, opposing Israeli operations in Gaza or against the Hamas in Qatar, dragging its feet on border coordination and quietly signalling discomfort with our assertiveness.

That's strategic ambiguity, and Israel must respond, remembering that we have leverage, we have gas exports, we have regional influence. We have ties with Washington. Egypt needs us more than it admits. But we were prepared for every scenario. That's what a October 7th taught us, including the possibility that Cairo is pivoting towards the Axis of Instability, Russia, China and Iran.

And then there's Turkey. Erdogan's rhetoric has been loud, hostile and consistent. He's positioned himself as the patron of Hamas and defender of Gaza. And the self-appointed voice of Islamic grievance. But behind that lies a fragile economy, internal descent, and a military that knows Israel isn't the enemy. It's the benchmark.

I'm not going to try to prophesy about the future. Just give you an insight on what we may be up against in the upcoming year. Well, for Israel, this is what independence looks like. This is what strength sounds like. And this?

This has been "Straight Up." I want to thank you for having joined me this past year, and Shana Tova to all of you.