26/09/2026
An important lesson I learned in India about Western culture that I want to share with you.
About 14 years ago, I travelled to India by myself.
It was one of the most wonderful and memorable trips of my life.
One thing I’ll never forget is watching in disbelief how some Westerners shopped at the Indian bazaars.
They would walk through the stalls, stop when they saw something they liked, ask the seller how much it was, and the seller would quote them some outrageous tourist price, sometimes something close to what they would pay back home in the US, UK, Canada, Australia or Europe more generally.
The Westerner would make a little grunt, almost as if to say, “Ugh, I thought India was cheap,” then pull out a pile of notes, pay the seller and disappear.
No bargaining.
No trying to negotiate the price.
They simply accepted it and moved on.
To us Israelis, you looked crazy. Absolutely crazy.
I once challenged one of them about it, and he said to me:
“Well… I know if I bargain with him for an hour, I’ll eventually get a discount. But it’s not worth my time. It’s a good enough price for me, roughly what I would pay at home, so yeah, I’m moving on.”
I couldn’t believe it.
Because the important question wasn’t how much it was worth to him.
It was how much it was actually worth in that market.
Truth needed to be the leading factor.
I was quite astounded by how quickly this intelligent, nice person was willing to give up on establishing the truth, simply to avoid the time, energy and conflict involved in getting there.
That mechanism never left my mind.
And when October 7 came, and I watched Westerners swallowing anti-Israel propaganda, I was astounded again.
To me, it looked like the same mechanism all over again.
The Westerner is saying:
“Well, nobody likes wars. Everyone wants the war to be over. So how do we reach peace in the shortest amount of time possible?”
That urgency felt familiar.
Wait a minute.
What about the truth?
What about Israel’s security needs?
Terrorists can murder families, abduct mothers and children, drag hostages into Gaza and hold them captive, and somehow the most urgent question becomes: How quickly can Israel end the war?
Wait a minute.
What about justice?
What happens when the war ends?
How do we make sure this doesn’t happen again?
What happens the day after the ceasefire, the withdrawal or the agreement?
When you march in these protests and repeat slogans without seriously investigating what they mean or where they come from, to me, you are demonstrating the exact same thing:
That you haven’t got the time, the energy or the patience to deal with the truth.
And it’s extremely important that you pay attention, not only because of us here in Israel, but because of you.
You’re the same Westerner I watched in that bazaar in India.
You just want to pay the price, avoid the headache and move on.
Except this time, we’re not talking about a scarf or a souvenir.
We’re talking about your identity, your continuity and potentially your survival.
All I want to say is this:
Wake up.
This is important.
This is a deep inquiry into what kind of forces and ideas will shape the West in the coming decades.
Take the time to investigate the narrative being sold to you.
How much of it is truth?
Try to pop the balloon that keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Because if you don’t, one day that balloon may carry your country into the sky, with everything you ever cared about still attached to it.
Image: Illustration
The Nation of Israel Lives