During the war, the soundtrack of Israeli bomb shelters came from Tehran.
As missiles fell, Israeli families recorded videos from bomb shelters with the track, “Lion Sun,” blasting through their phones. The artist, Tony Mohraz – known as 021kid – writes music of resistance inside Iran, of his people.
The song, born from resistance, rose from Israeli bomb shelters.
That’s not politics. That’s something deeper and harder to break.
This song became the soundtrack of Israeli resilience, too; of the shared soul of Iranians and Israelis, and a shared history of exile and return that stretches back millennia. Our people are as one, in a depth that regimes cannot erase – not if we don’t let them.
There is a heavy weight this Independence Day, as there has been on many Independence Days in our 78 years. From the first day of the state, external forces have attacked us, forces openly committed to the destruction of Jews and Israel.
While many in the West debate these conflicts from a distance, often without risk or consequence, Israelis live inside their reality. We hold complexity – how to grieve and celebrate in the same breath, to feel pride and anger, and hope and heartbreak, all at once.
A simple truth
As with Simchat Torah, even when darkness insists on itself, we celebrate.
We celebrate that Israel has the power to withstand those who openly seek the destruction of Jews and the Jewish state. We celebrate the courage and will of the Iranian people. We also celebrate something equally essential: that we, as citizens, still have the agency to turn the cruel and destructive tides of our own governments.
So with clear eyes about our unforgiving reality, and with hope for deeper freedom in our own land, Israelis watch Iranian citizens demand dignity and liberty in the ancient land of Persia, the same land where Cyrus once allowed the Jewish people to return from exile, with a particular recognition.
The courage we hear in their voices, the freedom they are trying to sing into being, is the same freedom every democracy must constantly defend. Democracy is never self-sustaining. It survives only through vigilance.
This Independence Day, we recommit to celebrating freedom while still fighting for it.
We celebrate our sisters and brothers in Iran, writing, even in blood, their songs of freedom. It will be an imperfect freedom, as everything human is, but one worth singing for.
And we will celebrate our own responsibility to keep writing and rewriting our song as we struggle to become worthy of finally coming home.
Somewhere tonight, a song of freedom may again echo between Tehran and Tel Aviv.
The writer is an activist and content creator. Raised in Jerusalem and living in Tel Aviv, she has become a leading voice on and offline for Liberal Zionism. A third-generation IDF veteran with over a decade in Israel Advocacy, Hallel has created and executed content for dozens of major organizations. She is an associate at the Tel Aviv Institute.