I recently had the pleasure of reading a pre-publication copy of Melanie Phillips’ new book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—and Why Only They Can Save It. In classic Melanie Phillips style, it is powerfully written, pulls no punches and cuts to the very heart of some of the most pressing issues of our time.

I then had an opportunity to discuss with book with Melanie for a Beit Avi Chai podcast (video below), and we’re sharing that with you today, with my thanks to Melanie for the invitation to spend that time with her.

First, though, the video above and the front page of Yedi’ot Ahronot below.

The video, which has gotten a lot of play in the press and on social media, is of Agam Berger, released from Hamas captivity last week, five days after the other four spotters were released (only after Liri Albag, who refused to be released without Agam, was tricked into moving to a different space so that Agam spent five days alone, with no knowledge of whether she’d really be released as promised). Agam’s younger sister, Bar, was completing an army course, and Agam went to the ceremony to place the aiguillette on her sister’s shoulder.

It’s lovely, obviously, but it’s really much, much more than that.

Take a look at these five women on the front page of Friday’s paper. It’s not just that they’re back from 480+ days of utter horror in Hamas cages, tunnels or apartments under the guard of barbarians (their stories are must-reads).

It’s that these are the very women who warned in October 2023 that Hamas was preparing for something big. They were doing precisely what they were trained to do, and then, when they saw something amiss, they reported it.

But no one paid attention to them. Perhaps because they were young, low on the IDF totem pole, perhaps because are women, perhaps both, perhaps something else. Had anyone listened to them carefully, we might not be in this war. Had anyone listened to the women in this photo, thousands and thousands of people who are dead might well still be alive.

But not only were they ignored, they were essentially sacrificed. They warned about the danger, no one listened, and just as awful, no one sent anyone to protect them. Because there was virtually no one there to protect their outpost, fifteen other spotters, just like them, were slaughtered that day, and these women were taken hostage.

In this photo on Friday’s front page, the five are finally reunited in the hospital. And in the video at the top of the post, Agam, just days after being released, attends a ceremony at the base of the same army that utterly abandoned her.

These women are a reminder of what this country is still made of.

Look at that photo. It’s our future.

And then there’s this page from the inside of Friday’s paper, because five Thai workers were also released after 480+ days in captivity. What in the world did Hamas hold on to them for? The barbarity is unspeakable.

Finally, though, they are thankfully out, and while Israelis’ attention was naturally focused on the Israelis who were released this week, the press made a point of paying attention to the Thais, too.

The Thai reads, “We’re waiting for them all to come home,” which is precisely what the Hebrew in the black and yellow to the right says.

Amen to that.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

And now, with thanks again to Melanie Phillips and Beit Avi Chai, my conversation with Melanie about her powerful new book.

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster and author, who now lives in Jerusalem. Her weekly column, which currently appears in The Times of London, has been published over the years in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times and Daily Mail. She writes for the Jerusalem Post and Jewish Chronicle, is a regular panelist on BBC Radio's The Moral Maze and speaks on public platforms throughout the English-speaking world.

Her best-selling book Londonistan, about the British establishment's capitulation to Islamist aggression, was published in 2006 by Encounter. She followed this in 2010 with The World Turned Upside Down: the Global Battle over God, Truth and Power, with a foreword by David Mamet and also published by Encounter. The updated edition of Guardian Angel, her memoir, was published in August 2016.

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"The Builder's Stone," by Melanie Phillips