Most lives have “best years” and “worst years,” and even relatively easy-to-remember “best days and worst days.” These are private events, days known only to the individuals and their closest family members and friends, and include weddings, births, graduations and other such milestones. 

The occasions for widespread public joy are few and far between. The greatest such days I can recall in my life are the days marking the fall of the Berlin Wall, the return of America’s hostages from Iran on the day of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, and the return of our POWs from Vietnam in groups in early 1973. 

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Now, Monday, October 13, 2025, enters that small but very important list of history’s good milestones. 10/13/25 will always be an Ebeneezer to the courage and endurance of the captives, the fearlessness of soldiers, the resolve of diplomats, the iron will of families, the help of true allies, and the triumph of good over evil. 

Of course, the battle for peace and stability in the Middle East is ongoing. Israel is the equal of any of our allies, and there is hope that its breakthrough partnership with our other allies, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which first surfaced in the Abraham Accords in 2020, will spread to other regional powers, including Saudi Arabia and other majority Muslim countries around the world. 

ALL LIVING ISRAELI HOSTAGES FREED FROM HAMAS CAPTIVITY

Islam, of course, does not mean “Wahhabism” and the radical jihadists it breeds. Moderate Islamic countries are among our allies, such as “Little Sparta” — the U.A.E. Turkey, while the problem child of NATO, is still very much part of NATO. As the world again divides into two large factions in the new Cold War between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, America has to return to Nixonian realism and secure our alliances with those allies upon whom we can depend in a second long showdown with Leninist cadres atop a superpower intent on expanding its sway over the globe. 

The “pivot” of the United States military to the Pacific is already well underway, and much of it is invisible as it is occurring in the domains under water, in space, and in the virtual world. 

China knows what it does not know about the United States: All that DARPA, the NSA, and the CIA have been developing for decades. The Chinese Communist Party expends a vast amount of resources surveilling our country and our allies, but like Iran’s blindness to the Israeli drone factory built within its borders, the CCP has no idea of our complete capabilities. 

Still, allies at peace and growing stronger and more capable by the day are much to be preferred than an ally surrounded and besieged by one of China’s proxies as Israel was by Iran when Hamas launched its bloody invasion of Israel on 10/7/2023. After two long and costly years of war, Israel has emerged victorious, and while in mourning for the victims of the massacre and of the battles that followed, the Jewish State is recommitted to “Never Again,” and this time that includes taking the words of its enemies literally and seriously. 

For the United States, the end of the combat phases of Israel’s long war sees Russia booted from the region, Assad exiled and Hezbollah neutered, Iran’s nuclear program obliterated, and President Donald Trump respected and indeed feared on the world stage. What a change from just a year ago. 

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That guarantees nothing about the future, of course, and Congress must continue to rebuild our defenses hollowed out by the Obama-Biden years, a project begun in Trump’s first term and accelerating again in his second. Along with Israel and those allies that stood by her, the U.S. leads a coalition of free nations that want to remain that way and which are not crippled by radicals within their domestic political coalitions. 

Israel is first among equals among our allies, and Trump’s partnership with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reminds anyone old enough to remember of the genuine friendship between Reagan and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in their standoff with the Soviet Union.

Hugh Hewitt is a longtime conservative commentator and author. He hosts the Hugh Hewitt Show on Salem Radio every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m.