It was late in the evening. The awards had been handed out; the meal had been finished. Most of us were ready to go home. But we still hadn’t heard from the keynote speaker.

I know I was ready to call it a night. But as they often say, the best was saved for last. The speech, delivered by an Israeli soldier, was to put it candidly, one of the most powerful talks I’ve ever heard.

He spoke about what it meant to be a Jew, of growing up and experiencing bigotry in England, of seeing first-hand some of the violence perpetrated against himself and his brothers and later in battle.

The speech was an earnest, straight-forward account of what the state of Israel means to him. His words were not only spoken with conviction, but delivered articulately in the commanding voice of a military man.

While sitting there…