On the lawn of Regent University this week, more than 1,400 Israeli flags were planted in a solemn field of remembrance — each one a life stolen on October 7, 2023 — as students, faculty and community members gathered to honor the victims and to pledge that America’s Christian institutions will not forget. The visual statement was simple and powerful: America’s faith communities stand with Israel against terror and with the families who still wait for answers.
One of the most harrowing moments of the ceremony came when Shye Klein, a dual citizen and survivor of the NOVA music festival massacre, shared how he escaped while filming the horror so the world would see the truth. Klein’s testimony was a reminder that the brutality of Hamas was not an abstract news item but a lived atrocity that ordinary people survived — and that ordinary people must continue to tell the story.
Regent’s Israel Institute organized the event and invited leaders who refused to sanitize the facts, including former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell and Michele Bachmann, who framed the attacks as both a political and spiritual assault on a people. Their message was unambiguous: we will not allow the historical reality and moral context of Israel’s fight for survival to be erased by fashionable narratives that excuse terror.
This display was more than symbolism; it was an act of defiance against a culture that too often treats American support for Israel as controversial or optional. While many in the elite media and on university campuses bend over backwards to explain away murderers and excuse mass murder, Regent students did what citizens should do in a free republic — they stood up, chose the side of victims, and refused to bow to moral whim.
Speakers and attendees also united in the urgent call for the safe return of hostages and for a responsible path to lasting security for Israelis and their neighbors. That plea — prayed for on an American campus — is the sort of clear moral clarity our foreign policy should reflect, not the equivocation that weakens allies and emboldens tyrants.
Regent’s commitment didn’t stop at the lawn; its students have been active on the world stage, joining commemorations at the United Nations and traveling to voice support for Israel, proving that young conservatives still value patriotism, faith, and the covenant between democracies. These are the young Americans who reject surrender to fashionable relativism and who will carry the torch of Western civilization forward.
Americans who cherish freedom should be proud of institutions like Regent that teach allegiance to truth and the courage to oppose terror. Stand with those who remember, pray, and act; stand with Israel; and demand that our leaders and our media treat evil for what it is rather than inventing excuses for it. The flag field in Virginia Beach was a vivid reminder that liberty-loving people will not look away.
