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 [ VOICES ](https://mail.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=375)

#  What It Truly Means to Let Freedom Ring

Written by Abe Gurko.

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October 20 2025

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ABE WON’T BE SILENT - The war has changed me — for the better. It has hardened my understanding of what it truly means to “let freedom ring,” because it has revealed the monsters who have destroyed the best of our humanity. It’s made me question who gets to be called heroes now that decay and corruption have seeped into every corner of our politics and into so many so-called humanitarian organizations gloating and grifting in the name of their questionable missions. Purity is no longer testable. The far left has usurped the word, wrapped it in moral pretense, and turned it into an oxymoron. Their supposed virtue has curdled and signaled its way far — far — beyond recognition.

Since the November election, I’ve done a 180-degree turnaround. The veil has lifted — the pretense, the false equivalencies, the empty slogans that once pretended to bridge divides. Instead, they chose sides — and too bad for them for choosing hate and the wrong side of history. You’ll see. History will prove otherwise, as it always does.

Karl Marx said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” Today, that applies to the socialist democrats who’ve become a collection of collagenous junkies, intoxicated by a false god draped in Islamic religiosity, violence, and performative virtue. There’s little difference between those who turned their backs on Moses in the desert and this new crop of Israel-hating, Zionist-phobic, assimilated Jews marching in lockstep with Bernie, the Squad, Zohran Mamdani — and Hamas. Nice quinella you got there.

It’s strange — even poetic — that what’s happening now echoes what happened when Moses led the Jews out of slavery, only to face the doubters and non-believers chasing their make-believe false idols. Sadly, that same sickness has spread across the United States and infected the streets of democracies everywhere.

Boy, what a turnaround, I’m experiencing. I started as a teenage hippie — boycotting grade school during the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam — then marching for women’s rights, fighting for gay rights, and taking to the streets demanding AIDS medication against the homophobic Reagan administration.

Today’s pathetic, performative protesters — posturing and parading about in their chronic, chaotic choreography — mistake subversive spectacle for substance. It’s soulless theater of the absurd and has turned my blood cold to their cause du jour, because it now centers on antisemitism and anti-Zionism. I have zero empathy for these empty empaths. The hippie in me is gone, replaced by a renewed determination to matter — and for my freedom to ring true.

And that freedom is to not be part of any political party — perhaps ever again.

Now, on the eve of returning to the land where it all began — to stand among the descendants of those who built, dreamed, and rose from ashes — I feel the gravity of stepping into their shadow. The Zionist Congress I am blessed to join isn’t just any old conference; it’s a calling. A chance to take my place in a lineage of defiant dreamers who refused to disappear — because “I won’t be silent” isn’t just my mantra, it’s my DNA.

I know where heroes once stood, and I know where they stand today. That’s where I’m headed — to stand where courage was born from resolve and where our future is still being written. There, I hope to make a difference — unlike the wannabe revolutionaries who’ve revealed their true, dark natures and deserve the harsh judgment of history, if not the wrath of the gods.

What’s on the horizon is about one thing: fighting for, protecting, and saving our homeland and heritage — and, most importantly, my legacy. I will forever be a one-issue voter — political parties be damned — having renewed my faith, not necessarily religiously, but spiritually, emotionally, and in harmony with the soul of my community.

Watching the hostages return to freedom and their families — seeing what love truly looks like — I’ve felt the humanity and connection so often lost in the translation of the moment we find ourselves in. Remembering the pure evil of the Islamists and their followers, so blatantly on display, it’s all impossible to unsee.

Freedom is having the power to claim who you are.

*(ABE GURKO is the executive producer of a documentary “LOUDER: The Soundtrack of Change,” about the extraordinary Women of Protest Music streaming on MAX. He's an Opinionator who hosts a podcast, "Won't Be Silent," engaging in conversations from the edge of democracy. Abe is a contributor to [CityWatchLA.com](http://citywatchla.com/). <abegurko@gmail.com>[.](mailto:abegurko@gmail.com))*

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