Sir Afilonius Rex

Tel Aviv, 16th February 2026

The relations between Wales, Judaism, and Zionism weave a tale as old as the hills. It is as tangled as the roots beneath them. These are threads of scripture, sympathy, small nations’ stubborn fire, and biblical thunder from the valleys. This comes to us in the voices of the past; lyrical, rhythmic, overflowing with vivid, swirling imagery. Alliteration and a bardic, almost incantatory prose describe the green and golden hills of Wales. The chapels rang with the thunder of prophets. The psalms rolled like the sea in the lungs of the miners. There, the Old Testament burned brighter than the coal seams! On those Nonconformist mornings, the children learned about Jerusalem. They learned their names even before their own rivers. Jordan flowed through the hymns. Zion was no distant dream but a living pulse in the blood.

And lo, from those same valleys came a small, fierce man. He was raised on the Bible’s wild poetry. He saw in the scattered Jews the kin of his own ancient, oppressed people. He spoke the words that cracked the world open like an egg of light. It was a national home in Palestine. This declaration bloomed from the lips of the empire. Yet, it was rooted in the chapel’s dream of return and restoration. The Jews came not as conquerors to these Welsh hearts. They came as brothers in the story of exile and the promised land. Both are small nations, singing against the wind. They are green and dying yet singing still. In the mercy of time’s green means, the affinity held; through the green fuse of childhood faith, through the explosive imagery of scripture made flesh in policy, through the rhapsodic lilt of a Welsh voice that would not go gentle into the good night of forgetting

He spoke in a measured, principled manner. He was a nationalist who held moral and declarative views. There was a quiet moral seriousness in his words. He emphasized nationhood, language, and self-determination. Wales is a historic community. It is a nation with its own language and spirit. Wales has always understood the fate of small peoples under larger powers. Our Nonconformist heritage is steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. It bred in us a natural sympathy for the Jewish people. This was not out of mere sentiment. It came from recognition of shared experience: the struggle to preserve identity, language, and land against assimilation and empire.

A voice from the Welsh hills carried this moral vision into the highest councils of state. As a leader, it presided over the declaration of 1917. It saw the restoration of a Jewish national home as biblical justice. This was also viewed as a principle of national self-determination that echoed Wales’s own aspirations. It was no accident. A voice raised on the prophets and the nonconformist conscience spoke this policy. This happened when others wavered. Yet we must speak plainly: the rights of nations are indivisible. The moral factor decides the fate of peoples; spirit can overcome Leviathan if unyielding.

Wales supported the Zionist cause as an act of solidarity. We once saw it as another small nation reclaiming its heritage. We supported them just as we demanded our own right to self-government, our language, and our integrity. The link is not one of conquest. It is a connection of parallel destinies. Two peoples, long denied, assert their place in the sun. Oh, how innocent, biased and naïve we were.

In the voice of Wales, direct, defiant, folk-protest ballad style, rousing, repetitive, rooted in survival and cultural pride, with a touch of wry satire and anthemic repetition:

Er gwaethaf pawb a phopeth, r’yn ni yma o hyd, means “despite everyone and everything, we’re still here”. The Jews were scattered and scorned. Yet, they held fast to their tongue, their faith, and their dream of Zion. In the chapels of Wales, we sang their story alongside our own. Both are small nations that were kicked by empires, yet refuse to disappear into the night of history.

A voice came from the valleys. The speaker had a Bible in the pocket and fire in the belly. This person stood up in London and said, “Let there be a home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” Not only for the empire’s gain. It knew the ache of a nation without a voice. It knew the ache of a nation without its land.

Like us painting the signs green, like us fighting for Cymraeg against the tide, they fought for Hebrew and homeland. We’re still here, despite the odds—and so are they, in Israel now, a nation reborn. But mind you, solidarity cuts both ways: the right of one people to live free must never crush another’s. Er gwaethaf pawb a phopeth; Wales remembers, and sings on, for every small nation that refuses to die. Yma o hyd!

So why has the dream of freedom and liberty changed? Why has independence and absence of fear become a tale so amoral? It has become depraved and degenerate. What can possibly excuse the genocide? The infanticide and the sense of impunity, conceit and evil that accompany it are inexcusable.

Thanks for reading.