WATCH: Gal Gadot: "I went to shul after October 7th; there, for a second, I could breathe"

The room was heavy, the kind of quiet that hums with unspoken things, when Gal Gadot stepped up late Tuesday night—or early Wednesday, depending on how you count the hours—to take the Anti-Defamation League’s International Leadership Award. No red-carpet gloss here, just a woman in the thick of it, voice rough with something real. (In fairness though, we are talking about Gal Gadot who can't help but emanate charisma). The Hollywood star, Israel-born and battle-worn in her own way, didn’t come to play nice. She came to say what’s been choking her—and plenty of others—since the world tilted off its axis.

“My name’s Gal. I'm Jewish. I'm Israeli. We’re tired of the hate,” she said. She was there to call antisemitism what it is: a fight they won’t lose. “It won’t beat us. Won’t define us. Our love’s tougher than their garbage hate,” she said.

The ADL gave her the nod for pushing back against the venom aimed at Jews, and the timing’s no accident—October 7th still cuts deep, a wound that hasn’t scabbed over. Gadot’s not the synagogue-every-Shabbat type, but she admitted she ended up in one anyway after that day. “I was broken, glued to the nightmare coming out of Israel, the hate spilling everywhere,” she said. “Not super religious, but there I was, and it hit me—the Jewish people, our people, wrapping around me. Felt like home, even in L.A., miles from Israel. That stuck with me, because out there it was chaos, but in there, for a second, I could breathe.”

She didn’t sugarcoat the stakes. “What hits Jews in one place screws with us all,” she said, tying Israel’s mess to the diaspora’s jitters. “It goes both ways—there to here, here to there.” Then she zeroed in: the hostages. Still stuck in Hamas’s grip. “Every minute’s hell for them. We’ve got to get them back. Every story we hear from the ones who make it out—it’s worse than you can stomach. They’re in danger, and we need them here, now. Their families need to know we’re not letting go—we’re fighting, we’re with them, and no Jewish community anywhere’s letting them walk this alone.”

Gadot didn’t dodge the ugly parts. She talked about the women—Jewish women—caught in the October 7th horror. Rape, murder, kidnapping. “We waited for the world’s women to say something, anything,” she said. “Mostly got silence. Crickets ... We’re done waiting, done begging for backup from people who won’t show up. We’ve got ourselves, and that’s enough.”

She’s raising four girls with her husband, Yaron Varsano, and you can tell it’s personal. “They’ll be strong Jewish women,” she said. “Proud. Standing up, standing together.” She threw it out to every Jew listening: do something. Talk. Dig into the past. Find your people. “Hold our own up,” she said, “but don’t stop reaching out, even when it’s rough.”

Her finish was blunt, almost ancient-sounding, like something carved into stone. “We’re old as hell—our story, our land. We love life, fight for something better, calmer. We stare down the hate, but we do it with love, trying to fix this busted-up world.”

Ynet contributed to this article.