A Jewish State

There are over a hundred nations of Christian background, slightly less Muslim nations, and only one extremely small Jewish nation sitting on a narrow strip of land along the Mediterranean. While nobody seems to have a problem that the Queen of England, its head of state, is also the head of the Church of England, or that non-Muslims are forbidden from publicly worshipping in Saudi Arabia, the world nods in agreement that the idea of a Jewish state, a democratic, free state of Jews built on Jewish principles (hopefully), is something primitive, wrong or artificial. (As if a state of French people in France or Chinese in China is offensive!) Many believe it to be charitable for another leader or country to acknowledge Israel's right to exist, as if Israel's right to exist is suspended in mid-air until someone allows us to live. Nobody challenges the rights of Canada, Chad or Australia to exist but to the self-righteous liberals of the world, a Jewish state is intolerant and racist. One need not look far to hear calls for the dismantling of Israel, branding the state as illegitimate, born in sin. Such calls are not only dangerous, but they are plain anti-semitic, to deny Jews the right of self-determination which is extended to all peoples. It is also genocidal in nature because by marking the Jews in Israel as squatters, they give liscence to Arab excesses and murder in the attempt to "liberate" their land.


The Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and since the time of the Conquest by Joshua, Jews have maintained a constant presence there. In 70 CE, the Roman armies of Titus and Hadrian marched through Judea, massacred its people, enslaved and exiled the remnants, razed Jerusalem and burnt the Holy Temple, rebuilt on its site a pagan city, and renamed the land Palastina. Millions of Jews, of Zionists, slaughtered, and the survivors were scattered to the four corners of the globe for two millenium. During these bitter years, the Jewish people suffered intense persecution, humilation, oppression, pogroms, Crusades, Inquistions, forced conversions and Holocausts. Thousands of Jews gave their lives in order to remain Jewish, as Muslim and Christian mobds demanded that they accept the truth of the revelations of Jesus or Muhammad. The Jews endured ridicule and ostracism, being a minority in hostile lands. It is little over 60 years ago when the Jews were taken from all over Europe (and the Jews of North Africa were only saved miraculously) and killed by the Nazis. The Jewish nation was weak, dispersed and defenseless. As the Jews suffocated and burned in Auschwitz, the world sat silently. The Pope turned a blind eye as all of the Jews of Rome were rounded up from beneath his very window. The message was painfully clear: never again to be a minority. We must be the masters in our own house.

From these ashes of the horrid destruction that engulfed the Jewish people 60 years ago, the nation regathered in its ancient homeland and reestablished itself. Jews had been living there since biblical times, and in the previous two centuries, settlements and aliyah flourished. Land that had been desolate and malaria-infested under the Arabs for hundreds of years suddenly bloomed when its rightful owners returned to reclaim it. Jerusalem, the ancient and eternal capital of Israel, which had been a backwater outpost in the Ottoman Empite, had a thriving Jewish population. In 1948, the state of Israel was declared and it quickly accepted 600 000 Holocaust surivors and close to a million Jews from Arab lands who were expelled from lands which they had lived in for millenium. The state grew and in 1967, following Arab threats and belligerence, Israel liberated Judea and Samaria, Sinai and the Golan and the Jews were finally reunited with their ancient and eternal capital Jerusalem, which was forbidden to Jews under Jordanian rule. The Israeli army ran towards the Kotel and towards the Temple Mount, which has been used as a garbage dump by the Arabs, and the tears of the soldiers poured over the holy stones. The Jewish people had come home.

Some people naively argue today that since most countries guarantee Jews equal rights for the moment, we should waltz right back into exile. Little do they know that anti-Semitic acts are quite common in Europe, Canada and even the United States as synagogues are firebombed, Jewish schools and cemetaries vandalized, and Jews beaten up regularly. Anti-semitism is far from gone and is on a frightening increase. Nonetheless, even without anti-semitism or Jew-hatred, Israel is essential. The Jews are entitled, as are the Swiss, the Italians and the Cambodians, to self-rule, to have a country of their own in which to practice their faith freely, to develop their culture and to shape their own destiny.


Israel has always been at the center of Jewish conscious. Jews pray three times a day that "our eyes behold Your return to Zion in mercy". We have ended every Passover seder with the words, "Next Year in Jerusalem!". The Land of Israel is the heart of the nation (Or Ne’erav 5:4). All of the Jewish pilgrimage festivals are based on the agricultural cycle of Israel. "See how dear the Land of Israel is before the Holy One Blessed Be He, that most of the commandments are determined there" (Batei Midrashot 1). Judaism in exile is unnatural, existing like a spirit without a body. Only in Israel is Judaism healthy, natural, complete and uncompartmentalized. The Jewish communities in the Diaspora are shrinking, plagued by a 50% assimilation and intermarriage rate. The American Jew is quickly vanishing, through assimilation, country clubs, pork chops, intermarriage and public schools. Israel is the only Jewish community that is thriving and flourishing because it is where Judaism belongs. "There is no Torah like the Torah of the Land of Israel And no wisdom like the wisdom of the Land of Israel." (Sifri, Ekev) Just as the Swede is connected to Sweden, so to is the Jew connected with his heart and soul in Israel. "The Land of Israel is our inheritance from our forefathers" (Baba Batra 119:B) It belongs to us by virtue of inheritance, by Divine promise, by our never ending love-affair with this land. It is in Israel that the Jew is meant to create a holy society, to be able to practice the mitzvot freely, which is impossible in exile. Our Jewish destiny is to become a "light unto the nations", to teach the world of the Truth of HaShem, that there is none but Him, which cannot be done living in the humilation and enslavement of exile.


G-d said: The Land is Mine, and the People of Israel is Mine. I will give My Land to My People (Tanchumah, Bamidbar 34). Who dares fight against the Master of the Universe?

Cross-posted from For Zion's Sake