Birth of a Nation, Israel at 69

 

The other day, a friend asked me why so many people hate the Jews.

I said: “We gave the world monotheism and morality. We insisted that there is right and wrong, good and evil. And HaShem made a covenant with His people that is eternal.

The world has never forgiven us.

The world hated us when we lived in ancient Israel. And then the world hated us when we were flung into the Diaspora. And now the world has discovered another reason to hate the Jews. Israel, the modern Jewish state, refuses to be a victim. The world is complicit and silent when Jews are herded into gas chambers. But when Jews dare take up arms and sucessfully defend themselves against the onslaught of IslamoNazis, well, that is just intolerable. Zionism is just another excuse to hate the Jewish people.

So get used to it. We are hated for all the wrong reasons.”

Today is Israel’s Independence Day. The modern state of Israel was born sixty-nine years ago.

I used to think that sixty-nine is old.

But years and experience have given me some measure of wisdom and I know that for a nation-state sixty-nine is but infancy.

From the moment Israel was born she was invaded by five Arab Muslim armies—Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Holy Warrior Army—whose stated intent was to annihilate the fledgling state and finish the job of genocide begun by Hitler’s Third Reich and her collaborators.

But Israel survived and will continue to survive and thrive because the land was promised to the Jewish people by G-d in a sacred and eternal covenant.