Only Israel Has a Right to Exist

And it was granted by the Creator

And I will give to thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land in which thou dost sojourn, all the land of Kena῾an, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. Genesis 17:8

There it is. As simple as it gets. The Jews were granted an everlasting deed to the Holy Land, the land of Israel. That is the Jews right to exist. As ancient as this pact is, the parameters set by this covenant are the same parameters that bound the present-day conflict. Who has the right to allocate countries and delineate national borders? The Jews claim that on this particular plot of land in the Middle East, only God has the right to choose a people and grant them the right to inhabit it. As for the rest of the world, borders are fixed through violent conflict between peoples. That has been the rule.

But confirm the word of My servant
And fulfill the prediction of My messengers.
It is I who say of Jerusalem, “It shall be inhabited,”
And of the towns of Judah, “They shall be rebuilt;
And I will restore their ruined places.” Isaiah 44:26

When the Jews finally returned to their land it was in the hope of having international recognition and acceptance. At that time there was not much of a belief in the old prophecies driving the Zionist project. Except for one thing. Because of the precarious situation of the Jews throughout the world, the Zionist leaders were prepared to accept any plot of land that the world powers might deem proper to grant to them. Herzl himself favored a spot in Uganda. Uninhabited areas of Argentina were considered. Soon enough though, a murmur arose from the rank and file of world Jewry, that became an unequivocal demand. There is only one place on this Earth for a Jewish homeland. “Next year in Jerusalem,” the Jews had proclaimed for centuries at the end of the Passover Seder. Thus this secular national liberation movement for the Jews became focused on the same plot of land that their God had apportioned for them from the start. Thus pure Zionism was from a very early stage infected with the Jewish virus. At first glance that last statement may seem to be a product from the Antisemite’s playbook. In reality, it is what grants legitimacy to the movement and what is driving the survival and the continued success of Zionism.

Because the root of the conflict is religious in nature. One side to the conflict declares this unabashedly and with pride. For every Jewish child slaughtered and burned in front of its parents, a thousand “Allahu Akbars” are offered in ecstasy to the heavens. The other side—the Zionist side with the Jewish component—answers fervently with a resounding: “It’s complicated.” Secular Zionists desperately wanted an arrangement with the secular enlightened West that would approve of Israel’s presence as a western-style liberal democracy in an Arab authoritarian middle-east while at the same time coming to some sort of arrangement with neighboring Arab countries, preferably with full and amicable relations. The answer from both directions has been (at least for the last thirty to forty years): first, a Palestinian state. Then everything in the region will be roses. That desire has met what now seems to be the final brick wall.

Secular Zionists have discovered to their dismay and disappointment, that though they are willing to genuflect to every demand of the liberal world in order to gain acceptance to that world, and then to excel in meeting those demands beyond all other candidates, still they remain in the eyes of that world utterly, finally, nothing more than tolerated Jews. Born a Jew and a Jew until death. Worse comes the realization that in this world, the Jew needs to plea for the right to exist, and that right is always, but always, contingent on whim and prejudice by nature undefinable and forever fungible. Doubly denied, of the contingency and of the right itself, the Jew turns unto himself—returns to his virtual ghetto—to continue that same struggle of his ancestor Jacob, who wrestled with an angel generations before by the Jabok River, the Jew knowing that one does not emerge from such a struggle without injury, but at the same time knowing that it is this struggle—this spiritual wrestling match—that separates him essentially and existentially from the rest of mankind and is what grants him (or her) a place at the table where the eternal discussion with the Creator is taking place.

In the world where Jews are physically injured, they are Chosen in the sense that they are chosen to be denied. In the world where Jews are injured by a messenger of God they become invigorated; they become the ones who strive, and prevail. They become Israel.

And Ya῾aqov was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

And when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Ya῾aqov’s thigh was put out of joint, as he wrestled with him.

And he said, Let me go, for the day breaks. And he said, I will not let thee go, unless thou bless me.

And he said to him, What is thy name? And he said, Ya῾aqov.

And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Ya῾aqov, but Yisra᾽el: for thou hast contended with God and with men, and hast prevailed. Genesis 32:25-29