A JEWISH STATE WAS NEEDED
On the 14th May 1948 the first Prime Minister of the modern State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, proclaimed these words in Israel’s Declaration of Independence:
“The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people—the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe— was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State…
THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions…”
The State of Israel has been faithful to the words expressed by Ben-Gurion. It has taken in millions of Jews from around the globe—hundreds of thousands who were refugees from war-ravaged Europe were among the first to arrive in 1948. Within months of the birth of the State, the Displaced Persons camps in Europe that housed devastated Jews were closed down as their occupants had gone home to Israel. Many more who were forced out of Arab States in the Middle East and North Africa in the first few years of independence arrived back home too. Israel has dealt with Jewish “homelessness” and continues to do so because Israel is the indigenous Jewish homeland. All sectors of Israeli society—Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian, Druze etc. share equally in the benefits of the nation in education and culture, politics and religion, business and employment. All have the same equal opportunities you would find in any other genuine democracy. Of course there are problems being worked out within that democracy but there is not one democratic state in the world which is not still ‘a work in progress’— New Zealand included. In his speech as Israeli Foreign Minister to the United Nations commemorating the
Holocaust in 2005 Silvan Shalom said:
“Since its establishment Israel has provided a haven for Jews facing persecution anywhere in the world. At the same time, it has built a society based on the values of democracy and freedom for all its citizens, where Jewish life and culture and literature and religion and learning—all those things which the Nazis sought to destroy—can flourish and thrive.”
Recent history proves that there needed to be a Jewish State and it must remain a Jewish State. Nazi
Germany is long gone but anti-Semites are still found in every nook and cranny and they are increasing rapidly. Sometimes it is blatant and directed against the Jewish people simply because they are Jews. At other times it is veiled and directed against the State of the Jewish people in the form of what we consider anti-Israel policies at the UN. Anti-Zionist sentiment is another manifestation of anti-Semitism. Zionism is simply the ideal of the Jew to live on his natural, historical and ancestral homeland. Anti-Semitism is unjustified persecution against the Jewish People. Its political companion is espoused as anti-Zionist sentiments and anti-Israel conduct in international affairs. The Basic (Nation State) Law passed by Israel’s lawmakers in 2018 which was decried by its opponents as apartheid and racist, is simply a clarification of what Ben-Gurion declared at Israel’s independence. It is not anti-Arab or anti any race or religion. It simply enshrines the need to preserve the State of Israel as a Jewish State that will always remain just that, while at the same time giving respect and room to non-Jews who live within that state.