3 Reasons Why the State of Israel Must Exist

There are 56 Muslim nations in the world. Here is why we need the only little Jewish one.

Sivan and her infant son were spending Shabbat with Sivan’s mother in Sderot, Israel, when the sound of rockets woke her at 6:30 a.m. Then, a community-wide message from the mayor arrived, warning people to stay inside and be silent because Hamas terrorists were swarming the city. Soon, Sivan saw videos on social media of pickup trucks filled with terrorists on nearby streets.

“I started to think in a way I never thought a Jewish person would think again,” she told me. “I am calling my brother, ‘Jacob, how do I open the attic in Mom’s house because I need to hide my baby there?’ I start to check all kinds of cabinets, or I lift the bed to see if I can hide my baby there in a way he won’t suffocate. I’m starting to think, How do I save my baby? hoping he won’t cry. Hoping that when the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] enters a few hours or a day after, they will find him. Like in the Holocaust, exactly like in the Holocaust.”

The day was October 7, 2023. Thousands of Hamas terrorists from Gaza breached the border into Israel and butchered nearly every Israeli man, woman, child, and infant they could get their hands on (around 1,200 people) and kidnapped 251 others, many of whom died in Gaza.

Amazingly, Sivan, her baby, and her mother escaped to safety; but she experienced what countless Jewish mothers have felt over the past two millennia: the frantic quest to save the life of her child while facing mutilation or annihilation at the hands of rabid antisemites. And her experience—their experience—illustrates three reasons why the State of Israel must exist.

One: To Defend and Avenge
The State of Israel makes it possible for the Jewish people to defend themselves—and to avenge themselves when necessary.

Following their exile from the land in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, Jewish people settled in other nations. There, they were persecuted and harassed for being a “stateless people.”

This same charge drove the Nazi regime to implement the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” from 1941 to 1945. The Nazis did not view the Jews as citizens of Germany and had no qualms about murdering some 6 million of them across 21 countries¹—wiping out 40% of the world Jewish population and more than 60% of European Jewry.²

When the Jewish people returned to their Promised Land and reestablished their sovereignty through the State of Israel in 1948, their Arab neighbors attacked them for coming home. Even today, anti-Zionists call Israel a European colonialist project that must be wiped off the map. Sivan and her people experienced such an attempt on October 7, 2023.

History, ancient and modern, demonstrates that the Jewish people will be persecuted whether they reside in other lands or in their own, whether they are a stateless people or citizens of a sovereign Jewish state.

The difference, of course, is that when they lived outside their land, the persecution went largely unhindered. Often, governments either turned a blind eye to antisemitism or sanctioned it themselves. Today, the Jews have a state that can actively defend against such attacks.

Though Sivan’s agony looking for somewhere to hide her baby is strikingly similar to that of Jewish mothers during the Holocaust, the difference is that Sivan knew the IDF eventually would arrive.

Israel’s existence also ensures that attacks on Israel and the Jewish people will be avenged, one of the primary biblical responsibilities of human government (Rom. 13:4).

A clear example is the case of Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi masterminds behind the mass murder of European Jewry. In 1946, Eichmann escaped U.S. custody and fled to Argentina, where he lived for many years.

In 1960, the Mossad captured Eichmann and brought him to Israel, where he stood trial. The following year, the State of Israel found him guilty of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and membership in a criminal organization.³ Eichmann was hanged at a prison outside Tel Aviv around midnight on May 31, 1962. His body was cremated, and his remains scattered in the Mediterranean Sea.

Though only God can adequately punish Adolf Eichmann for what he did, the State of Israel made it possible for the Jews, as a people, to avenge those he murdered.

Although Israel’s existence does not mean antisemitism is no longer a threat, it does mean Jewish people no longer have to depend solely on the governments of the Diaspora to protect them or to bring justice to them. Israel’s independent government acts as an avenger and a deterrent to contemporary would-be Hitlers and others who seek “Final Solutions” of their own.

Two: To Be a Place of Refuge
In the 1890s, Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl covered the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a loyal, French-born Jewish officer in the French military who was falsely accused of spying for the Germans.

The full-throated antisemitism that surfaced during the trial demonstrated powerfully to Herzl, who was Jewish, that Jew-hatred could find a home anywhere, even in liberal France. He realized the Jewish people would never be fully welcomed anywhere. “We have honestly endeavoured . . . to merge ourselves in the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve only the faith of our fathers,” he wrote. “We are not permitted to do so. In vain we are loyal patriots.”⁴

His solution was for the Jewish people to establish a homeland of their own. Today, the State of Israel is a place of refuge for world Jewry.

What Herzl observed at the Dreyfus trial, Jewish communities around the world have experienced for centuries. No matter how integrated or patriotic the Jewish people are, they are always considered outsiders. During economic hardship or political calamity, they are routinely scapegoated for the ills that befall the societies in which they live. The result is almost always persecution.

Where can they go to escape antisemitism?

For many, America has been the answer. Although antisemitism has always existed in the United States, American law has given Jewish people freedoms and opportunities they could find nowhere else. In fact, between 1880 and 1924, more than 2 million Jewish people emigrated from Eastern Europe⁵ to the place they called in Yiddish the Goldene Medina, the “Golden Land.”

Unfortunately, today antisemitism has reached a record high in the United States, with more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents reported between October 2023 and September 2024, a 200% increase over the previous year.⁶ Like Herzl, many American Jews are beginning to wonder how long America will remain the haven it was for their ancestors.

Thankfully, Jewish people today have something Dreyfus did not have: the State of Israel. In the wake of the violent wave of global antisemitism ignited by Hamas’s October 7 attack, 35,000 Jewish people from around the world have made aliyah (immigrated) to Israel.⁷

Though most in the United States and other Western nations still hope for a future for their children and grandchildren in the lands where they live, they will have a place to go should circumstances worsen. Israel’s existence ensures that Jewish people around the world can escape the Diaspora and live freely as Jews in the land of their ancestors.

Three: To Provide Self-Government and Self-Preservation
In the lands of their dispersion, Jewish people throughout history were often considered second-class citizens, both socially and legally.

For centuries, those living in “Christian” nations often had to wear special clothing, such as bells, badges, or hats, to mark them out as Jews. In German-speaking areas during the Middle Ages, every Jewish person was required to wear a cone-shaped Judenhut (Jew’s hat), while Jews in England had to wear badges that looked like the tablets of the Law.⁸

Islamic regimes deemed their Jewish residents dhimmis, people who were allowed to practice their faith but had to acknowledge the supremacy of Islam.⁹ Islamic law forbids them to serve in the military, hold public office, build synagogues or homes that are taller than the houses and mosques of their Muslim neighbors, or to defend themselves in court.¹⁰ Their rights are marginal, exposing them to a host of indignities and injustices.

In Israel, Jewish people finally have self-determination. They can make laws that protect the people and ensure justice and equality before the law—not only for themselves, but for their non-Jewish citizens as well.

Israelis don’t think their country is perfect. Like other nations, Israel has its problems, many of which divide its citizens and cause them to march in the streets, calling for change. But the very fact that they can march for change—that they can live in their own land, express their opinions and displeasures freely, and petition their own government—demonstrates how essential the State of Israel is.

Terrorist attacks like the one Sivan and her family experienced will continue. Antisemitism is not going away. But Israel’s existence means Jewish people can now fight the terrorists and avenge the taking of innocent lives. It means they have a place to flee to when the fires of antisemitism ignite the world. It means they have a government that represents them, not one that persecutes them.

The State of Israel not only should exist; it must exist. The survival of the Jewish people depends on it.

ENDNOTES

1. 1. 1. 1. Britannica, s.v. “final solution” (britannica.com/event/Final-Solution).
         2. “Jewish Population of Europe in 1933,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (shorturl.at/VaBXf).
         3. “Eichmann Trial,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (tinyurl.com/Eichmannn).
         4. Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2008), 11.
         5. Jonathan Sarna and Joellyn Zollman, “Jewish Immigration to America,” My Jewish Learning (tinyurl.com/MJLearning-2).
         6. “Over 10,000 Antisemitic Incidents Recorded in the U.S. since Oct. 7, 2023, According to ADL Preliminary Data,” Anti-Defamation League, October 6, 2024 (tinyurl.com/ADL-antis).
         7. “35,000 Jews immigrated to Israel since October 7 massacre,” i24NEWS, December 29, 2024 (tinyurl.com/i24-immigration).
         8. “Jewish Badge: Origins,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (tinyurl.com/J-Badges).
         9. “Jews in Islamic Countries: The Treatment of Jews,” Jewish Virtual Library (tinyurl.com/JVL-Treatment).
         10. Ibid.

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