“Must Israel exist?”
This is the unspoken question behind any discussion or debate regarding the State of Israel or Israeli policy today.
If Israel must exist, then every action it takes to that end is justified. If Israel need not exist, then its actions necessary to secure its prolonged existence are essentially unjustifiable.
Every scrutinized minutia of Israeli policy is ultimately downstream of this question.
Even amongst those who answer this question in the affirmative, however, exist considerable distinctions.
The Rights of Peoples to Self-Determine
The classic Hasbara affirmation is that Israel must exist because it has a legendary “right to exist” – a naive appeal to the legitimate rights of nations to self-determination.
But curiously, those who couch the necessity of Israel in the universal language of nationalism are rarely as passionate about the Scots, the Lombards, the Bodos, or the nearly 100 other stateless nations.
Did the Confederate States of America have a right to exist? Does Palestine have a right to exist?
Such illusory nationalism recalls an episode in the career of Vladimir Lenin, in which the revolutionary leader endorsed Polish national liberation in his 1917 essay Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism only to order the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1920.
National self-determination is a very nice value with wide appeal among the many peoples who enjoy or yearn for independence, but in practice it always comes second to any deeper ideological conviction.
A Valuable Asset to the United States
Another weak case for Israel is one of US imperial realpolitik, such as the statement once made by former President Joe Biden while in the Senate: “Were there not an Israel the USA would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”
Establishing Israel’s existential necessity in its functional utility to US regional interests may be far more intellectually honest and defensible than the nationalist appeal. But such a conception of Israel’s existential justification practically makes Israel’s existence contingent on its cooperation with and utility towards US regional interests in West Asia, interests that often do not match her own.
Further, Washington would likely have little issue “inventing an Israel” to protect US interests in West Asia if they found Israel no longer capable of doing so, leaving Israel’s existence indefensible and unjustifiable for those who today justify it in terms of Jerusalem’s cooperation with Washington’s regional agenda.
A Light onto Nations
Israel must exist because Israel has the unique ability to serve as a living model of a better society for humanity.
We can already see a glimpse of this in the fact that Israel is the only state with both a first-world standard of living and a birth rate above the replacement level. While every country in the world struggles with resolving the contradiction between economic development and social sustainability, Israel is the world’s living social compass.
This will become all the more true as Israeli society continues to develop internally and begins to embrace the Torah as a source of prophetic guidance. Israeli society is currently on a trajectory to reach the point of its every social function being a living model and a social compass for all the peoples of the world.
The necessity of Israel is not in some vague, bad-faith international nationalism but in a real national internationalism. The underlying reason for the Torah’s demand that Israel possess its land is that the children of Israel are meant to create a holy society that positively influences humanity through its example of kedusha in all spheres of national existence.
This is a conception of Israel’s necessity, which is couched in its unique character rather than its subordination to the interests of another state. Israel must exist not as a consequence of abstract rights or foreign interests, but in its unique capacity to build and exemplify a better society for the benefit of the entire world.
