God didn’t pick us because we were weak or would run from danger. We’ve taken murder and sorrow and humiliation for six thousand years and we have kept faith. We have outlived everyone who has tried to destroy us. Can’t you see it, Kitty? … this little land was chosen for us because it is the crossroads of the world, on the edge of Man’s wilderness. This is where God wants His people to be … on the frontiers, to stand and guard His laws which are the cornerstone of Man’s moral existence. Where else is there for us to be?

– Excerpted from Exodus by Leon Uris 

There is an old song which asserts ‘the best things in life are free’. Not true! Utterly false! … Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain… The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion… and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself- ultimate cost for perfect value.

– Excerpted from Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

I got back Wednesday from a ten-day trip to Israel. It was, without question, one of the greatest experiences of my life.

I have dreamed of travelling to Israel for literally
half a lifetime, ever since I first read Exodus as a boy. For
me, visiting Israel meant far more than a fun trip abroad; it meant a
chance to see the places that I had hitherto only known through the
books of my childhood, and the writings of the Bible. To visit Israel
was to see more than six thousand years of history come to life
before my eyes- and to truly understand just what Israel means, and
why both the land and the idea of Israel are so important.

More than anything else, it was a chance to truly
understand what it means to have a land of one’s own- and the almost
incomprehensibly steep price that must be paid to keep it.

There is a powerful magic to the idea of Israel, and you
have to go there to really experience it. The words, “Next year
in Jerusalem”, have been the anchor of faith for millions of
Jews around the world for nearly two thousand years. Yet, if you
actually look at Israel as a land, you would be forgiven for
wondering what the fuss is all about. Israel is, at first glance, a
wasteland- the Galilee in the north and west is swamp, the hills of
Judea and Samaria to the east are barren rock, and the Negev to the
south is Sun-blasted desert. Most people would not think twice about
abandoning it to seek better pastures elsewhere.

The Jews are not like most people.

To them, Israel is everything. It is the land
that God promised them when He made His covenant with Abraham, and
that promise has sustained them through sixty centuries of
persecution, hatred, and grief. For the desperate refugees who fled
the growing darkness of Europe between 1860 and 1939, the idea of
Eretz Israel carried them through the horror and tragedy of a
world gone mad. When they arrived in the Promised Land, they could
have been forgiven for thinking that God had abandoned them, for they
found a land as hostile to them as the ones that they had left
behind. They found Arab villages wallowing in the same miserable
conditions that they had known a thousand years ago. They found
little water, almost no readily useful resources, and aside from the
support of rich American and European Jews, virtually no support from
the rest of the world.

A lesser people would have despaired. The new Israelites
did not. Through back-breaking labour, in the face of soul-destroying
hardship, with all of the odds stacked against them, they created a
good and green land in some of the most inhospitable and dangerous
places on Earth. The hard and unforgiving soil of Israel is nourished
today by the blood, sweat, and tears of those who gave their lives
for the promise that their new country held- and see now how the
fruits of their devotion have blossomed.

And that is the magic of Israel. It lies in the way that
the land has been transformed by Israeli hands.

Their first Prime
Minister, David Ben Gurion, dreamed that the Negev Desert would one
day be a haven and a home to the Israeli people. Today, his dream is
being realised. To see green fields and trees and children’s
playgrounds in the middle of the Negev, underneath the mind-breaking
heat of the Sun, can- and does- bring tears of joy to a grown man’s
eyes.

One would not think it possible to see olive gardens and
vineyards and banana plantations in the midst of rock and sand- but
on the slopes of Mount Carmel, in the sands of Rosh Ha’Nikra, on the
shores of the Sea of Galilee, on the hills surrounding Jerusalem, all
of this and much more has come to be.

There are parts of Israel that
appear as alien to the human eye as the surface of Mars, and every
bit as inhospitable to human life- and yet somehow, through inhuman
will and unbreakable faith, the Israelis have created a land that not
only permits life, but lets it thrive.

The result is a country unlike any other on Earth. In
the forge of God, the hammer of War and the anvil of Destiny have
created the only truly advanced nation in the region. This is the
only nation in the Middle East that actually practices
religious tolerance- in Saudi Arabia, for instance, not one
Christian church is permitted to exist. Other nations in the region
have been blessed- or cursed, depending on how you look at it- with
abundant mineral resources, but were completely incapable of
exploiting those resources without Western help; by contrast, tiny
Israel, with almost no real resources of its own, has found ways to
tap into the wealth of the land through ingenuity, perseverance, and
sheer guts. Her neighbours remain enslaved to a totalitarian
political ideology in the guise of a “religion” that embraces a
world-view that remains mired in the backwardness and folly of the
7^th Century, and that offers nothing but war, slavery, and
death; Israel is a modern nation that pushes the boundaries of what
is possible every single day, seeking resources, wealth, and
knowledge in places and ways that the rest of us could not even
begin to imagine.

The Star of David flies high and proud in its simple
glory once again over a God-kissed country.

It is also a land that has come up with some quite
unique ways of organising communities and people. In order to really
understand the spirit of Israel, you have to understand the concept
of the kibbutz. This is a uniquely Israeli idea, created from
the pressures and requirements of settling and transforming such a
hostile land. It came down to a simple idea: with nowhere else to
turn, the Jews of Israel had to depend upon each other. And so the
concept of a communal society, with collective ownership of all land
and wealth, was created- and only in Israel has it ever been
shown to work, even slightly.

Every other nation that has tried this approach-
including mine- has seen it fail, always with horrible results. When
it was tried in Soviet Russia, the result was a famine that killed
millions of peasants between 1919 and 1924. When it was tried in
Communist China during the Great Leap Forward, the result was the
single greatest man-made disaster in history, in which some 24
million peasants died of hunger and disease. Even in Israel,
the kibbutz has not worked out perfectly- socialism inevitably
fails because it is based on a complete misunderstanding of human
nature and incentives, and so it came to pass with the kibbutz
eventually as well.

Yet in Israel, uniquely among nations, the kibbutzim
and their more realistic counterparts, the moshavim, have
shown that it is possible to create thriving communities dedicated to
the goal of the common good. This is an idea that seems as ephemeral
as the wind- but it binds more strongly than steel. That is the ethos
that has created the modern Israel, a nation that, for all of its
many flaws, provides light and hope to a world in desperate need of
both.

Sadly, the results of Israel’s success have not brought
it the peace that it so richly deserves.

Israel is surrounded by enemies on all sides, and
constantly has to deal with enemies within. Those enemies seek
nothing less than the utter extermination of this upstart state that
has defied all expectations and easy explanations, that has created
an economic, social, and political miracle in a land that has long
grown disillusioned of miracles. The Israelites are a people under
daily siege, yet even though I visited Israel at a time of great
stress and conflict, I do not recall feeling unsafe for one moment
while I was in the kibbutz or at most of the sites that we
visited. The only times I ever felt the least bit worried was
when I was visiting the Arab quarter of Acre, or the heavily Arab
Old City of Jerusalem- and with good reason.

Speaking to the Israelis themselves, one is struck by
how remarkably calm they are about the fact that every day is a
struggle to survive. Beneath their laconic humour lies a quiet,
tenacious resolve whose depth must not be underestimated. The
Israelis want nothing more than to be left alone to live their lives
as they see fit- to create a good land in harmony with the eternal
Laws of God.

To secure this, Israel
has tried compromise- and been kicked in the teeth every time. They
unilaterally withdrew to the pre-1967 borders, for peace. They
unilaterally handed back the entire Sinai peninsula- an area of land
greater than the entire landmass of Israel itself- for peace. They
unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon, for peace. They unilaterally
withdrew from Gaza, for peace. They unilaterally uprooted thousands
of their own settlers, demolished hundreds of homes, and withdrew
from contested areas, for peace. In
response to the mailed fist of its enemies, it has offered charity
and brotherhood- and has
always
been repaid with blood and death. For all of its problems, Israel has
shown the best of what Man can aspire to become- but
the Israelites must daily fight for the simple right to survive.

They
fight- cheerfully, quietly, endlessly- because theirs is a land worth
fighting for.
This little country- raped and brutalised and tormented for so many
centuries, now a green and flourishing land- has earned its right to
exist a thousand times over through sacrifice and toil. I had
understood this, intellectually, for half my life- but I never
understood what it meant in reality until I went there and saw for
myself what Israel is today. That
is the reality of Israel, from the Gulf of Aqaba in the south to Rosh
Ha’Nikra in the north, from Haifa and Tel Aviv in the west to the
River Jordan in the East.

This
land is, and must forever be, the home of the Jewish race. They have
fought and bled and died for it- and in so doing, earned
it in the eyes of God and Man.