Israel's Historic Achievement

The refusal to accept the existence of Jews in a separate state of Israel is worse than anti-Semitism. It is, as former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler described it, "a genocidal anti-Semitism, the public calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people," wherever they may be. Listen to the state-sanctioned genocidal anti-Semitism in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, made clear by the publicly avowed intent to acquire nuclear weapons for this purpose. It is in the language of the covenants, charters, platforms, and policies of the terrorist movements and militias of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda, which call not only for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews but also for acts of terrorism in furtherance of that objective, supported by religious fatwas in which these genocidal calls are held out as religious obligations. All this comes from a culture that greets brutal deeds of terrorism with glee and celebrates martyrs and their families.

Spurned nation. Despite this history of violence and rejectionism, it is Israel that has been delegitimized and demonized around the world and described as a "racist, apartheid" state, which by definition does not have the right to exist. Witness the U.N. Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 (to be followed by another one this year) and the miserable, execrable performance of the bad joke known as the U.N. Human Rights Commission. As Cotler put it, historically the most dangerous anti-Semites are the ones who want to make the world free of Jews, and today, the most dangerous anti-Semites are those who want to make the world free of a Jewish state.

From the Arab and Palestinian world there is a continual incitement to hatred that makes indiscriminate Palestinian terrorism against Israel palatable. Those who suggest a moral equivalence for a cycle of violence to describe Israel's response to terrorism fail to distinguish between the arsonist and the firefighter.

The Jews who became Israelis have built a thriving economy, based to a large extent on their human capital. They revived as a spoken language an ancient language, Hebrew. They have integrated new arrivals from around the world and resolutely maintained a vibrant, free, and democratic society; they have created the political and economic infrastructure of a nation; and they have survived in war after existential war as Psalm 129 foretold. "Sorely have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me." They have cultivated desolate lands with one of the world's most innovative agricultural economies; they have established legal systems that protect civil liberties against the backdrop of the most lethal security threats. They have made a home for the world's largest Jewish population, passing America by about 1 percentage point. They have fulfilled Israel's destiny to give Jewish communities threatened from without, or assimilated to the point of extinction from within, a place to survive and thrive. This is the dream that has come true. Even though Israel seeks no allegiance and loyalty from anyone who is not an Israeli citizen, the realization of the dream and the remarkable historical event that Israel represents with its rebirth have evoked the spirit of kinship and emotional and association with those who share the Judeo-Christian community throughout the world.

They have failed in one respect. They have been unable to make peace with terrorists, but it is because the terrorists reject all compromise. But Israel fights those bent on its destruction within the rule of law and within reasonable constraints of human rights and civil behavior, a remarkable model in an era of terrorism.

The achievements are without parallel, but Israel remains a permanently embattled nation.

Today, as Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary of independence, Iran develops nuclear weapons, Kassam rockets are daily fired into Sderot from Gaza, and Hamas continues to threaten Israel with more and more terrorism. In the north, Hezbollah remains a potential threat, building up its inventory of longer range, more lethal rockets; prospects for peace with Syria look as dim as ever; and negotiations with those few Palestinians who seem to wish to live in peace are barely progressing.