The Jewish people possess an inherent right to live in peace and security within their ancestral homeland. This statement is not merely a contemporary political debate; it is an ongoing existential test. For millennia, Jewish history was defined by dispersion, leaving a stateless population structurally vulnerable and dependent on what Edmund Burke termed the fluctuating "benevolence of nations."
The Zionist revolution radically upended this paradigm by asserting that genuine safety cannot be outsourced. True security requires autonomy-the physical, military, and diplomatic capacity of a nation to defend itself.
Today, as Israel faces relentless challenges to its legitimacy, the philosophical arguments for its existence remain anchored in two pillars: the moral imperative of sovereign self-reliance and an unprecedented historical endurance that defies conventional patterns of civilization.
Sovereign Security versus Historic Vulnerability
The daily challenges to Jewish peace and security in their ancestral homeland expose the fundamental tension between sovereign security and historical vulnerability."
Historically, as noted by Edmund Burke in 1782, stateless populations lacked the military, diplomatic, and legal frameworks that sovereign nations utilize for self-defense, leaving them entirely dependent on the fluctuating benevolence of host societies.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, argued that true security requires a nation to provide its own physical defense, noting that even in seemingly safe diaspora environments, minorities lack genuine safety because they rely on others for protection.
Echoing this sentiment, legal scholar the late Ruth Gavison, a professor of Human Rights at The Hebrew University, warned that abandoning a sovereign state would force the Jewish people back into a universal minority status, exposing them to a resurgence of antisemitism, persecution, and eventual assimilation-a fate she characterized as national suicide.
Countering Modern Critics and Objections
This necessity for independence addresses modern critiques suggesting that Israel's existence or policies increase dangers for global Jewish communities. Gavison countered these objections by emphasizing that even when facing active threats, citizens of Israel do not depend on the goodwill of foreign rulers for their survival. Furthermore, while contemporary political debates exist, antisemitism predates the modern state, and Israel serves both as a physical refuge and a diplomatic shield for Jews worldwide.
Beyond physical survival, sovereignty enables a unique quality of life, offering the only environment where Judaism can be applied to all aspects of existence, including governance. It establishes a distinct public sphere where societal and cultural norms naturally reinforce, rather than erode, Jewish identity, effectively reversing the external pressures of assimilation found elsewhere in the world.
Defying the Conventional Laws of History
Ultimately, the survival and reconstitution of the Jewish nation are viewed as phenomena that defy conventional historical patterns. Thinkers like Yaacov Herzog asserted that the unique trajectory of the Jewish people places them outside standard historical laws, granting them an undeniable connection to their land rooted in both faith and the past. Yoram Hazony argued that this historic endurance through centuries of exile was sustained not by a mere preoccupation with physical survival, but by a collective devotion to a transcendent historic calling and identity.
Hazony famously maintained that it was this willingness to risk life for that ideal, rather than a focus on survival itself, that secured the nation's continuity, a sentiment detailed further on.
Ben-Gurion similarly highlighted the unprecedented nature of a people who, despite two millennia of dispersion and persecution, maintained their focus on returning to renew their independence. Consequently, despite contemporary international criticisms or challenges to its legitimacy, the state's survival is framed not by external consensus, but by an inherent right to the land and the independent capacity to defend it.
David Ben-Gurion on Sovereign Security
In his pivotal 1946 testimony before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, David Ben-Gurion, serving as Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, clarified that a Jewish state fundamentally equates to "Jewish security." He observed that even in countries where a Jewish person appears to be secure, they inherently lack a true feeling of security because that safety is provided by someone else rather than themselves. By establishing the State of Israel, the Jewish people gained a vehicle to physically provide and guarantee their own safety, moving from a position of reliance on external protectors to one of self-sustaining defense.
Furthermore, Ben-Gurion marveled at the historic anomaly of the Jewish people, noting that he knew of no other nation that was exiled, dispersed, hated, and persecuted for two millennia without vanishing from history, despairing, or completely assimilating. Instead, their unceasing yearning to return and believe in deliverance culminated in an unprecedented renewal of national independence.
Gavison on Survival and Culture
Professor Ruth Gavison strongly reinforced the idea that the existence of Israel is a vital condition for the security of its Jewish citizens and the continuation of Jewish civilization, warning that forgoing a state would mean a catastrophic return to minority status everywhere. She countered critics of Israeli policy with four distinct assertions: first, that Israeli safety does not depend on the goodwill of host societies; second, that antisemitism long predates the modern state and Israel serves as a crucial diplomatic refuge; third, that Zionism ensures the quality of Jewish life by allowing Judaism to be applied to a total existence, including politics; and fourth, that Israel is the unique public sphere where cultural pressures work toward preserving identity rather than forcing assimilation.
Gavison concluded that the creation of Israel was fully justified at independence and remains justified today, as abandoning it would mean a return to constant fear of persecution and genocide, making the forfeiture of statehood akin to national suicide.
In response to these intense external challenges and international pressures, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly shifts the foundation of Israel's legitimacy away from foreign approval or diplomatic negotiations. Netanyahu observed, "Our existence does not depend on the willingness of the Palestinians to make peace with us. Our existence is secured by our right to live in this land and our capacity to defend that right." This perspective anchors the state's survival purely in its historical right to the ancestral homeland combined with its autonomous, independent military capability to defend that existence against any threat.
A Final Note: The Permanent Imperative of Autonomy
Ultimately, the modern state of Israel represents far more than a geopolitical response to tragedy or an experiment in statecraft; it stands as the realization of an existential necessity. From Edmund Burke's eighteenth-century defense of the stateless to the twentieth-century warnings of David Ben-Gurion and Ruth Gavison, the intellectual consensus remains clear: a nation that relies on the "benevolence of others" for its physical safety lives on borrowed time. By refusing a return to the structural vulnerability of minority status, the Jewish state secures not only the physical lives of its citizens but the very future of Jewish and Western civilization.
In an era where Israel's legitimacy is continuously scrutinized, its survival will not be dictated by shifting international consensus or foreign approval. Instead, as history continues to unfold, Israel's existence remains permanently anchored in its unyielding right to its ancestral homeland and its independent, sovereign capacity to defend it.
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and on the advisory board of the National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI). He has an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.