Should Israel have its own land?

Answer 1

Answer 1

Israel already has its own land, so this question sounds strange.

The State of Israel is situated on the historically Jewish land that formed The Kingdom of Israel and The Kingdom of Judah, and the capital of Israel is that same city that was its capital 3,000 years ago: Jerusalem.

Answer 2

Since Israel is an extant country, there is no justifiable reason to deprive it of the land it lawfully occupies. India controls several disputed territories like Arunchal Pradesh and Kashmir, but nobody makes the absurd statement that India should cease to control land at all because there are disputed territories.

The reason why people find it is legitimate to ask these questions of Israel is because Jews did not make up the majority of people in Mandatory Palestine prior to mass immigrations. (Note that this does not legitimize these views, but explains why people have them.) Therefore, Jews have had to defend why their state was legitimate. There is the implicit question as to whether a Jewish State is something that should exist. There is the second implicit question as to whether the geographical location chosen for this Jewish State is proper for its mission. Both questions should be answered in the affirmative for the following reasons.

1) Why a Jewish State: Herzl explained quite well that the European concept of a nation-state was dependent on the idea that all of the people in any particular nation were of the same ethnic stock and heritage. Jews were branded by this system to be "the Other" and were regarded at best as possible equals and at worse as traitors, spies, thieves, and fifth columns. When the Dreyfus Affair turned out marches in Paris that said "Death to the Jews" on account of a kangaroo court against a particular guiltless Jew, it became clear that the Jew could not be integrated into Europe. After the Holocaust, the strongest proof that the Jew and the European Nation-State were irreconcilable, this view persists. In Europe, it is now directed at the Muslims since the Jews are not large enough of a threat to the European System. Unlike Muslims, though, which can return to their countries of origin if the discrimination becomes intolerable, the Jews did not have such a place. This is why the Jewish State is necessary. Since it came into existence it has accepted Jewish political refugees from over 50 nations and flown missions at its own expense to rescue Jews from at least 10 nations.

2) Why Palestine: Ahad Ha'am explains that the Jewish Soul is intrinsically connected to his history and in the same way that a German-American can never be as properly German as a German in Germany, the People of Israel can never be as properly Jewish if they are not in the Land of Israel. The relics in that land speak to a Jewish sensibility and character. There are also religious reasons as expounded by Rav Avraham Kook which posit that the development of a Jewish State in Israel hastens the arrival of the Messiah. There are additional political reasons why Palestine and not Europe. As explained above, the European Culture is strongly anti-Other and making a Jewish State there would have fostered much more contempt and alienation (ironically).