This expression, traditionally recited at the conclusion of both the Passover Seder (the Jewish festive feast to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt) and the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) service, represents the enduring aspiration of the Jewish people to return to the land of Israel. While it has been recited for centuries before the return to the homeland, it is still relevant as it reminds both Israelis and Jews around the world that the miraculous creation of the State of Israel is not trivial and still needs to be fought for.

Tomorrow we are celebrating the third Passover Seder since the 7th of October 2023 and by now the antizionist movement is clearly spelling its aim to expel (at best) all the Jews from Israel. They are no longer hiding behind ‘from the river to the sea’, in private talks, on social media and often in street demonstrations they are unequivocally stating that the Jews have illegally stolen the land from its original natives; the so called “Palestinians”.

The knives are out – it became legitimate to call for the elimination of the State of Israel ‘by any means necessary’. As no one relates to the fact that the Jews were thrown out of their countries in the diaspora in the first place, my understanding of ‘by any means necessary’ is based on the 7th of October massacre and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians by Iran and its proxies.

Thus, given the worldwide increase in antisemitism and the direct violence against Jews everywhere, Israel’s importance has become even more pronounced.

My aim in my book and articles is to simplify complex situations and write with the principle of ‘short hits the aim long is lame’.

The Quran relates to Bnei Israel, this means that it recognises that there was such a nation, and we know well where it had resided. In fact, chapters 5:20 and 17:104 in the Quran seem to support the idea that Allah gave the promised land to the Jews. Moreover, Jews, even after the forced Roman exile, have always lived in the land (e.g. the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem).

The “new TickTalk historians” drivel with a basic claim that there was an entity called Palestine before the creation of the Zionistic movement. This is not the case, the territory was part of the Ottoman Empire, and the land was mostly owned by absentee wealthy landowners who were based in Damascus and Cairo. In the 19th century, it was a feudal society where poverty prevailed, and people lived in huts made from mud with no work and social institutions. Given the poor state of the land, which generally consisted of either swamp land or the arid areas where you either had too much water and malaria or drought, the landlords were more than happy to sell land to the new Jewish settlers.

The story of Theodor Herzl, known as the ‘Prophet of the State of Israel’, provides the best illustration of the state of the Jewish nation and the territory at the turn of the 20th century. Herzl who was a journalist, a playwright and a writer, was deeply shocked by the Dreyfus Affair during his time as a correspondent in Paris. He founded the Zionistic political movement with the aim of establishing a Jewish homeland in the ‘Land of Zion’. The combination of Jewish emancipation with continuous waves of antisemitism (as manifested in the Dreyfus Affair) have led Herzl and his contemporaries to change phase. After centuries of waiting for the Messiah to lead the Jews back to their homeland, they decided to act and create the movement which has recently become the object of hate not only towards Israelis but towards every Jew around the world who supports the State of Israel’s right to exist.

The term ‘Land of Zion’ is a biblical and religious reference to the Land of Israel, often synonymous with Jerusalem and the broader region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

Herzl visited the land in 1898, and my guess is that he was completely shocked by the poverty and deprivation that he had seen there. He felt that he needed to give the Jewish people, in the diaspora, a vision for a better future for the promised land. This was the inspiration for his book ‘Altneuland’ (the Old New Land) which was published in 1902.

In the book, which sets the fundamental principles behind the Zionistic movement, the Arab population has full and equal rights and there is no objection on their part to the Jewish immigration and settlement in the country. The main principle of governance is tolerance, many businesses are run by Armenians, Greeks and others and a politician who tries to limit the rights of non-Jews is not elected.

Indeed, Israel’s Declaration of Independence, dated May 14, 1948, which is considered the country’s closest equivalent to a constitution, features a significant statement directly inspired by Herzl. ‘The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations’.

In the utopian book the Arabs can only see the benefits that the Jews brought on arrival and claim, that if nothing is taken away and only good comes out of it, there is no reason for them (the Arabs) to be enraged. They compare the realities of life before and after. Following the Jewish immigration to the land, times have changed significantly for the better with, employment, better food, education, housing and social support.

As with many of his predictions, Herzl was 100% right on this point, the Jews brought prosperity which led to a significant wave of immigration of Arabs from all neighbouring countries to Palestine. Israeli Arabs, who live within the borders of the State of Israel, now constitute approximately 21% of the total population of about ten million.

Unlike the Arabs who lived in Palestine at the turn of the 20th century, the Zionists have built all the institutions that enabled them to establish a functioning, democratic, liberal independent country. The Arabs focused on one thing only, trying to get rid of the Jewish immigrants. They have done so by aligning themselves with Nazi Germany, and after the end of WWII, by calling on the help of their Arab neighbours who promised them that their armies would destroy the Jewish entity from day one. The UN resolution from November 1947 has given them the opportunity to create their own independent identity, the Jews (in line with the Zionist mantra) have accepted that resolution, but they have chosen to fight. That war, now backed by Iran, has been going ever since and, while the world has experienced numerous refugees’ crises, the Palestinian one has been kept alive by the United Nations and the lack of willingness of Arab regimes to accept these refugees as citizens for their own internal political reasons that called on the forever existence of an external enemy.

As mentioned, no one cares about the facts, Jewish legally established right to self-determination has been diminished by their “crimes” against the newly invented Palestinian entity. The Jews are not allowed to win their wars as by doing so they oppress the aggressor. How absurd, an entity that has only been created by the return of the Jews to their homeland, now claims rights that it never had before.

Next year in Jerusalem, we do not have any other country, and no one wants us, this has now become clearer than ever.

This article is partly taken from my upcoming book Revealing Israeli secrets’, this is a gentle reminder to pre-order it. Please click here.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)