1) Distortion of Torah

Professor Shaul Magid has established himself in recent years as the leading anti-Israel Jewish intellectual in academia. In his book “The Necessity of Exile” he makes his case for why he thinks that exile is the ideal Jewish condition, and for why the modern-day State of Israel should no longer be a Jewish State, but a binational one. As far as I can tell, the only chapter in which he quotes primary Torah sources is Chapter Six: “Who Owns the Holy Land?”, and so, in order to stay in my rabbinic lane, I’ll limit myself here to an analysis of that chapter alone. We will see that every one of the verses which Magid cites is interpreted by him against their plain meaning, and in the precise opposite way in which Chazal (the rabbinic tradition) interpreted them!

The first verse he quotes is from Exodus 19:5 that “the whole earth is Mine”, to show that no one land fundamentally belongs to any one nation. But he only cites the second half of that verse, cutting off its beginning. The full verse reads:

וְעַתָּ֗ה אִם־שָׁמ֤וֹעַ תִּשְׁמְעוּ֙ בְּקֹלִ֔י וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֖ם אֶת־בְּרִיתִ֑י וִהְיִ֨יתֶם לִ֤י סְגֻלָּה֙ מִכׇּל־הָ֣עַמִּ֔ים כִּי־לִ֖י כׇּל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃

“Now then, if you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine”.

The plain meaning of this verse in context, and of similar verses like it, is expounded by Rashi in his well know first comment on the Torah: that precisely because God owns the whole world, that’s what gives Him the right to bequeath one small part of it to the People of Israel! See also Otzar Midrashim, Midrash on the Ten Commandments 1:12, expounding our verse here in Exodus in the same way. The modern-day Bible scholar Robert Alter also sees the plain meaning of this verse as invoking God’s ownership of the whole world in order to justify His particular focus on the People of Israel.

None of these appeals to Rashi and the Bible need to actually be used as a basis for modern day Zionism in our secular world, and indeed, political Zionism does not even rely on such religious arguments, expect perhaps as a sentimental underpinning. I only aim to show the real meaning of the verses to the extent that Magid misrepresents them.

Next, Magid quotes from Ezekiel 11:5-11 that the Land isn’t ours unconditionally, since the Jews can be exiled from it because of our sins. Again, the plain meaning is the opposite of what Magid intends: Ezekiel portrays exile as an undesirable, temporal condition, which results from when we are sinful. But the ideal vision for posterity is always that we return to the Land, as Ezekiel himself expresses in verse 17, just a few verses after Magid conveniently cuts him off:

לָכֵ֣ן אֱמֹ֗ר כֹּֽה־אָמַר֮ אֲדֹנָ֣י יֱהֹוִה֒ וְקִבַּצְתִּ֤י אֶתְכֶם֙........

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