Why The Fate Of Israel Matters

People often ask me why I care so much about the fate of Israel despite not being Jewish.

Israel is a tiny country the size of The San Francisco Bay Area, with a population half that of greater New York City. It’s on the other side of the world from the US, and supporting Israel often creates friction with Europe and the Muslim world - regions with which many Americans want to have good relations.

Can’t we just pretend that, under a one-state solution “from the River to the Sea”, the Jihadist groups who have openly promised to exterminate the Jews wouldn’t actually do so? Yes, much of the negative reporting about Israel is misleading at best, but why make a fuss about it? Can’t we just focus on other things, like climate change, or poverty, which surely must be more important? Hasn’t Israel become one of those causes that decent people are simply expected to oppose? There are only 15 million Jews in the world, only 0.2% of the world’s population. Surely the continued existence of the Jewish people can’t be that important?

Isn’t it suspicious that I seem to care so much about the welfare of the Jews. Am I secretly one of them? Am I sure I’m not secretly one of them? It does seem suspicious.

In this essay I want to make two bold claims:

1. The continued existence of the Jewish people is important to humanity’s future.
2. The continued existence of Israel is important for the continued existence of the Jewish people.

But first, a confession. I said that I’m not Jewish, but twenty years ago I came very close to converting. I was in a relationship with a Jewish woman, and in order for us to marry, I would have needed to convert.

If you are born into a religion, it’s easy to not think too much about what that religion really is. This was largely the case for me with Christianity, the religion I was born into. But if you convert to a religion, you need to think long and hard about what you are signing up for. So I put a lot of effort into understanding what it meant to be Jewish, to decide whether this was something I genuinely wanted to commit to. I also talked at length with a rabbi to help me with that process.

So what is Judaism? Is it just Christianity without Jesus, or another religion that holds slightly different beliefs to other religions and is mostly interchangeable with them? No. Very much no. Judaism is something quite different, and I believe it contributes something profoundly important to the rest of humanity.

Judaism is something that is important not just for the 15 million Jews in the world but for humanity as a whole.

When I started the process of converting to Judaism, I was initially concerned that I would need to believe in God. I had left Christianity largely because I was unwilling to believe things I considered to be false, and I worried that Judaism would be the same.

My rabbi assured me that this concern showed a misunderstanding of the nature of Judaism. Judaism is far more concerned with orthopraxy (what you do) than orthodoxy (what you believe).

Any religion, or indeed any social group, needs ways for people to signal their loyalty to the group.. For these signals to be trusted, they need to impose some cost on members. One common way groups achieve this is by rewarding members who publicly express beliefs that people outside the group consider ridiculous. I won’t give examples, because beliefs that are core to the identity of one group and seen as absurd by others are inherently third rails and I don’t want to derail the argument. But I’m sure you can think of some yourself.

Unlike many religions, Judaism has never had a single creed defining exactly what every Jew must believe. It has no equivalent of Christianity’s Nicene Creed or, for that matter, the “In This House We Believe…” yard signs of American politics. While the idea of God has traditionally been central to Judaism, Jewish thinkers have debated for centuries what God is, how God relates to the world, how scripture should be interpreted, and many other fundamental questions. My rabbi told me that he personally saw God not as a supernatural person who could be spoken to and who issued commands, but as a personification of life and all that is good. Many Jews today are atheists and yet remain fully part of the Jewish people.

Instead, Jews typically signal their identity in three ways that I’ll touch on throughout this essay:

• By imposing constraints on their daily lives, like keeping kosher, or observing the Sabbath.
• By publicly identifying as members of the Jewish people, sharing both their history and the risks that have often come with that identity.
• By embracing the role of the “other”, maintaining a degree of intellectual and cultural independence from the surrounding society.

Judaism goes beyond just “allowing” people to question conventional beliefs. Questioning accepted wisdom can itself become a way of signalling Jewish identity. It becomes a way of imposing real costs on yourself by challenging the beliefs of the surrounding culture. This functions a lot like the way other groups signal identity by expressing beliefs that outsiders consider ridiculous, except that the emphasis is on challenging the orthodoxies of the surrounding society, rather than conforming to a fixed set of Jewish beliefs.

I once asked a group of people at a synagogue in Israel what they thought it meant to be Jewish. The overwhelming answer was that to be a Jew is to be an “other”. It meant not being part of the mainstream. Not being Christian, not being Muslim, and being willing to criticise the most deeply held beliefs of whatever society you happen to live in (including, yes, Israel itself).

One plausible explanation for the extraordinary intellectual achievements of the Jewish people is that Jewish culture has long celebrated questioning, debate, and disagreement to a degree that few other traditions do. There are certainly other contributing factors, such as high literacy, strong educational norms, and the historical experiences of diaspora communities, but I suspect this cultural emphasis on intellectual independence is one of the most important.

And the intellectual achievements of the Jewish people are hard to ignore. Despite being only 0.2% of the world’s population, and 2% of the US population, Jews have won a quarter of Nobel Prizes (including 40% in economics), have founded or led many of the most influential tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Intel, Oracle, and Anthropic, have made extraordinary contributions to literature, music, film, and comedy, and have played substantial roles in many movements, including the US Civil Rights movement, the Soviet dissident movement, and modern intellectual movements such as Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and the Heterodox movement.

Of course, Jewish communities differ enormously from one another. The Jews who have won Nobel Prizes or founded technology companies often come from very different backgrounds from those of, say, the Hasidim or other deeply traditional communities. Yet one striking feature that spans much of Jewish life is a culture of argument. The Talmud itself is fundamentally a record of debates, and even communities that are highly conservative in their religious practice often place extraordinary value on questioning, interpretation, and intellectual disagreement.

The second thing that was made clear to me is that to convert to Judaism is to willingly expose yourself, your future children, and your family to a very real risk of persecution. If I wasn’t willing to accept that, then I should not convert. 

At the point I was considering converting, many Jews felt reasonably safe in the US, but it was made clear to me that, throughout their history, the Jewish people have repeatedly been subjected to pogroms, massacres, persecutions, and attempts at extermination. It would be foolish for me to assume that no such events could ever affect me or my family.

While Jews have lived continuously in the Land of Israel for more than three millennia, the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE marked the beginning of a long period during which most Jews lived in communities across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Over the following two millennia, periods of what felt like lasting peace repeatedly gave way to expulsions, pogroms, massacres, and persecution.

The Holocaust largely destroyed the centuries-old European Jewish communities. Two thirds of European Jews were killed and most of the rest fled. Today only 0.1% of the European population is Jewish, and as anti-semitism rises again in Europe many of those that remain are wondering how much longer they can stay. Similarly, the once vibrant Jewish communities that had been an important part of the intellectual and commercial life of the Middle East were almost entirely eradicated between 1948 and 1972. In the space of a generation, the Jewish people lost the two main centers of their community and the Jews that survived were forced to build a new life from scratch, mostly in Israel and the United States - not because those were the places they wanted to flee to, but because they were among the very few places willing to take them.

It is hard for a non-Jew to fully appreciate the scale and the lasting inter-generational trauma of these very recent events.

And of course the Jews have never been safe in Israel. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has had to defend itself against repeated wars from neighboring states and armed groups, several of which would likely have resulted in the extermination of most of Israel’s Jewish population had Israel lost. Between those wars were decades of terrorist attacks, suicide bombings, rocket fire, and most recently the atrocities of October 7, 2023. The UN General Assembly has passed more resolutions against Israel between 2015 and 2024 (173) than against all other countries combined (80), including resolutions that many Israelis believe would have led to the certain demise of Israel if implemented. It is remarkable that Israel has managed to survive as long as it has, and many Israelis feel that their country’s continued existence is very much at risk today.

In 1903 it was proposed that Uganda, rather than Israel, should serve as a safe haven for the Jewish People. Multiple Israelis have joked to me that, had that happened, the Jewish community in Uganda would today be a hugely successful economic and intellectual hub, but would also be facing just as many terrorist attacks, wars, and UN resolutions as Israel does today. Their point was that hostility to Israel had nothing to do with the particular piece of land on which they lived, and everything to do with the idea that there should be anywhere in the world where Jews could be safe.

Back in 2006, the United States felt like a much safer place to be Jewish than it is today, but it was made clear to me then that, as a convert, it would be foolish for me to assume that anywhere would remain safe for Jews forever. There had been many moments in history when it seemed like the persecution was over, but it never was. The persecution had always returned and probably always would.

To some extent the deepest “honest signal” cost of being a Jew, is not the orthopractic burden of keeping kosher or observing Shabbat. It is the fact that, by becoming visibly Jewish, you expose yourself to the possibility of very real harm. If you openly wear a yarmulke, you are not just signalling to other Jews that you are one of them. You are also showing that you are committed enough to the Jewish community to make yourself a target.

It’s possible that the constant threats are one of the reasons why Jewish intellectual culture is so vibrant.

To remain Jewish has often required active bravery. It’s not just that converts need courage to join the tribe. Throughout history, many Jews could have made themselves safer by changing their names, concealing their ancestry, and converting to the dominant religion. Many did. Many others chose not to, despite knowing that doing so exposed them and their families to persecution. (Under the Nazis, even conversion was no protection - anyone with Jewish grandparents was classified as Jewish)

The result of this is a community that has an unusual strong tradition of intellectual and political bravery. I suspect that this tradition is one of the reasons why Jews have consistently been among the most revolutionary thinkers and the most willing to stand up against harmful orthodoxies. If you are brave enough to be openly Jewish, you are probably brave enough to stand up for other things too.

So why have the Jews been the subject of so much persecution? Why have so many authoritarian regimes and movements sought to exclude, expel, or eliminate them? The list spans an extraordinary range of ideologies and eras: the Romans, Christian and Islamic zealots, Russian Tsarists, Nazis, Communists, White supremacists, and parts of today’s far left and far right.

The reasons given for persecuting Jews have changed over time. At different points they have been accused of murdering Christian children, poisoning wells, conspiring to rule the world, corrupting society, or undermining the nation. Today, hostility to Jews is often expressed using the language of anti-Zionism, portraying the existence of Israel as uniquely illegitimate or morally indefensible by holding Israel to standards that are not applied to any other country, and treating Jews around the world as morally tainted due to their association with it. While the pretexts keep changing, the shape of Judaism’s opponents has remained remarkably consistent. The movements most hostile to Jews have been those that demand total ideological conformity and view free-thinking communities with suspicion.

Yes, many people who speak against “Zionism” today are good, well-intentioned people who are simply expressing what they have been taught are the morally correct views, or who are reluctant to challenge the accepted views of their community. But that has been true of many previous waves of antisemitism too. Most participants in a moral panic do not see themselves as persecutors. They see themselves as decent people standing on the right side of history.

The primary reason why so many authoritarian movements hate the Jews is that Jews are often among the first and loudest to stand up against them. Jewish culture celebrates argument, embraces being “the other”, values intellectual bravery, and honors those willing to stand with the weak against the strong. It is a culture unusually resilient to ideological conformity. Judaism stands for much of what authoritarian movements most despise, and that is why they draw so much hate. 

I suspect that the existence of a thriving Jewish community provides an important immune system against emerging authoritarianism. A society that values Jews is often one that values dissent, disagreement, and independent thought more broadly. Conversely, when Jews begin to be persecuted, it is often a warning that a society is moving in a dangerous direction.

Okay. So Jews make up a significant fraction of our most important thinkers, particularly those willing to challenge harmful orthodoxies, but not all such thinkers are Jewish. Not every Nobel Prize winner is Jewish, not every civil rights leader was Jewish, and not every tech company was founded by a Jew. So can we afford to let Judaism disappear and expect humanity to be just fine?

I think that there are two reasons why this is a dangerous assumption to make.

The first is that important thinkers rarely succeed alone. Every intellectual movement depends on a community of people willing to defend unpopular ideas, argue about them, publish them, and keep them alive when they are under attack. Jewish communities have repeatedly played that role, supporting not only Jewish thinkers but many non-Jewish ones as well. 

The second is that it would be foolish to assume that any movement that seeks to exterminate the Jews will be satisfied once the Jews are gone. They seek ideological conformity. Jews have often been among their first targets because they are unusually resistant to conformity, but they are rarely their last. Stalin and Hitler did not stop after persecuting Jews and neither have most other authoritarian movements.

So why does Israel matter? The first reason is simple: Israel is home to about half of the world’s Jews. If Israel were conquered or ruled by forces committed to its destruction, many of those Jews would almost certainly be killed, and it is unclear where those who fled would be allowed to find safety.

The other reason is that the existence of Israel is vital to the psychological security of many Jews around the world.

Like many American Jews, my ex-girlfriend had family members who had died in the Holocaust. She would sometimes talk to me about her constant fear that this would happen again, and that one day the U.S. would turn against the Jews the way Europe had, and like everywhere else where Jews had lived before. She told me that whenever she went somewhere unfamiliar, she found herself thinking about where she would hide, or how she could escape if the worst happened. 

Where would she escape to? Israel. That is the role Israel plays for many Jews. Even if they have no plans to move there, it is the one place in the world where they know they could always escape to. Even if the whole world turned against them, as it has many times in history, there would still be Israel. There would still be one place that would try its best to protect the Jewish people.

The sense that “there is still Israel” is vital to the sense of safety of many Jews. The Jewish people have lost their previous safe havens in Europe, lost their previous safe havens in the Middle East, and many now feel that their safety in the U.S. is tenuous. Simply knowing that Israel exists, even if it is under constant attack (and likely always will be, unless the rest of the world changes), is hugely important.

To some extent, you can think of Israel as being a “seed bank” for the free thinkers of the world. Even if the rest of the world were to descend into a seemingly inescapable authoritarian tyranny in which no free thought was allowed, there would still be Israel, where Jews could continue to live, where the tradition of free thought could continue to survive, and from which they could one day emerge to help rescue the world when the time is right.

I spent time in Israel talking to a wide range of people, including settlers, Ultra Orthodox Jews, and (yes) people associated with the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade in Jenin.

One thing that is striking is that no Jewish people I talked to, not even the most politically or religiously hard-line, expressed any desire for Jews to control any territory beyond Israel and the occupied territories, and no personal hatred towards Palestinians. While I am sure that, like any society, there are people motivated by hatred and dreams of conquest, there is no indication that such beliefs are widespread among Israelis. Instead what I heard again and again was a much simpler aspiration: that there should be one place in the world where Jews could live in safety without having to fear persecution or extermination.

But what about the settlements? I visited the settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. The people I spoke to there told me the settlements were not primarily about taking land, but about ensuring that strategically important high ground did not fall under the control of forces that might one day attack Israel. Without that, they argued, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would become far harder to defend. The settlers may be wrong about the military necessity of the settlements, but I came away believing this was their genuine motivation. From their perspective, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, followed by Hamas’s takeover of the territory and years of rocket attacks, reinforced their conviction that further territorial concessions would only make Israel less secure, and that promises of “land for peace”, or “UN security guarantees" should not be trusted.

The contrast with the Muslims I spoke to in the West Bank was stark. Among the people I met, the overwhelming view was that all of the Middle East was Muslim land and that all Jews should be expelled or killed. It’s hard to know how widespread these views truly were, but people weren’t shy about expressing them to someone they assumed was a sympathetic European. These conversations made it hard for me to imagine how a “one state solution” could produce a pluralistic society in which Jews could be safe.

I’m sure that there are better ways that Israel could conduct its war. I’m sure that Netanyahu is a flawed leader. I’m sure that innocent people are suffering as a result of Israeli military activity. It’s possible that the Israeli leadership was wrong to believe that a large military response to October 7 was needed to deter imminent attacks from other actors. But I’m also sure that if the wider world made an honest, good-faith attempt to allow Israel to feel confident its citizens would be safe from harm, then the prospects for peace would be dramatically better.

I also believe that a world without Israel would be much much worse that people appreciate. Israel is the rock on which the Jewish community rests, and the Jewish community is the rock on which much of the pluralistic, tolerant, democratic culture we have come to take for granted rests.

It's not much to ask for there to be one tiny place on Earth where this tiny community, whose members have made extraordinary contributions to humanity, should be allowed to live without fear.