Israel Asserts a Biblical Framework

May 13, 2015

by: Brian Schrauger, News Bureau Chief

From the day it was reborn, Israel’s leaders have asserted a biblical basis for the nation’s existence as the world’s one and only Jewish state. One day later and ever since, Israel’s enemies and detractors have waged war against that biblical foundation.

Israel’s Declaration of Independence asserted the nation’s origin and rebirth as defined by the Bible. “The land of Israel,” it said, “is the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.”

In almost 2,000 years since their forced exile from the land, the Declaration continued, the Jewish people have “kept faith with it.” What’s more, they “never ceased to pray and hope for their return to [the land] and for the restoration in [the land] of their political freedom.” Affirming a state “based on freedom justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel,” the document’s signatories affixed their names, “placing our trust in the ‘Rock of Israel.’”

And so, asserting a biblical foundation, supported by modern law (UN Resolution 181 that called for the establishment of a “Jewish state”), the Declaration affirmed the nation’s rightful status; it was, at once, a resurrected country from the past and “a nation like all other [modern] nations, in [its] own sovereign State.”

One day later, five Islamic states declared war. The entire land of ‘Palestine,’ they said, “is an Arab [i.e., Islamic] country falling in the heart of the Arab countries and attached to the Arab world with all [of its] spiritual, historical bonds.”

The Islamic world waged war against Israel because it rejected Israel’s biblical origin and denied its biblical narrative. It is a rejection and denial that continues to this day. In part if not the whole, it continues because Israel’s leaders have consistently reminded the world that the nation’s existence, identity and purpose are defined by the Bible.

Bible Establishes Israel’s Right to Exist

David Ben-Gurion, the nation’s first prime minister, was not religious. Still, he said, the Bible “is the single most important book in my life.” Accordingly, he asserted that “Jews everywhere” need “to realize their affinity with Israel, the Bible and Hebrew, the pillars whereon the condition of being Jewish rests.”

Subsequent prime ministers expressed respect for Israel’s biblical foundation, but few articulated it so clearly as Menachem Begin and today’s head of state, Benjamin Netanyahu.

In 1977 Begin was in Washington D.C. negotiating the United States’ role in Israel’s pending agreements with Egypt, the Camp David Accords. During a meeting with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor, the men discussed a US–Israeli statement that was going to be released. In his book, Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, Yehuda Avner recalls the conversation.

“Please delete, ‘The United States affirms Israel’s inherent right to exist,’” Begin said.

“Why so?” Brzezinski asked, surprised.

“I appreciate the president’s sentiment,” Begin replied, “but our Hebrew Bible made that pledge and established our right over our land millennia ago. Never, throughout the centuries, did we ever abandon or forfeit that right. Therefore, it would be incompatible with my responsibilities as prime minister of Israel were I not to ask you to erase this sentence.”

The sentence was deleted.

What Begin asserted to the most powerful nation, Benjamin Netanyahu has declared to all the nations.

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, he asserted that Israel’s existence and prosperity today is fulfillment of biblical prophecy. “In our time,” he said, “biblical prophecies have been realized. As the prophet Amos said, ‘They shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine; they shall till gardens and eat their fruit. And I will plant them upon their soil, never to be uprooted again.’”

Reciting the same passage in Hebrew, the Prime Minister finished with the affirmation, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the people of Israel have come home, never to be uprooted again.”

 When he went to Washington D.C. in March 2015, Netanyahu risked everything. Acceptance of an invitation to speak before a joint session of the US Congress—and hence the world—provoked the wrath of that nation’s Commander in Chief and political opponents in Israel. Still, he came. He came determined to warn US lawmakers and the world that their imminent agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran was dangerous to all. Netanyahu argued that the agreement would enable Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. What’s more, it would effectively sanction its regional terrorism and support its religious fascist ambitions.

He began the speech asserting that, “We are an ancient people. In our nearly 4,000 years of history, many have tried repeatedly to destroy the Jewish people. Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we will read the Book of Esther. We will read of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot and gave the Jewish people the right to defend themselves against their enemies. The plot was foiled. Our people were saved.”

Israel’s Prime Minister immediately asserted a direct link between biblical history and current reality. “Today the Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei spews the oldest hatred, the oldest hatred of anti-Semitism with the newest [nuclear] technology.”

President Obama refused to attend the speech. Later that day, however, he rendered an appraisal: “As far as I can tell,” he jabbed, “there was nothing new” in what was said.

By insisting on a link between today’s Jewish state and the history, prophecies and mandates of the Bible, the reborn state of Israel and its leaders concur. Israel today, along with its detractors and its mortal foes, is anything but new.