Sometimes you meet a tourist, who asks you: Tell me, why? Why do you insist on living right at the foot of the volcano?
After all, there are other places in the world, quiet corners, without smoke or noise, and solid ground that won't tremble beneath your feet.
Why don't you move away from here, and look for a safer place, where you can finally live in peace, once and for all?
Well-meaning friends of the Jewish people often offer two pieces of advice: First, that Jews would be safer without a state of their own, and should have remained dispersed among democratic nations. Second, that if Jews must have a homeland, Israel's location, surrounded by hostile neighbors, was a catastrophic choice.
Both arguments are dangerously wrong.
The Historical Case Against Dispersal
Jews constitute merely 2% of the world's population. History teaches us that dispersal offers no protection. While American Jews fare relatively well today, European Jews face rising antisemitism. We need not recount the horrors that befell German Jewry, a community that had once welcomed and integrated us. The pattern repeats across centuries and continents: Jews fleeing Spain, England, France, Russia, and countless other nations that initially offered sanctuary. Dispersal doesn't guarantee safety; it almost always ensures vulnerability.
Critics suggest Israel should have been established elsewhere: Wyoming, Uganda, Madagascar, the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Cyprus, or Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. This geographic second-guessing, while understandable, misses a fundamental truth about collective security.
Consider a simple thought experiment: Ten people must traverse dangerous territory. Should they travel separately or together? The answer is obvious. Ancient wisdom teaches that there is safety in numbers. Try breaking ten sticks bound together versus snapping them one by one; the principle is elementary yet profound.
So should Jews scatter across the globe, a few hundred here, a few thousand there, some tens of thousands elsewhere? History demonstrates what happens to such isolated communities: they become easy pickings.
Recent Events Illustrate the Pattern
We're not suggesting American Jews should immediately make Aliyah, but recent events remind us that Jews have been killed in twos and threes across America before. The pattern of isolated attacks on dispersed Jewish communities demonstrates precisely why geographic concentration matters for collective defense.
The recent murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim RIP outside Washington's Jewish Museum illustrates this principle. These two young Israeli Embassy staffers were gunned down in cold blood. But the truly chilling aspect wasn't the murder itself. Sadly, such attacks on Jews occur with disturbing frequency.
What should terrify us even more is the response. Former Jordanian Interior Minister Mazen Turki El-Qadi suggested Israel orchestrated the murders to "lessen Western-American pressure" under the guise of fighting so-called antisemitism. Rebecca Rothstein, a Maryland middle school math teacher, dismissed the victims as "2 racist white folks." (One shudders to imagine what narratives she weaves into her lesson plans, shaping young American minds with such casual hatred.) Iranian state media's Kayhan praised the alleged killer Elias Rodriguez as "Our Dear Brother" who sent "Two Wild Zionist Beasts" to hell. They proclaimed him the "American Sinwar" and heralded "a new axis of resistance."
This reaction pattern, where isolated attacks on Jews are either ignored, celebrated, or blamed on the victims themselves - demonstrates why dispersal fails as a security strategy. When Jews are scattered in small, vulnerable communities, each attack appears isolated and manageable to outside observers. The broader pattern of antisemitic violence gets lost.
The Hornet's Nest Reality
Yes, Israel sits on a hornet's nest, surrounded by a billion hostile neighbors. In 2002, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah even gloated about this, declaring that Jews gathering in Israel saves their enemies "from having to go to the ends of the world, for they have gathered in one place, and there the final and decisive battle will take place."
But here's what Nasrallah and others fail to understand: Would Jews be safer scattered in small communities worldwide, easy targets for the Rebecca Rothsteins and Elias Rodriguezes of the world? History and logic say a loud "no."
When Jews are dispersed, each attack seems isolated, local, manageable. When Jews are concentrated in a sovereign state with a military, intelligence services, and diplomatic leverage, they can defend themselves collectively. The hornet's nest may be dangerous, but at least Israel can sting back.
