Today is the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day, which
commemorates something as close to a miracle as we are ever
likely to see — the re-creation of an ancient state in the Land
in which it stood 2,000 years before, the resurrection of an
ancient language to provide for common discourse, the
ingathering of millions of exiles who had no other place to
live, the creation of a democracy that extended citizenship not
only to Jews but also to Arabs in the midst of an Arab war to
destroy the state, the safeguarding of all holy places of all
religions and the provision of free access to them, the creation
and maintenance of a free and vibrant civil society while under
continuous terrorist attack and multiple genocidal wars, and the
growth of the nation from a third-world economy into one of the
most technologically advanced in the world. It is no
exaggeration to say, in the words of Hillel Halkin, that “for
all its shortcomings and mistakes, Israel is and will always be
one of the most glorious historical adv