Four Thousand Years of Survival: Why Israel Has the Right to Exist

Michel Benchimol

Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

Few nations in history can trace an unbroken identity across four millennia.
Fewer still have survived repeated conquest, exile, persecution, expulsion, and attempted annihilation while preserving their language, religion, culture, and national consciousness.

The history of the Jewish people is not merely a story of survival. It is the story of a people who repeatedly lost their sovereignty, scattered across continents, endured some of humanity’s worst atrocities, yet never abandoned their connection to the land where their civilization began.
Understanding that history is essential to understanding why Israel has the right to exist.

A Nation Is Born

The Jewish story begins approximately 4,000 years ago with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the land of Canaan.

Long before the rise of Christianity or Islam,

The Jewish people established their identity, faith, and national traditions in the land that would later become known as Israel.
After a period of bondage in Egypt and the Exodus under Moses, the Israelites returned to their homeland and eventually established a kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon.
Jerusalem became the political and spiritual center of Jewish life.

This was not a colonial project. It was not a modern invention. It was the birthplace of the Jewish nation.

The First Exiles

The first great enemies of Jewish sovereignty were the ancient empires of Assyria and Babylon.
Assyria destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE. Babylon later conquered Judah, destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE, and carried much of the Jewish population into exile.

Yet even in exile, the Jewish people maintained their identity.

Remarkably, one of history’s first great allies emerged at this moment. Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon in 539 BCE and allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple.
So significant was his role that he is referred to in the Hebrew Bible as God’s “anointed.”
This would become a recurring pattern throughout Jewish history: persecution by some rulers, protection by others.

Empires Come and Go

The Jews survived Greek rule, but under the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV they faced religious persecution and the desecration of the Temple.
The resulting Maccabean Revolt gave birth to Hanukkah and briefly restored Jewish independence.

Then came Rome.

The Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE and, following the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE, expelled many Jews from Jerusalem.

In an effort to erase Jewish ties to the land, Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea “Syria Palaestina.”

The Jews lost their state but not their nationhood.
For nearly two thousand years, Jewish prayers would end with the words: “Next year in Jerusalem.”

Survival Without a Homeland

Most nations disappear when they lose their territory.

The Jews did not.

Scattered across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, they built communities centered not on military power but on education, law, scholarship, and faith.
The Babylonian Talmud, one of the foundational texts of Judaism, was produced in exile.
Jewish academies flourished in Persia. Communities developed throughout the Islamic world and Europe.
The diaspora became one of history’s most remarkable examples of cultural resilience.

A History of Persecution

The Jewish experience also became a history of recurring persecution.
The pattern was astonishingly consistent across centuries, cultures, and religions.
The Crusaders massacred Jewish communities on their way to Jerusalem.
England expelled its Jews in 1290.
France expelled them repeatedly.
Spain expelled them in 1492 after centuries of Jewish life.
Blood libels, forced conversions, discriminatory laws, ghettos, and periodic massacres became common features of Jewish existence.
In Eastern Europe and Russia, pogroms terrorized Jewish communities for generations.
The reasons changed. The accusations changed.
The victims remained the same.
Again and again, Jews became convenient scapegoats for political failures, economic hardship, social unrest, and religious fanaticism.

The Importance of Allies

Yet history also records those who protected Jews when others persecuted them.
Cyrus the Great allowed their return from Babylon.
Poland-Lithuania offered refuge to expelled Jews from Western Europe.
The Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews expelled from Spain.
Sultan Bayezid II reportedly remarked that Ferdinand of Spain had impoverished his own kingdom while enriching the Ottoman Empire.
The Dutch Republic became one of Europe’s most tolerant societies.
The United States opened its doors to millions fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe.
Even during humanity’s darkest hour, thousands of non-Jews risked their lives to save Jewish neighbors.
History remembers them as the Righteous Among the Nations.

The Holocaust: History’s Greatest Warning

Nothing, however, compares to the Holocaust.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany systematically murdered six million Jews.
This was not another pogrom.
This was not another expulsion.
This was industrialized extermination.
Two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was destroyed.
Entire communities vanished.
Ancient centers of Jewish life that had existed for centuries disappeared forever.
The Holocaust demonstrated what many Jews had long feared: that a people without sovereignty ultimately depended upon the goodwill of others for their survival.
Too often, that goodwill proved insufficient.

The Return to Sovereignty

In 1948, three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the State of Israel declared independence.
The timing was not accidental.

The Jewish people were not creating a homeland because of the Holocaust. They were restoring one.

Zionism did not begin in 1945.
The longing for return had existed for nearly two thousand years.
What the Holocaust demonstrated was the urgency of ensuring that Jews would never again be entirely dependent on the protection of others.

Within hours of declaring independence, Israel was invaded by neighboring Arab states.
The objective was not a Palestinian state.
The objective was the destruction of the Jewish state.
Israel survived.
It survived again in 1967.
It survived again in 1973.
And it continues to survive today despite terrorism, wars, boycotts, and repeated calls for its elimination.

The Real Meaning of Israel

Critics often debate Israeli policies.

Like every democracy, Israel’s governments can and should be criticized when warranted.
But criticism of policy is fundamentally different from denying the nation’s right to exist.
No one demands the dissolution of France because they disagree with French policy.
No one argues that Japan should cease to exist because its government makes mistakes.
Yet Israel is frequently subjected to standards applied to no other nation.
The question is not whether Israelis and Palestinians deserve peace.
They do.
The question is whether the world’s only Jewish state has the same right to exist that is routinely granted to every other nation.

History provides a clear answer.

A people who maintained their identity for four thousand years, whose connection to their homeland predates virtually every modern state, who survived exile, persecution, pogroms, and genocide, possess both the historical and moral right to national self-determination.

Conclusion

The history of the Jewish people is not merely a record of suffering.
It is a record of extraordinary endurance.
Empires that once seemed invincible—Assyria, Babylon, Rome, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union—have disappeared or faded into history.
The Jewish people remain.
Israel is not an accident of twentieth-century politics.
It is the latest chapter in a four-thousand-year story.
A story of survival.
A story of resilience.
And above all, a story of a people who refused to disappear.