Yom Ha’atzmaut 5766: Israel Undefeated

K'vod mara d'atra, Rabbi Mirvis, k'vod hashagrir, distinguished visitors, chaverai v'chevratei, friends. May I begin simply by thinking of the person who has been with us with these celebrations for at least 50 years, whom we miss this evening... I refer of course to Arieh Handler who - at the young age of 90 - has made aliya. And we say to Arieh and Henni, may they have every happiness in Yerushalayim, Ir HaKodesh, and may we celebrate next year's Yom Ha'atzmaut together with them, the l'shana haba'a biYerushalayim habenuya.

[Congregation: Amen!]

Friends, tonight as we celebrate the 58th birthday of Medinat Israel, one phrase comes powerfully to mind. And that is the phrase from the second Psalm, the vegil'u bir'ada, “rejoice with trembling” [Tehillim 2:11].

We rejoice for all that Israel has done, all that Israel represents, all that Israel means to us and to Jews around the world. And if we seek to define that, all we have to do is remind ourselves of the words we say every Shabbat, every Yom Tov, after the Haftara: Racheim al tzion ki hi beit chayeinu, “have compassion on Zion because it is beit chayeinu, the home of our lives as Jews. It is, four thousand years ago, where our people began, where our people was born, and where fifty-eight years ago, our people was reborn. And for that, we rejoice and we thank Hashem, shechechiyanu vekiyimanu vehigiyanu lazman hazeh.

But we also tremble. We tremble that after 58 years, 59 years after the United Nations vote called the State of Israel into existence, still there are those who deny Israel's right to be. Alone among the 192 nations that make up the United Nations, Israel still finds itself having to fight for its very right to exist.

And therefore, let me repeat the words I said on Sunday at Logan Hall, on Yom HaShoah. That we, and the world, have just been given the most powerful lesson in the Holocaust remembrance we have ever had, by a man not generally known as a prophet, or a philosopher, or a lover of mankind. I refer to the great Holocaust ‘educator’ of our time, President Ahmadinejad of Iran.

No one has stated the case for Holocaust remembrance more simply more powerfully and more bluntly, because in the past six months, he has taught us - and taught the world - that if you want to commit a truly horrendous crime, you must deny the Holocaust.

You must say “it never happened”. You must say “it is a figment of the Jewish imagination”.

You must announce a conference of Holocaust deniers.

You must publish obscene cartoons.

If you want to commit a crime against humanity, you have to deny the Shoah. Those who, God forbid, think of repeating the past, have to deny the past. And that is why we must deny them their denial.

But friends, Israel did not come into being because of the Holocaust.

There had been no Holocaust in 1917 when the Balfour Declaration was made. There had been no Holocaust in 1919, when that resolution was ratified by the League of Nations. There had been no Holocaust in 1896 when Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat, no Holocaust in 1882 when Leon Pinsker wrote Auto Emancipation. No Holocaust in 1876 when George Eliot wrote one of the great Zionist novels of all time, Daniel Deronda, there had been no Holocaust 27 centuries ago when Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel foresaw the return of the Jewish people to its land.

The Holocaust has nothing to do with the State of Israel except this: that after a blood-stained history of a thousand years, beginning with the murder of every single Jewish woman, man, woman and child living in Yerushalayim in the first crusade, and culminating in the crime of all crimes against humanity, that after 1000 years of that suffering, Jews earned the right that belonged to every other nation under the sun - to our home, to a place where it can defend itself, to one tiny space less than one quarter of 1% of the land mass of the Middle East, where Jews can live as Jews without fear.

Jews did not come to Israel as a way of the world atoning for the Holocaust. They came because it is our land, taken from us by Empire after Empire, by the Greeks, by the Romans, by the Christians, by the Muslims, they came because this is the Jewish home from which Jews never left voluntarily and to which they returned whenever they could.

Yehuda Halevi in the 11th century, Rambam - Maimonides - in the 12th century (though he had to leave), Nachmanides in the 13th century, they came because the Jewish attachment to Eretz and Medinat Yisrael is older by far than the attachment of the English to England, the French to France, the Italians to Italy, and certainly longer than any other nation in the Middle East, each one of which is an artificial creation of the 20th century.

No, if there is a connection between Israel and the Holocaust, it is not that. It is something else entirely. It is what that very brave lady indeed said on Al Jazeera television. (Did you see that interview?)

When Dr Wafa Sultan (originally from Syria, now the United States) said these words. She said: “the Jews have come from the tragedy of the Holocaust and forced the world to respect them with their knowledge - not with their terror. With their work - not with their crying and yelling.”

Friends, the connection between the Holocaust and Israel is simply this: that in Israel, through Israel, and to Israel's eternal pride, Jews showed what it was to survive tragedy without being defeated by tragedy. That you can take a population of refugees from more than 100 different countries, and out of the make a brave and courageous nation. That you can start with nothing, with no natural resources, with no oil wells, in Tel Aviv with sand dunes in the whole of the valley, with swamps in Jerusalem, with ruins, and out of them - by hard work and by ideals and by death-defying determination - you can build a country of fields and farms and universities and research institutes that leads the world in agriculture, in meds, in physics, in aviation, in high-tech and yes, sometimes even in basketball as well.

How do you do it?

Israel has shown us exactly how you do it.

You do it by not blaming others.

You do it by not talking about Al-Nakbar.

You do not do it by thinking of past grievances or of past glories.

You do not do it by defining yourself as a victim.

You do not do it by dreaming in possible dreams.

You do it by having the courage - yes, even in the face of the worst tragedy of all - the courage to move on, to face the future, to put the past behind you, to build a life for your children and grandchildren, and to teach your children to live and cherish life.

Friends, Israel should be a source of hope, not just to us but to the world.

And as the years pass, the conflict becomes ever clearer.

It is now no longer a local conflict between Israel and her neighbours.

It is a global conflict between those whose weapons are hate and threat and terror and death, and those whose weapons are education and democracy and freedom and justice and the rule of law and human dignity and the sanctity of life.

And therefore, even as we tremble, we rejoice.

We rejoice in those glorious words of Yishayahu HaNavi that we read in shul three days ago.

Simchu et Yerushalayim vegilu va... “rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad for her, Kol ohaveha..., all of us who love her, her people, and her land with an everlasting love. [Isaiah 66:10]”

And therefore, as we rejoice for all Israel was, and is, and will be, we pray that we may witness the fulfilment of that other verse from the same Haftara: Hineini, noteh eileha k'nahar shalom, “I will extend to Israel, (says God), peace like a river...” Uchenachal shotef k'vod goyim, “and the honour of the world like a flowing stream. [Isaiah 66:12]”

Bimheira b'yameinu, Amen.