'From the river to the sea!'
Therefore declare that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you from the countries to which you have been scattered, and I will give back to you the land of Israel’ -Ezekiel 11:17
Imagine a nation that is less than fifty miles wide from the river to the sea, taking an hour to drive from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and less than 300 miles from north to south, comprising just 0.1% of the land mass of the Middle East. Now imagine that nation being founded by refugees from the greatest genocide in human history, where they were told in Europe, “You don’t belong here! Go back to where you belong!” And so Jewish refugees gathered back to the land where their history began, and from which they were driven, the ancient Land of Israel.
The Jews were told in Arab countries where they had lived for generations, “You don’t belong here! Go back to where you belong!” So the Jewish refugees of Iraq and Iran and Yemen and Egypt and Morocco and Algeria and Syria returned to the Land of Israel.
Contrary to modern mythology, they were met there with hostility. In 1929, before any state was formed, the Jews who had settled in Hebron, the location of the tombs of their progenitors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were massacred by the local Arabs. And when the State of Israel was declared 1948, the Arab armies came to destroy the fledgling country, shouting, “You don’t belong here! Go back to where you belong!” but they failed. And that same chant continues to this very day, with the surrounding Arab nations launching terrorism and a series of failed wars of annihilation, right up to that infamous day of slaughter on October 7th, 2023.
Now around the world nations have picked up the chant, “You don’t belong there in Israel! Go back to where you belong!”- and wail in angry demonstrations, “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free!”- meaning the entire eradication of the one tiny country for the Jewish people. Never mind that there are already 57 large Muslim nations in the world.
Now imagine slicing that small sliver of land into two states as many suggest, where Israel becomes an indefensible 9 miles wide, and vulnerable to hostile rockets fired down from the hills of Samaria into Tel Aviv and the Ben Gurion airport. With the incessant barking of “Death to Israel!” from the surrounding nations, that is simply not a viable option. With the current rise in virulent antisemitism again worldwide, Israel is the only place where the Jewish people can now defend themselves with a powerful modern military.
If the ancient land from which the Jewish people originated, where every archaeological discovery from Dan to the Sinai and from the river to the sea shouts the Hebrew language and 3000-year history of the Jews, is not where they belong, then where is? When I was a young boy in America, a neighbor shouted angrily at me, "Why don't you Jews go back to Israel where you belong!" To my surprise, years later that's exactly what I did, being mightily blessed ever since.
