The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

By the mid- to-late 19th century, Diaspora Jews, especially those who settled in western Europe, believed that they could assimilate into European culture.  In fact, most of the European democracies had granted Jews citizenship, facilitating this cultural accommodation.  But this was not the case in Eastern Europe and Russia where Jews were segregated into ghettos and regularly experienced the violence of pogroms—anti-Semitic, government-sponsored violence against the Jews.  Thus, accommodation in the West and pogroms in the East threatened the survival of the Diaspora Jews.

This was thus the context for the birth of Zionism.  A Sephardic rabbi from Belgrade, Judah Alkalai (1798-1878), and an Ashkenazi rabbi from Poland, Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795-1874), both proclaimed that the only hope for the Jewish people was to return to their Land.  Since Scripture stated that Messiah would come to the Jews in Zion, they needed to be there when He came, they reasoned.  In addition, the secular Jewish leader, Moses Hess (1812-1875), a friend of Karl Marx, also argued that Jews must return to the land of Israel as the only means of survival from the anti-Semitism permeating European civilization. Thus, between 1882 and 1903, small agricultural settlements in Israel emerged, supported by the “Lovers of Zion” movement in Europe and America and financed in part by the Rothschild family of France.  These first settlers, numbering about 25,000, became the first wave of immigrants, the aliyah, who today are often referred to as the “pioneers.”

In 1895, a Jewish officer on the French General Staff, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, was convicted of spying for Germany and sent to Devil’s Island.  Despite obvious evidence demonstrating his innocence, the General Staff refused to act.  Anti-Semitic riots broke out, and a purge of all Dreyfus sympathizers ensued in the French army and government. Although Dreyfus was pardoned in 1899, European Jews concluded that assimilation was now impossible.  A Hungarian Jew and literary critic from Vienna named Theodore Herzl (1860-1904) reacted to the Dreyfus affair in 1896 by publishing his famous book, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State).  Herzl argued that the Jews were a distinct people but without a state—and this was the root cause of anti-Semitism and the violence against Jews throughout much of history.  The only solution, therefore, was for the Jews to establish a state that would guarantee their survival  and endurance as a distinct people.  Although he did not specify where the state would be at first, he quickly became convinced that only in the Land of Israel should the new Jewish state be established:  “Palestine is our ever-memorable home.  The Maccabees will rise again.  We shall live at last as free men on our own soil and die peacefully in our own homes.”  To that end, he formed the World Zionist Organization.

In 1897 the first Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland and Herzl was elected president, a position he held until his death in 1904.  For the rest of his life, he engaged in significant diplomatic initiatives with European leaders to build support for a Jewish state.  At first he believed that Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm would be his advocate, but Wilhelm’s self-elevating arrogance quickly dispelled that idea.  Next, Herzl turned to England, which initially offered him Uganda as a homeland.  Herzl and the Zionists quickly rejected that idea.  Re-energized pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia in 1903 and 1905 led to a second wave of immigrants to Israel (the second aliyah) from Russia.  Among those immigrants from Russia was David Ben-Gurion, who, at eleven years of age, regarded Herzl as “the Messiah who would lead the Jews back to Israel.”

As the 20th century began, the idea of a Jewish homeland in Israel was no longer a distant, unimaginable dream.  Although small in number, Jews were returning to their Land.  Herzl’s vision was internalized by a dynamic, energized group of Eastern European Jews, who were farming a once barren land, draining the swamps of Galilee and reclaiming what was lost in A.D. 70.  But the world community was not yet ready to accept this idea of a Jewish homeland. World War I and its subsequent events would produce that acceptance. It would take World Warr II and the Holocaust for the Unted Nations to create a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine in 1948.

Senior columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Ari Shavit, has written that the 20th century was “the most dramatic century in the dramatic history of the Jews.  In its first half, we lost a third of our people.  But the second half of the century was miraculous.  In North America, we created the perfect diaspora, while in the land of Israel we established modern Jewish sovereignty.  The Jews of the 21st century have today what their great-grandparents could only dream of: equality, freedom, prosperity, dignity.  The persecuted people are now emancipated.  The pitiful people are now proud and independent . . . [Israel] is the demography of hope: an almost extinguished people renewing itself.”

Shavit also documents the staggering success of the Zionist movement in Israel:  “In 1897, approximately 50,000 Jews lived here.  Now the Jewish population exceeds six million . . . In 1897, Jews living in Palestine represented only 0.4 percent of world Jewry.  In 1950 we accounted for 10.6 percent.  In 1980, 25.6 percent.  Now we make up almost 45 percent.  The historic project that aimed to congregate most of the world’s Jews in the Promised Land has had mind-boggling success.  Today, the Jewish community in Israel is one of the two largest in the world.  Given current trends, by 2025 the majority of the world’s Jews will be Israelis.”

How do we explain this—Jews once again in their Promised Land?  It was certainly the vision of Theodore Herzl and the Zionist movement to transfer people from one continent where they were being persecuted, almost extinguished, to their ancient homeland.  And it was their goal to reestablish the state of Israel with its revived language of Hebrew—all in the land of their forefathers. But it was God fulfilling His promises first detailed in the Abrahamic covenant and reiterated continuously throughout both the major and minor prophets of the Old Testament.  The birth of the modern nation-state of Israel is not only an event of history; it is the fulfillment of prophecy.

After Israel was established in 1948 as a haven for Jews, another wave of displacement followed as nearly a million Jews were expelled or fled from Middle Eastern countries in reprisal for about 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were kicked out during the fighting over the creation of the Jewish state. Another surge occurred with the collapse of communism in Central Europe and Russia in the early 1990s, when about 1 million Jews fled to Israel. Since the 1960s, the world’s remaining Jews—just under 16 million compared with 2.5 billion Christians and 2 billion Muslims—have thrived in Europe, Australia, the U.S. and Israel.

This brief review of the history and formation of the modern state of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people provides the context for posing the question highlighted by Natasha Dangoor, “Jews being to wonder: Is anywhere safe?”  She notes an event in Liege, Belgium: “Earlier [in March 2026], Guy Wolf, the president of the Jewish Cultural Centre in Liège, Belgium, awoke to alarming news: overnight, an IED was detonated outside his local synagogue, blowing out the windows and setting the front doors and nearby cars alight . . . The whole thing has left the 68-year-old Wolf wondering: If Jews can’t feel safe here, can they feel safe anywhere?  This is an increasingly urgent question for Jewish communities as antisemitism rises across the globe, and particularly in the West where Jews have lived in relative peace since the end of World War II. But a spasm of antisemitic violence and hostile rhetoric stemming from conflicts in the Middle East is making many Jews feel increasingly isolated from their homelands and their neighbors.”

In addition to the attack in Liège, the following incidents happened in just . . . three weeks in February/March 2026:

• Four Jewish charity ambulances were firebombed in north London.
• An armed man rammed a vehicle into Temple Israel in Michigan while 140 children were inside the school.
• Three synagogues in Toronto were hit by gunfire within days of each other.
• Four people were arrested after an arson attack damaged a synagogue in Rotterdam.
• A Jewish school was attacked in Amsterdam.
• Two Jewish men overheard speaking Hebrew were beaten outside a restaurant in San Jose, Calif., by men shouting, “Don’t mess with Iran.”
• British police said they were investigating a possible hate crime after spectators at a school soccer match in the U.K. shouted “Go back to the gas chambers” at students from the visiting London Jewish Free School.

Behind this recent surge in hostility is a combination of radical Islamic beliefs and anti-Jewish sentiment on the far left and far right of Western politics, according to Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. “I have never seen in my lifetime a period when antisemitism has been expressed so overtly by both the right and the left,” said Lipstadt. “They agree on nothing else. Only on Jew-hatred.” And unlike previous eras of antisemitism, social media has given them platforms to reach millions, she added.

“The recent spasm of anti-Jewish hatred that has swept the country has shocked and scared many,” wrote Simon Sebag Montefiore, a prominent British historian. He said many antisemites hide their bigotry behind criticism of Israel and the language of human rights. “But no one kills Russian, Emirati, Iranian, Ukrainian, Saudi, Sudanese, Chinese, Pakistan, Indian or American people or attacks their communities because of the actions of their governments, and they certainly do not do so in terms of cosmic evil. Only in this case.”

For this reason, argues Dangoor, “Now some Jews are debating whether to stay put or move to places with more Jews like the U.S. and Israel, which together account for 90% of the world’s Jewish population. Those conversations are especially active in Europe, where the Holocaust killed six million Jews, and there are currently only 1.3 million, a small minority. Still, America is also facing a rising tide of antisemitism from both sides of the political spectrum. Nearly a third of American Jews say they experienced an antisemitic incident in the past year, according to the American Jewish Committee. More than half say they have changed how they dress or where they go. And 17% now say they have considered leaving the country due to antisemitism in the past five years. ‘The issue isn’t whether Jews can live somewhere, it is whether they can live there openly, proudly and without fear,’ said Ted Deutch, the CEO of the AJC. ‘And in too many places in the world right now, the answer is no.’”

For some, Israel still feels like the only safe place. The country has been at war intermittently for decades and is a regular target for terrorist attacks. But for Jews who have been a minority all their lives, living in a country surrounded by other Jews brings comfort, said Kada, the London rabbi. “Statistically speaking, you are probably more likely to be harmed in Israel, but somehow everyone feels much safer there,” he said. Dangoor reports that “As of September, this year, over 50,000 Jews globally have emigrated to Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel.”

Ezekiel 36:16-38 is one the most important passages in Scripture envisaging the restoration of the Jewish people to their land.  As this event is accomplished, Ezekiel exclaimed, the nations will be silent in their amazement of what God has done (vv. 33-36).  I believe quite strongly that in the 21st century we are witnessing that restoration.  But the other dimension of Ezekiel’s prophetic claim is the spiritual restoration of the Jews.  That is detailed in Ezekiel 36:22-32 and 37:15-28.   God will put His Spirit in them; they will obey Him; and they will walk with Him forever.  The fulfillment of God’s covenantal promises to Abraham (land, seed and blessing), to David (an eternal throne, kingdom and dynasty) and the New Covenant of spiritual renewal are foretold in 37:24-28.  The Jewish people will be united as one people, secure in the land God promised them, renewed spiritually and with their Davidic King ruling in their midst. We await that fulfillment.

See James P., Eckman, A Covenant People: Israel from Abraham to the Present, pp. 289-290, 327-328; Natasha Dangoor in the Wall Street Journal (28-29 March 2026.