Hillel Halkin: Land Without Regret

I excerpted from part of this article by Hillel Halkin in another post, but then I read these paragraphs:

But the thought of my death is not sufficient reason to make me wish I had never lived. On the contrary, it makes my life meaningful in a way it would not be had I been guaranteed immortality.

I feel the same about Israel. I did not choose to live in it because I was convinced it could not perish. I have always lived in it with the consciousness that it could. This is what makes it so precious to me.

I'll go further. Were I prophetically to know that Israel would perish within the next 20 or 30 or 50 years, as many of its bon ton critics are now prognosticating, it would not make the slightest difference to me in terms of my own decisions. I would still feel happy that I chose to live here; would go on living here; would want my children to live here; would want them to raise my grandchildren here -- until the last possible moment. Isn't that the way we want to live our own personal lives, too: Until the last possible moment?

Happy -- and proud. Because for all its shortcomings and mistakes, Israel is and will always be one of the most glorious historical adventures in the history of mankind. A 3,000-year-old people, the victim of the greatest act of mass murder ever committed on this planet, has the indomitable will to reconstitute itself in its ancient homeland, to revive its ancient language, to assert its right to live, to create new life, to nourish it and maintain it in defiance of all odds -- there's never been anything else like it before and never will be again.

I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity to be part of it. I would have felt envious had I been anywhere else.

Technorati Tag: Israel.