The events of Oct. 7, 2023, shocked the world. That day revealed not only the savagery of the Arab enemies of the Jewish people but also our own blind spot. For a century, Jewish leaders and diplomats have struggled mightily to present legal arguments, calling on people to “Remember there was the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations, the Peel Commission, the U.N. Partition Plan … .”
And yet, year after year, brutal assaults on Jews and their homeland have continued relentlessly. It seems that no stack of resolutions can smother a fire this old. So maybe it’s time to confront an uncomfortable truth: If a century of diplomatic appeals hasn’t secured our legitimacy, what will?
Deep down, we all know that if rights come from Britain, then Britain can revoke them. If they come after a vote in the United Nations, another U.N. vote can nullify it. If the Jewish people are occupiers, then what difference does it make how many startups we launch or how everyone has the right to vote in Israel, regardless of their religion? If our right to exist rests on guilt-stained concessions of the international community, then we’re forever at the mercy of diplomats.
But maybe there’s one card we haven’t yet played. What if we reached for a source so ancient that it predates Christianity and Islam—one so foundational that it not only articulates Israel’s claim but also underpins the moral framework of Western civilization and the faiths that grew from it? And that is the Torah.
It’s safe to say all of Israel’s founders, thinkers and leaders knew of the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel. The question is: Why didn’t they invoke the Torah? Maybe they doubted it. Maybe they feared looking like fundamentalists. Maybe they felt Bible stories had no place in serious legal arguments.
At the end of the day, the reasons don’t matter. But by discarding the Torah’s account, we’re left with a very fragile claim to the land. And isn’t it ironic that no one believes our biblical claim to the Land of Israel more than our adversaries?
Would they have built the Dome of the Rock where they did if they didn’t believe it was the site of our ancient temples? Would their mosques and villages ring Hebron, Shechem (they call that city Nablus) and Bethlehem if they didn’t believe the Torah’s account?
Just how do they get away with claiming our ancestral land?
Because we let them. They know Western Jews recoil from citing Torah as the deed to our land. They know American Jewish academics treat the Torah as myth. They know that even Israeli diplomats would rather discuss desalination than Deuteronomy.
Meanwhile, the evidence of our right to the Land of Israel lies in wait.
The Torah recounts how Abraham purchased the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron for 400 silver shekels. It names the seller: Ephron the Hittite. It documents the transaction with the precision of a modern property contract. The Torah describes Jacob purchasing land in Shechem from the sons of Chamor. The Arabs eventually named the town Nablus. And Bethlehem, where the Matriarch Rachel is buried, that, too, is under Arab control.
Given the Torah’s exact record-keeping, one has to ask: Who is really the occupier?
Nine centuries ago, the Torah scholar Rashi asked: Why does the Torah begin with the story of Creation?
His answer: Because one day, the nations of the world will accuse the Jews of being bandits and stealing the Land of Israel. How could he have known this would happen hundreds of years later? He wasn’t a prophet, and he didn’t need to be. He understood something timeless: The Jewish people’s connection to the land would always be contested.
Jews were in the Land of Israel from the time of Joshua, and when we broke our covenant more than 2,000 years ago, we were exiled. We finally returned in 1948, but for what purpose? Was it simply to be a state for Jews or to be a Jewish state?
The real struggle isn’t over borders. It’s over the Jewish people’s mission and their memory—over whether the Jewish people have the courage, the honesty and even the humility to ask the questions avoided for far too long.
Our adversaries don’t fear Israeli tech prowess or military might. They don’t fear pride parades in Tel Aviv or women in the Israel Defense Forces. What they fear with existential dread are Jews who remember the covenant with God. Jews who know their texts and strive to live their tenets. They fear Jews who walk their ancestral homeland not as nervous immigrants, but as a people returning home.
I see this firsthand as I travel across the United States with my new film, “Tragic Awakening”, which explores the Jewish people’s forgotten mission and the quiet revolution that is now unfolding. A generation is waking up.
These Jews are not rabbis and scholars; they’re filmmakers, physicians, journalists and entrepreneurs. They’re young and old, and they share one trait: They are done pretending. They refuse artificial labels like Orthodox or Reform. They see themselves simply as Jews. And they don’t need validation from the Balfour Declaration or the United Nations’ blessing. They have the deed; they have the Torah, and they approach it as living wisdom.
They understand what our enemies always knew: This land belongs to the Jewish people, not because we say so, but because the Torah says so. The deed didn’t disappear. We just stopped reading it.