c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) There is a small crowded shop in Jerusalem that offers customers a wide assortment of lettered T-shirts. Some shirts display the faces of famous rock stars. Other brightly colored shirts feature comic-strip characters or witty bon mots. Yet the best selling T-shirt has only three words imprinted across its front: “Israel is Real” _ a proud, almost defiant declaration.

Why have so many people purchased a shirt that proclaims such an obvious truth? Why has the semantically clever phrase “Israel Is Real” struck such a responsive chord?

It is a statement that is hardly needed, since the reality of Israel has been an obvious fact since May 14, 1948, the day Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion read the Jewish state’s Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv.

Israel is real because today nearly six million Jews live in the country, making it the world’s largest Jewish population center. In 1948 only 600,000 Jews lived there; that’s a tenfold increase in less than 60 years.

Israel is real because one-half of all Jewish children under the age of 15 live there and more than two-thirds of children receiving a Jewish education of any kind are Israelis.

Israel is real because more people speak the Hebrew language today than at any other time in history.

Israel is real because it has established formal diplomatic relations with 161 nation-states and states including the Vatican, two of its Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, as well as Turkey.

Israel is real because the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, signed in 1979 and 1994, have endured despite ominous predictions that they’d be mere pieces of paper. Critics charge the two treaties have provided Israel with only a “Cold Peace,” but that is far better than a “Hot War.”

Israel is real because it has a strong growing economy that emphasizes high technology and has achieved extraordinary things in cutting edge industries like in medical and agricultural sciences.

Israel is real because, as the world’s only Jewish state, it has absorbed hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from over a hundred countries including in recent decades, the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia.

Israel is real in many more ways, and yet …

It is a country that has not enjoyed a single day of peace during its more than 21,000 days of existence. In its first decades, Israel successfully defended itself from hostile Arab neighbors: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Today it confronts two highly trained and well financed terrorist groups dedicated to its destruction: Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And an aggressive Iran, flush with oil revenue and ruled by Islamic extremists, is committed to wiping Israel off the face of the Earth.

Mixed with these challenges is the daily threat of suicide bombings and other murderous acts of terrorism.

Yet Israelis have maintained a working democracy that constantly pursues peace in good times and bad.

Israel is real, and yet …

Despite its booming economy and its increasing standard of living, poverty remains a reality for many of Israel’s citizens. And despite the traditional Jewish emphasis on study and learning, Israel’s Minister of Education ruefully told a visiting American Jewish Committee delegation last September that her nation’s schools were failing to provide the quality education necessary to compete in the global arena.

Israel is real, and yetâÂ?¦

The obscene pathology of anti-Semitism _ hatred of Jews and Judaism _ once thought dormant after the Holocaust, has publicly emerged with a viciousness not seen since the Nazi regime. That hatred comes not only from Israel’s implacable Arab and Muslim enemies, but from elements of the intellectual elite of so-called enlightened Western countries, including France and Britain.

Israel is real, and yet …

As Israel’s early leaders leave the stage of history _ Ariel Sharon remains in a coma and an aging Shimon Peres gamely presses on with his vision of peace _ younger Israelis are painfully debating the future of their country. They recognize the idealistic fervor of Israel’s founding generation must ultimately be replaced with stable, viable and meaningful values that will provide permanent security and survival for an embattled Israel.

But after 59 years of Jewish sovereignty in the biblical homeland, one thing remains clear:

Israel is real.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

DSB/LF END RUDIN

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