It is precisely now that we must call upon the Jews of the world: Immigrate to Israel and come home. However, in contrast to our almost conditional tendency to link aliyah to anti-Semitism, which is rising again and raising its head in Jewish concentrations around the world, the context this time must be different.
Come to Israel not because it's necessarily safer here, or because it's less safe here. Sometimes it really is, and sometimes – you and we know – it's the other way around. Come to Israel because this is a land of destiny, not just a land of refuge. Come here to help us make Israel a better place and a safer place. Come here because here, despite all the troubles and tribulations, it is possible to live as Jews, to look like Jews, to dress as Jews and to take pride in the fact that we are Jews, without hiding, fearing, hiding, or being forced to assimilate.
Come, not necessarily because it's bad there, but to help us build something better and more diverse here, and also so that we can, together with you, deal with the declared threat of some of the Arabs of the Land of Israel and our enemies to turn the State of Israel from the nation-state of the Jewish people into a "state of all its citizens." So that we can maintain the Jewish majority here, and perhaps even increase it.
The State of Israel must now offer Jews around the world to come here and be partners in shaping its content and internal identity. It also includes significant flexibility in the establishment's attitude toward the non-Orthodox streams, as part of the new postwar political overhaul. Not behind the backs of the religious and ultra-Orthodox parties, but together with them. We all need to learn to talk to all of us.
Udi Moses
The immigration that will probably increase now – there are already early signs of this – is a good opportunity to reiterate that even before this land became a refuge for refugees of hatred and pogroms, it was a land of destiny; That we may be here today by virtue of power, but even earlier – by the power of right; That security is an essential tool, but only a tool, in order to realize the right to live here, and that "specifically here" is not limited to the obvious, the place of birth.
After all, the State of Israel arose out of the past, and without the religious-cultural and historical-national baggage that rests on Jewish religion and heritage, it has no right to exist here. This is the justification for our lives here in the Land of Israel and in the State of Israel, and it is also the justification for calling on the Jews of the world to immigrate to the Land of Israel and be partners in our huge and fragile miracle.
We need them
When Ethiopian Jews arrived in Eretz Israel during Operation Solomon (more than 30 years ago), one day then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir waited for them at the ramp and asked the name of one of the girls who extended her hand to him.
Someone translated the question for her, and she replied, "Jerusalem." Shamir did not hide his astonishment: "Is that your name?" he asked again, and she repeated: "Jerusalem." The Jews of welfare countries, our generation, do not yet have a similar tradition, but they too know that the clear realization of Zionism is in Zion. As much as they need us, we need them. Here. Us.
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