Diaspora Jews: Israel Can't Protect You. Fight Back or Get Out.

The State of Israel has succeeded in granting the Jew the ability to defend himself within a sovereign framework in the land of his ancestors. Yet in recent weeks, by sea, air, and land, from Greece to Ireland, Florida to Vancouver, the realization is sinking in once again: that this alone is not enough.

While we all yearn for the full realization of the ingathering of exiles, we also face a disturbing reality, one that proves that although the State of Israel can provide macro-level protection against genocide, discriminatory laws, and pogroms, it cannot, like any distant sovereign body, defend Jews everywhere, at all times and in all places, from localized persecution and sponsored attacks.

Indeed, some would argue, including elements of the global Left and certain anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox factions, that the very existence of the Jewish state is what creates the need for protection in the first place (as if everything was idyllic for Jews before 1948...).

This reality demands that Jews in the diaspora internalize a new truth: the time for self-defense has come.

One of the first to recognize this was Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League. It’s worth noting that until the Israeli left-wing press turned Kahane into a demon in the 1980s, the League was seen as a consensus organization within American Jewry and was even praised by figures like Bob Dylan. Its success in curbing a wave of violent attacks, mainly by children of Catholic immigrants and members of the Black community across major U.S. cities from the mid-60s to the early 80s, stemmed from its uncompromising stance.

There were even cases where the League allegedly assisted the State of Israel in extra-diplomatic ways on U.S. soil (cases historians will no doubt detail in the future...).

At this point, I wish to set aside questions of race, peoplehood, and the Jewish religion in historical and contemporary contexts, or the crisis of Jewish identity that has accompanied us since the late 17th century and the rise of modernity. Let us also ignore the “curse of exile” that has haunted and shaped our consciousness and earthly existence from the days of Titus to the return to Zion.

In other words, I accept Jewish existence as a historical given, more or less framed by halacha.

Even before the Simchat Torah War, I called for Jews to lease land long-term (say, 1,000 years) in South America and Australia as a contingency plan to ensure Jewish sovereignty in the event of an unthinkable catastrophe, G-d forbid, in the Land of Israel. I envisioned that this territorial enclave would remain loyal to either the historical-halachic framework or to Jewish genetic identity, such that as long as the State of Israel exists, this autonomous zone would serve as a kind of parallel "living lab" of Jewish sovereignty. A historic model operating alongside the State of Israel.

In fact, this idea still holds merit, especially when considering the issue of Jewish self-defense. It demonstrates that sovereignty and self-protection are not necessarily monopolies held by Zionism or its crown achievement, the State of Israel.

It seems clear that in some cases, perhaps with the exception of utterly "conquered" areas like France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and Belgium (where, oddly enough, Jews still reside!), Jews must no longer remain immobilized in the face of violence.

The call for self-defense, and even retaliation, as the author of "Or HaRaayon" understood, is not an empty slogan. It stems from a deep awareness that pride without divine consciousness is either arrogance or mere national survival, a trait shared by even the most primitive of peoples.

This is precisely where diaspora Jewry must develop an ethos that parallels and is nourished by the State of Israel, but can also stand independently so long as Jewish life continues outside of Israel.

One major reason for the diaspora’s failure to foster authentic and alert-ready Jewish pride is not merely the absence of sovereignty or land, the kind of land where a people builds its nation, fights its existential battles, but because diaspora Jewry has essentially leased out much of its modern identity (especially post-Holocaust) to the Zionist movement. It has even surrendered the monopoly on Jewish violence and self-defense.

The privilege of the Jewish warrior has become the exclusive property of the Zionist who enacts it. Zionism's success in transforming the Jewish diaspora in under 80 years has failed in one of its most fundamental goals: to turn diaspora Jews into active historical agents. These Jews ignored Jean-Paul Sartre’s call to respond to aggression with aggression.

If Jewish self-pride is merely a fulfillment of “the lessons of the Holocaust,” and that fulfillment happens only within a sovereign-national framework, then this monopoly over response strategies (held by Israel) will naturally diminish efforts to realize the "lesson" in other frameworks.

Thus, the diaspora Jew ends up outsourcing his self-defense to a "foreign" state, Israel, rather than integrating the spirit of that state into his own lived experience. He does not become Israel, not really. And truthfully, he cannot become Israel.

Because such a transformation is neither easy, nor legal, nor even natural in a foreign land. It requires risk. It is unnatural. But if the Jew chooses to remain in exile, the least he can do is import the spirit of Israel into his local environment, or else abandon it entirely.

This doesn't mean his other efforts to support or embody the sovereign spirit of Israel are in vain simply because he doesn’t implement them forcefully in his own life. Everything is kosher. But not everything is authentic.

What made me reflect on all of this was a verbal/physical attack experienced by a Jew on a light rail somewhere in Ireland.

Sometimes, a Jew may be better off remaining silent. Especially when law enforcement prefers not to “deal with” Jewish victims, it’s a headache. And in any case, the Jew's battle in exile can never result in true revival, only survival under inferiority. Any “successful” battle will merely delay the next one. And yet, if future battles are inevitable, and the Jew is conditioned to see his self-defense as a symbolic act in the name of Israel, then his chances of success are even slimmer.

There is another issue: the less-assimilated segments of diaspora Jewry, those most vulnerable to attack, are mostly religious. Often ultra-Orthodox. This has created a paradox in which the Jews most at risk, and also the least Zionist (formally), are in some places the ones most inclined to adopt a confrontational ethos akin to that of Israel, particularly in certain neighborhoods in the U.S.

But for now, these are exceptions that prove the rule.

The question now is: will other Jewish communities, less religious or more modern, be able to make the Israeli ethos as central to their communal life as philanthropy, volunteering, or institutional continuity?

Unless they do, they will remain entirely at the mercy of the attacker and his host nation, while Israel, today, cannot always guarantee their safety.