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Multiple efforts in Jewish sovereignty have self-destructed after 75 years. Can Israel defy history — again?
(JTA) — This week marks Yom Haatzmaut, our beloved Israel’s 75th birthday — the day on the Hebrew calendar when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate” by establishing a Jewish state in the land of Israel. Together with countless Jews around the world, we express our gratitude to be alive at this moment in history when the Jewish people have sovereignty and a nation to call their own.
But on this anniversary, Yom Haatzmaut’s special prayers and festive afternoon barbecues fail to capture the fraught feelings many of us are experiencing. Jews across the globe in all our different peculiarities and particularities — from all political orientations, religious and secular, progressive and conservative, for and against the judicial overhaul being proposed by the current government — are reeling.
The past few months of terrible turmoil in Israel surrounding the judicial overhaul proposal have shown us how fragile our singular and precious Jewish state is. While Israel’s history is replete with instances when external forces threatened its people, this moment is unique in revealing internal threats to its democracy and social cohesion. We have seen toxic hatred rising among Israeli Jews, with fears of a civil war at an all-time high.
How, then, are we supposed to celebrate Israel on its 75th birthday?
The answer to this question lies at the heart of Jewish history and reveals that now is the moment for a new Zionist revolution led by both Israeli and Diaspora Jews.
Zionism was never just about establishing a Jewish state. It was about defying Jewish history. In 1948, when Ben-Gurion and his fellow Zionist leaders declared Israeli independence, it was nothing less than a radical assault on diasporic Jewish history. It defied the thousands of years of Jews being a minority in other countries, subject to the whims and caprice of other rulers. It defied the image of the weak and defenseless Jew. It even defied Jewish tradition itself, which for centuries was understood by many of its adherents to demand passivity by Jews as they waited for divine deliverance.
For two millennia, Jewish existence was one of vulnerability and victimhood — most often either hiding who we are or suffering for it. The Zionism of 1948 defied diasporic Jewish history by giving Jews power, self-determination and sovereignty to respond to external threats and establish a Jewish state.
Understandably, most of the work of early Zionism was focused on mere survival — establishing a state, providing safe refuge to the millions of Jews fleeing inhospitable lands and contending with enemy countries sworn to destroy the new nation. It succeeded beyond any of the wildest imaginations of its founders. The first 75 years of Israel, in which it has become a powerful and thriving state, are a testament to the success of Zionism in defying diasporic Jewish history.
But the next 75 years of Zionism present and impose on us a different task: To be Zionists today means we must defy a different chapter of Jewish history — one that might be called sovereign Jewish history.
Historians and educators have pointed out a critically important pattern in the history of Jewish self-rule. There are two pre-modern eras in which the Jewish nation enjoyed sovereignty in the land of Israel: at the end of the 11th century BCE with the Davidic Kingdom and the first Temple in Jerusalem, and in 140 BCE when the Hasmonean dynasty reestablished Jewish independence in Judea. But as each approached their 75th year of existence, each started to disintegrate because of internal strife and infighting. The Davidic reign over a united Israel effectively ended when it was split into the two competing kingdoms of Judea and Israel. The Hasmonean kingdom began to fall apart due to infighting between the sons of Alexander and Shlomtzion, the rulers of Judea in the first century BCE.
Sovereign Jewish history tells us that at around the 75th year, experiments in Jewish self-determination faced the most dangerous threat of all: self-destruction.
On its 75th birthday, Israel and its supporters face the internal tensions of sovereignty: What does it mean for Israel to be both a Jewish and democratic state and a home to all its citizens? How can Israel be both at home in the Middle East while modeled on Western democracies? How should its leaders balance majority Jewish culture with minority rights?
The concerns of the old Zionism certainly still exist: how to pursue peace even as Jewish vulnerability and safety continue to be threatened. But they take on a new character in this day and age, forcing us to ask how we can manage and embrace conflicting visions of Jewishness and Israeliness while nurturing social solidarity and cooperation across deep and painful divides.
This Yom Haatzmaut comes at a moment of rupture. But the current crisis in Israel represents an opportunity – a moment for our generation to ensure this rupture defies the pattern of sovereign Jewish history. The generations before us proved that we can rewrite diasporic history, turning a tale of vulnerability and weakness into one of strength and power. Our generation and those that follow must likewise defy sovereign Jewish history and prove that we can protect our Jewish state from the internal threats it faces. Our generation’s task is to overcome our divisions and not let fraternal hatred destroy our shared home.
On this 75th birthday, then, let us learn from our past and look forward toward a new future. Let us continue to celebrate the incredible success by writing a new chapter in the magnificent story of Israel and Zionism.
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The post Multiple efforts in Jewish sovereignty have self-destructed after 75 years. Can Israel defy history — again? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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High-Stakes US Special Forces Mission Rescues Airman From Iran After F-15 Crash
FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft takes off for a mission supporting Operation Epic Fury during the Iran war at an undisclosed location, March 9, 2026. U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
US forces staged the audacious rescue of an airman behind enemy lines after Iran downed his fighter jet, officials said on Sunday, resolving a crisis for President Donald Trump as he weighs escalating the war, now in its sixth week.
The airman rescued by special operations forces, who Trump said was a colonel, was the weapons-systems officer on the downed F-15, a US official told Reuters.
“Over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History,” Trump said in a statement, adding that the airman was injured but “he will be just fine.”
The officer was the second of two crew members on the warplane that Iran said on Friday had been brought down by its air defenses. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said several aircraft were destroyed during the US rescue mission, Tasnim news agency reported.
Reuters reported on Friday that the first crew member had been retrieved, triggering a high-profile search by both Iran and the United States for the remaining airman.
Iranian officials had urged citizens to help find him, hoping to gain leverage against Washington in the war Trump and Israel launched on February 28.
Trump has threatened to escalate the conflict in the coming days with attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure.
Had Iran captured the airman, the ensuing hostage crisis could have shifted American public perception of a conflict that opinion polls show was already unpopular.
Trump said the airman was rescued “in the treacherous mountains of Iran” in what he said was the first time in military memory that two US pilots had been rescued, separately, deep in enemy territory.
The official told Reuters that as the weapons-systems officer was moved from near a mountain to a transport aircraft parked within Iran, US forces had to destroy at least one of the aircraft because it had malfunctioned.
U.S. AIRCRAFT HIT
The rescue effort, involving dozens of military aircraft, encountered fierce resistance from Iran.
Reuters reported on Friday that two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search were hit by Iranian fire but escaped from Iranian airspace.
Separately, a pilot ejected from an A-10 Warthog fighter aircraft after it was hit over Kuwait and crashed, the officials said, though the extent of crew injuries was unclear.
Still, Trump was triumphant.
“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” he said in his statement.
US air crews are trained in what to do if they go down behind enemy lines, measures known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, but few are fluent in Persian and face a challenge in staying undetected while seeking rescue.
The conflict has killed 13 US military service members, with more than 300 wounded, US Central Command says. No US troops have been taken prisoner by Iran.
While Trump has repeatedly sought to portray the Iranian military as being in tatters, they have repeatedly been able to hit US aircraft.
Reuters reported on US intelligence showing that Iran retains large amounts of missile and drone capability. Until just over a week ago, the US could only determine with certainty that it had destroyed about one-third of Iran’s missile arsenal.
The status of about another third was less clear, but bombings probably damaged, destroyed or buried those missiles in underground tunnels and bunkers, Reuters sources said.
The US and Israeli war on Iran has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands and hitting the global economy with soaring energy prices that are fueling fears of inflation.
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On Easter, Pope Leo Urges World Leaders to End Wars, Renounce Conquest
Pope Leo XIV waves from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica after delivering his “Urbi et Orbi” (To the city and the world) message, on Easter Sunday at the Vatican, April 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Pope Leo urged global leaders in his Easter message on Sunday to end the conflicts raging across the world and abandon any schemes for power, conquest or domination.
The pope, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of the Iran war, lamented in a special message to the thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square that people “are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent.”
“Let those who have weapons lay them down!” the first US pope exhorted. “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!”
Leo did not mention any specific conflicts in the message, known as the “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing. It was unusually brief and direct.
The pope said that the story of Easter, when the Bible says Jesus rose from the dead three days after not resisting his execution by crucifixion, shows that Christ was “entirely nonviolent.”
“On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars,” Leo urged.
Leo, who is known for choosing his words carefully, has been forcefully decrying the world’s violent conflicts in recent weeks and ramping up his criticism of the Iran war.
In a sermon for the Easter vigil on Saturday night, he urged people not to feel numbed by the scope of the conflicts raging across the world but to work for peace.
The pope made a rare direct appeal to US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, urging him to find an “off-ramp” to end the Iran war.
In his address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday to the Square below, decorated with thousands of brightly colored flowers for the holiday, Leo offered brief Easter greetings in ten languages, including Latin, Arabic and Chinese.
The pope also announced he would return to the Basilica on April 11 to host a prayer vigil for peace.
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Temple Mount Set for Limited Reopening to Jews and Muslims
Israeli National Security Minister and head of Jewish Power party Itamar Ben-Gvir gives a statement to members of the press, ahead of a possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Jan. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Oren Ben Hakoon
i24 News – Israeli authorities are preparing to partially reopen the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to both Jewish and Muslim worshipers for the first time since the start of the war with Iran, under a tightly controlled and highly restricted security arrangement, i24NEWS has learned.
According to details obtained by i24NEWS, the Israeli police, backed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, are also expected to permit limited access for Jewish worshipers to the Western Wall as part of the same phased plan.
Under the framework, access to the Temple Mount and surrounding holy sites would be restricted to small groups of up to 150 people at a time. In the event of a missile alert, all visitors would be immediately evacuated in accordance with emergency protocols.
The decision follows a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing demonstrations in a limited format. Police argue that a consistent standard must apply across both civic gatherings and religious sites, with Ben-Gvir insisting that “there cannot be one rule for demonstrations and another for the Temple Mount.”
However, the reopening contradicts recommendations from the Home Front Command, which has advised keeping sensitive sites closed due to the ongoing risk of missile attacks.
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin has proposed transferring authority over such security-related decisions exclusively to defense officials, an initiative that could reshape the balance between the judiciary and security establishment regarding restrictions on public access.