Israel Continues Herzl's Dream

This year we celebrate 62 years since the reestablishment of the State of Israel and 150 years since the birth of the Zionist visionary Theodor (Binyamin Ze’ev) Herzl. We can look around our nation and take enormous pride in what we have achieved in the few decades since Jewish sovereignty returned to the land of our fathers.

Herzl famously wrote, “If you will it, it is no dream” more than 100 years ago, but unfortunately he died only a few years later. His dream, a Jewish state, would against all the odds be recreated in its ancient land, as he prophetically stated, less than five decades later.

Today, most of us have not known a time without the State of Israel. Few alive remember the battles, the struggles and sacrifices that the early Zionists and even early Israelis had to endure to ensure that Herzl’s vision would not remain a dream. Too many take the presence of Israel for granted, and this has allowed us to become complacent about its role and its future. We must never forget that we are a reborn nation surrounded by many enemies intent on our destruction.