Why the Jews Always Win

Yesterday, just as my nine-year-old son finished packing his bag for a long-awaited school trip, the news arrived: no school tomorrow. Iran is firing missiles at us again.

The alerts sounded. We went to the safe room. We comforted the disappointed boy as best we could. We reassured the other children that the war would not last forever—though I am no longer certain they believe us. This morning, I exchanged messages with other parents. We traded humorous memes and resigned sighs. It is what it is.

Have we lost hope? Not at all.

We are tired. We are frustrated. But despair is not an option. Why should it be? Aren't we living in the very land our ancestors dreamed of returning to? Aren't Jewish pilots flying over Iran at this very moment to defend us? Most of all, aren't we simply taking our place in yet another chapter of Jewish history—a people restored to its ancient homeland, still called upon to exercise courage and patience until God grants us the final peace?

Our wars come with a terrible price. There is no shortage of blood, sweat, and tears. Yet alongside that painful knowledge stands another certainty: in the end, we always prevail.

The Jews always win.

We know this because for thousands of years we have lived with the awareness that there are those who hate us, and that much of that hatred is directed toward the bond between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. The second chapter of Psalms describes the phenomenon with remarkable clarity:

"Why do nations assemble, and peoples plot in vain? Kings of the earth take their stand, and rulers conspire together against the Lord and against His anointed."

The Midrash directs us to another verse in Psalms for an explanation:

"They say, 'Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; Israel's name shall be mentioned no more.'"

And it elaborates:

"At that hour, what do the nations of the world say to Israel? 'You have no share in this land, nor in this Holy Temple!' And they say to one another: 'Come, let us divide Jerusalem!'"

The scene feels strikingly familiar. We have lived through it before. We are living through it now.

Rabbi Yehudah Halevi offered a profound explanation for this phenomenon in The Kuzari. He argues that the nations of the world intuitively recognize Israel's unique role—the segulah, the treasured core of humanity—and therefore seek either to emulate it or to replace it:

"And as for your seeing the nations holding fast to their religions and exalting themselves over Israel, this is only because they see the unique status that Israel possessed... and they attempt to resemble it, claiming that they are the true Israel, and that this land [the Land of Israel] belongs to them."

Elsewhere, he explains that the struggle over the Land of Israel arises because all recognize it, consciously or unconsciously, as the King's Palace—Traklin HaMelech—the place where the Divine Presence and prophecy find their fullest expression. Jealousy toward the people becomes a contest over the land itself.

More than eight hundred years after those words were written, little has changed. The same hostility seeks to weaken us, to undermine our existence in our homeland, to insist that we are strangers in the very place from which we emerged. "You have no share in this land." We have heard the claim before.

What has enabled us to survive it is not military power alone, nor political ingenuity. It is faith—together with the knowledge that, however dark a particular chapter may appear, the covenant between God and the Jewish people ultimately endures. Again and again, it emerges victorious over those who seek to erase it.

One need not wait for the final redemption to notice this pattern. Perceptive observers have seen it already, including some who were not Jewish themselves.

More than two centuries ago, the young Lord Byron wrote his poem On the Day of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. He mourns the destruction of the Temple, yet by the poem's conclusion he recognizes that Rome's triumph was not quite what it seemed:

"And scatter'd and scorn'd as thy people may be,
Our worship, oh Father! is only for thee."

The Temple lay in ruins. The Jewish people were scattered. Yet the world gradually came to acknowledge the God of Israel. The pagan gods vanished; the idols lost their devotees. The greater struggle had ended differently than Titus imagined. The light that shone from Jerusalem was diminished, but it was never extinguished.

Nearly two thousand years later, we still face those who hate us, who resent our covenant, our mission, and our presence in the land promised to our ancestors. We grow weary. We grieve. We worry for our children.

But we do not surrender to hopelessness.

The responsibility entrusted to us came from God. The land entrusted to us came from God. And because our covenant is with God, those who wage war against it ultimately find themselves fighting a battle they cannot win.

That is why the Jews always win.