Birthday greetings from Hillel Halkin:
Were I prophetically to know that Israel would perish within the next 20 or 30 or 50 years, as many of its bon ton critics are now prognosticating, it would not make the slightest difference to me in terms of my own decisions. I would still feel happy that I chose to live here; would go on living here; would want my children to live here; would want them to raise my grandchildren here — until the last possible moment. Isn’t that the way we want to live our own personal lives, too: Until the last possible moment?
Happy — and proud. Because for all its shortcomings and mistakes, Israel is and will always be one of the most glorious historical adventures in the history of mankind. A 3,000-year-old people, the victim of the greatest act of mass murder ever committed on this planet, has the indomitable will to reconstitute itself in its ancient homeland, to revive its ancient language, to assert its right to live, to create new life, to nourish it and maintain it in defiance of all odds — there’s never been anything else like it before and never will be again.
I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to be part of it. I would have felt envious had I been anywhere else.