Quotes About Israel

Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Here, the focus is not on the irrevocable covenantal promises so prominent in Genesis but rather on the proven record of fidelity and integrity that rabbinic thought attributes to those national ancestors. Presented with God's offer, Israel protests her unworthiness—people do not, after all, deserve to have a specific person love them to the point of proposing marriage—

Because this history seems to be typical of the calling of the Gentile church, and indeed of the conversion of every believer. Ruth was not originally of Israel, but was a Moabitess, an alien from the commonwealth of Israel: but she forsook her own people, and the idols of the Gentiles, to worship the God of Israel, and to join herself to that people. Herein she seems to be a type of the Gentile church, and also of every sincere convert.

III. Happiness is nowhere else to be had, but in their God, and with their people. There are that are called gods many, and lords many. Some make gods of their pleasures; some choose Mammon for their god; some make gods of their own supposed excellencies, or the outward advantages they have above their neighbors: some choose one thing for their god, and others another. But men can be happy in no other God but the God of Israel: he is the only fountain of happiness.

Our cleaving to them, and having their God for our God and their people for our people, depends on our resolution and choice; and that in two respects. 1. The firmness of resolution in using means in order to it, is the way to have means effectual. There are means appointed in order to our becoming some of the true Israel and having their God for our God; and the thorough use of these means is the way to have success; but not a slack or slighty use of them.

The faith of ancient Israel, according to some scholars, was not Judaism or even Yahwehism but "Davidism.

The people of Israel are entitled, as is any other nation, to live in peace and safety.

But it is surely no coincidence that Israel became the first – indeed the only – nation in history to receive its laws before its land. A law that could be easily written and read, and that could be transported anywhere, was the expression of the God who was everywhere, in the desert as well as in the land.

Rashi notes that the mourning for Aaron was more widespread than for Moses (of Aaron it says, "The entire house of Israel grieved" [Num. 20:29]; in the case of Moses the word "entire" is missing [Deut. 34:8]). The reason is that Aaron was a man of peace; Moses was a man of truth. We love peace, but truth is sometimes hard to bear. People of truth have enemies as well as friends.

But few nations other than Israel set it as their highest task to understand why the law is as it is. Shema is the Torah's call to moral growth.

Instead we hear a constant insistence that the strength of a nation – certainly of Israel/Judah – is not military or demographic but moral and spiritual. If the people keep faith with God and one another, no force on earth can defeat them. If they do not, no force can save them.

The message of the story of Balaam as a whole is this: God saves Israel from its enemies but even God cannot save Israel from itself. To be defended by the Holy One, Israel must be holy, and that includes – as Leviticus insists in chapters 18 and 20 – a strict sexual ethic. Lose that and the nation will lose everything.

He once said: "In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles."3 To put it at its simplest: In Egypt, where the source of life was the Nile, you looked down. In Israel, where the source of life is rain, you had no choice but to look up.

There neither was nor would be a time when Israel could rely on numbers, or vast tracts of territory, or easily defensible borders. So it was then. So it is now.

execution of civilians, collective rape of women. The Israeli general staff, moreover, used the Hebrew word tihur, meaning 'cleaning' or 'purification', more than 40 years before the concept of 'ethnic cleansing' was coined at the time of the wars in the former Yugoslavia.14

liberty and the homeland of the Jews. Athenian democracy had shifted to Washington, and ancient Judaism had taken a secular form in the state of Israel.

Today, anti-Semitism remains a distinctive feature of the nationalisms of eastern Europe, where Islam is almost non-existent and the turn of 1989 gave new life to the old demons (still present, even where there are no Jews), but it has almost disappeared from the discourse of the west European far right (which often proclaims its sympathies for Israel).

As long as we're tied to Middle Eastern oil we're tied to Middle Eastern politics. We're hostages to the terrorists and nutcases who want to wipe out Israel and the United States because we support Israel.

The liberal media hates Republicans, the military, and Israel.

I think that a strong Israel is the only Israel that will bring the Arabs to the peace table.

The Palestinians want a state, but they have to give peace in return. What they're trying to do in the United Nations is to get a state without giving Israel peace or giving Israel peace and security. And I think that's, that's wrong. That should not succeed. That should, that should fail.

You don't have people chanting 'Death to America' in Israel.

The purpose of the Jewish state is to secure the Jewish future. That is why Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, against any threat.

Most of the approaches to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, have been directed at trying to resolve the most complex problems, like refugees and Jerusalem, which is akin to building the pyramid from the top down.