Why the Fate of Israel Matters

People often ask me why I care so much about the fate of Israel despite not being Jewish.Israel is a tiny country the size of The San Francisco Bay Area, with a population half that of greater New York City. It’s on the other side of the world from the US, and supporting Israel often creates friction with Europe and the Muslim world - regions with which many Americans want to have good relations.Can’t we just pretend that, under a one-state solution “from the River to the Sea”, the Jihadist groups who have openly promised to exterminate the Jews wouldn’t actually do so? Yes, much of the negative reporting about Israel is misleading at best, but why make a fuss about it? Can’t we just focus on other things, like climate change, or poverty, which surely must be more important? Hasn’t Israel become one of those causes that decent people are simply expected to oppose? There are only 15 million Jews in the world, only 0.2% of the world’s population. Surely the continued existence of the Jewish people can’t be that important?Isn’t it suspicious that I seem to care so much about the welfare of the Jews. Am I secretly one of them? Am I sure I’m not secretly one of them? It does seem suspicious.In this essay I want to make two bold claims:The continued existence of the Jewish people is important to humanity’s future.The continued existence of Israel is important for the continued existence of the Jewish people.But first, a confession. I said that I’m not Jewish, but twenty years ago I came very close to converting. I was in a relationship with a Jewish woman, and in order for us to marry, I would have needed to convert.If you are born into a religion, it’s easy to not think too much about what that religion really is. This was largely the case for me with Christianity, the religion I was born into. But if you convert to a religion, you need to think long and hard about what you are signing up for. So I put a lot of effort into understanding what it meant to be Jewish, to dec