The greatest miracle of our time is the rebirth of the Jewish nation in its ancient home. And, with it, the transformation of an inhospitable landscape into the lovely land of Israel, with its tree-lined streets, cafes, universities, its optimistic people, its liberated women, its liberal democracy and rule of law. The continuing miracle is the survival of this remnant of a life-loving people on a sliver of land, despite repeated attacks from hostile Arab armies. Edward Gibbon wrote of the condition of European Jews in the early middle ages that, “they might be oppressed without danger, as they had lost the use, and even the remembrance of arms. ” Miraculously, in the twentieth century Jews learned again to use arms to defend themselves.

But though Israel has survived, it faces continued hostility, and not only from Arab irredentists, from politicians and businessmen who curry favor with oil-rich Muslim countries, and from ordinary old-fashioned anti-Semites. The most horrifying development of our time, with respect to Israel, is the worldwide conversion of many of my fellow liberal intellectuals —academics, artists, writers, labor leaders, “enlightened” clergy—to irrational hatred of Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and the only country in that region where any of us could bear to live. They sit in world forums, weirdly denouncing Israel as the worst violator of human rights, the greatest threat to world peace. They demand that Israel cease its checkpoints and walls and its other attempts to save Jewish lives. The most shameful participants in all this are Jewish and Israeli “liberals,” rushing to show the world that they are not the bad Jews, but the good ones, more anti-Israel than thou.

The asserted root cause of this hostility is the supposed “occupation” of Palestinian land. Often this takes the form of a demand that Israel return to its 1967 borders. Israel has already made a complete withdrawal from Gaza and handed over most of the West Bank to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Can anyone really suppose that clearing Jews from the small remaining area they inhabit and ending Israeli military patrols in the West Bank would bring peace? Hamas, Hezbollah, and their patrons in Muslim countries like Iran have made it clear that they will not be satisfied with anything but the annihilation of Israel. Supposed “moderates” in the PLO and some Muslim countries now say they accept the existence of Israel, but what line would they take if Israel returned to its strategically vulnerable 1967 borders? Remember, the PLO was founded in 1964, when no part of Gaza or the West Bank was in Israeli hands, and “liberation” could only mean the annihilation of Israel.

Not only is the demand for total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank unrealistic —it is unjust. Countries that are attacked, and defeat their attackers, are not usually blamed if they then take territory from their attacker that will help to protect them from further attacks. This is what the Soviet Union did after World War II, when it annexed East Prussia, and not even most Germans now condemn them for it. (Of course, Russia did not have the problem of ruling Germans in the land it seized, because it deported them all.) By these standards, Israel deserves to hang on to whatever part of the West Bank it needs for its security.

Then there are “liberals” who deny the legitimacy of Israel itself, and ask why there should not be a multi-ethnic state in the whole of Palestine, subject to a majority that happens to be Arab? They ignore the historical evidence that Jews cannot live freely in a country dominated by Arabs. Jews living among Arabs were subject to repeated Arab massacres, as in Hebron in 1929, and where Jews in Arab countries were tolerated, they were never more than second-class citizens, a status dictated in the Qu ’ran. Jews are now prohibited from living in Saudi Arabia, and have had to flee other Arab countries. Although world law established all of Palestine as the Jewish national home, the British handed most of it (the part today known as Jordan) to England ’s Hashemite allies, who had no connection to Jordan. But the Jews have real connections to Palestine, their ancient home, where thousands of Jews have always lived since the Roman era. Even after the handover to Jordan, the United Nations voted to partition the remnant, leaving only half of it to the Jews. Yet the Jews accepted their half-sliver of land, and created a beautiful country.

Let us, liberals and intellectuals, Jewish and gentile, return to true liberal values. Let us at last acknowledge that hatred of the Jewish state is hatred of Jews. Let us,  Jew and non-Jew alike, do what we can to help secure Jewish survivors of irrational hate in their own country.