Beginning in 1971, the Soviet police repeatedly arrested Yosef Begun for his involvement in teaching Hebrew, his connections with other Jewish dissidents, and his application to emigrate to Israel. Thanks to American pressure, he was released from his final imprisonment at the beginning of 1988 and since then has lived in Israel. In an interview with David Samuels, he tells how he was first drawn to the underground Jewish revival in the USSR, a process that began when he met an older man who offered to teach him Hebrew:

[H]e asked me, would you like to learn Hebrew? Hebrew—I asked him—what is “Hebrew”? He said to me it is the language of the Bible. I asked him, “What is the Bible?” He told me. Then he explained that Hebrew is the language of the state of Israel. . . . He had been a student at the Volozhin yeshiva before the Russian Revolution. He lived in a small, inexpensive flat, but he was a very educated man. He told me that he had met [the Zionist leader Vladimir] Jabotinsky.

Nobody knew [about the Hebrew lessons]. I studied with him in a very secret way.

Sometime after Begun enrolled in his clandestine Hebrew tutorials, he befriended a Jewish coworker; the two would often ride home on the bus together:

[W]e would talk about many different things, but not about Jewish subjects. . . . Talking about Jewish subjects was [taboo], and even dangerous. I was afraid, and everyone was afraid, to talk about such subjects.

[H]is hobby was Esperanto. . . . And he was very often invited to join a group he belonged to of people who were interested in Esperanto. . . . And every time I would say, “You know, I am very busy.” But [once] he saw in my pocket a small Hebrew textbook that my teacher gave me. . . . Then [my friend] began to talk with me in Hebrew. And of course it happened that his Esperanto group was actually a Zionist group.

So of course I came with him to his group of Esperanto Zionists. And from this moment I became a Zionist, and I met people who lived by their hope to go to Israel.

Donald Trump’s recent visit to the Arabian Peninsula, where he was fawned over by Hamas’s patrons in Qatar, made deals with the Saudis but seemingly no progress on diplomatic normalization between Riyadh and Jerusalem, and met with multiple Arab leaders while neglecting Israel—has raised much concern that the president is putting distance between himself and the Jewish state and moreover, that Israel’s regional standing is sliding. These concerns strike me as exaggerated and even overwrought, and in some cases wishful thinking on the part of those who would prefer such outcomes.

To Dan Schueftan too, Jerusalem is in an excellent position both diplomatically, and—as the IDF again ramps up its operations in Gaza—military:

In the regional arena, Israel has already won the war that started on October 7, 2023. While the fighting is not over yet, a confrontation with Iran is potentially dangerous, and there is no sustainable “solution” available in Gaza, the balance of power in the Middle East shifted dramatically in favor of the Jewish state and its de-facto Arab allies.

Since October 7, Israel has devastated in Gaza the only Arab state-like entity controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. The IDF also reduced Hizballah from an intimidating strategic threat, practically in control of Lebanon, to a major nuisance, fighting a rearguard battle for its position in Beirut and in the south. And Israel’s air force exposed the supreme vulnerability of Iran’s most-defended sites.

In Cairo, Amman, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Rabat, Arab leaders could not afford to infuriate their populaces by openly celebrating the dramatic weakening of their regional deadly enemies and giving Israel the well-deserved credit for inflicting the required blows. However, they know that sustainable Israeli resilience, strategic power, determination, and tenacity in the struggle against common radical enemies are indispensable for their own regional welfare, sometimes even their existence. Whereas America is immeasurably more powerful, Israel, in their experience, is an infinitely more trustworthy and dependable partner in this ongoing struggle.