In a recent interview, Israel’s minister of Diaspora affairs, Nachman Shai, stated that he does not consider encouraging immigration to Israel as one of his goals. Gershon Hacohen responds, calling calling Shai’s statement a “negation of the essence and purpose of Zionism.”

Returning to the Land of Israel is a national-religious obligation, and also obliges the Jews who already live here. A state, like intimacy and love, . . . needs to be nurtured and regenerated daily. A state is in a constant process of establishment—especially the Jewish state, where the ingathering of the exiles is its “yearning, destiny, and mission,” [in the words of David Ben-Gurion]. Being strong and prosperous is not an end in itself; the Jewish state must be strong and prosperous in order to accomplish its fundamental mission and destiny.

It is not for nothing that the term aliyah—roughly meaning “ascent”—cannot be accurately translated, as it does not exist in any other language. [It] is not equivalent to “immigration.” The Hebrew word aliyah refers to one thing only: Jews coming to Israel. . . . This is the context in which Jewish immigration and emigration are defined: there is one and only homeland, and a Jew living anywhere else is outside it.

Even during the aliyah of Ezra and Nehemiah, in the early days of the Second Temple, most Jews chose to remain in the Babylonian exile. As the [traditional festival liturgy states], “Because of our sins we were exiled from our land and moved away from our land.” Jews [still] pray three times a day: “May a great shofar sound our freedom and act as a miracle to gather our dispersed people.”

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.