“The state of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles,” reads the Israeli declaration of independence. Yet, drawing on his experience sitting on the Knesset’s Aliyah and Absorption Committee, Michael Oren argues that the Jewish state isn’t doing enough to encourage and facilitate Jews to settle in its borders. He writes:

Miraculously, it would seem, in the throes of the coronavirus and in the face of continuing terrorist attacks, aliyah from the North America climbed last year by an astonishing 31 percent. The increase reflects several factors, among them expanding employment opportunities in Israel, especially in high-tech, and the relative strength of the Israeli economy. The major cause, though, is anti-Semitism. The sharp rise in Jew-hatred both from the right and the left has convinced a growing number of American and European Jews that their only secure future lies in the Jewish state.

Olim from countries such as France, Belgium, and the United States, over half of whom are young and educated, bring both skills and capital to the country. Within a year, on average, their economic contributions more than pay the costs of their absorption. The 18,000 Americans who made aliyah between 2002 and 2008, for example, brought in more than a billion shekels. Olim improve medical and educational standards in Israel, enrich our cultural life, and defend our borders.

Yet, far beyond the professional, educational, and military benefits brought by olim, aliyah was and remains a central Zionist tenet. Without it, we are in danger of devolving into just another developed country concerned only with sealing its borders to immigrants. Precisely at a time of rampant anti-Semitism, Israel will fail to fulfill its primary historical mission of providing shelter for oppressed Jews worldwide. . . . Aliyah is not just immigration but part of the moral underpinning—the raison d’être—of our state.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.