The recent wave of terrorism in Israel was touched off by two attacks linked to Islamic State (IS). Until now, notes Cole Bunzel, such attacks have been exceedingly rare, largely because IS “is not ideologically disposed” to focus its military efforts on the Jewish state. Bunzel sketches the objectives and attitudes of key IS leaders and concludes that, while the terrorist group may occasionally execute one-off strikes against Israel, it is unlikely to devote serious resources to it.

To understand how Islamic State views Israel, it is helpful to begin with the relevant statements of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (d. 2006), the Jordanian founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq whose ideas form the foundation stone of the present-day caliphate. Palestine was not a prominent theme in al-Zarqawi’s speeches and lectures. Nor was attacking the Israelis a priority for him. On several occasions, he claimed that the liberation of Palestine would come only after victory had been achieved in Iraq and the Shiites had been subdued.

It was his view . . . that before one could effectively fight the “original unbelievers,” meaning the Jews and the Christians, it was first necessary to fight the Shiites. In this he was guided by his reading of medieval Islamic history, in particular the late Crusader period coinciding with rise of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (aka Saladin) and his defeat of the Shiite Fatimid caliphate in Egypt. In 1171, Saladin abolished the Fatimid caliphate and went on to construct a Sunni state spanning Egypt and Syria. A decade and a half later, in 1187, he captured Jerusalem following the decisive Battle of Hattin against the Crusader forces.

As Zarqawi saw it, there was “an important lesson” to be gleaned from this history. This was that “there will not be victory over the original unbelievers except after fighting the apostate unbelievers who are allied with the original believers.”

Contributing to the Jewish state’s current controversy over efforts to reform its judicial system, observes Peter Berkowitz, is its lack of a written constitution. Berkowitz encourages Israelis to seek a way out of the present crisis by looking to the founding document they do have: the Declaration of Independence.

The document does not explicitly mention “democracy.” But it commits Israel to democratic institutions not only by insisting on the equality of rights for all citizens and the establishment of representative government but also by stressing that Arab inhabitants would enjoy “full and equal citizenship.”

The Israeli Declaration of Independence no more provides a constitution for Israel than does the U.S. Declaration of Independence furnish a constitution for America. Both documents, however, announced a universal standard. In 1859, as civil war loomed, Abraham Lincoln wrote in a letter, “All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”

Something similar could be said about Ben Gurion’s . . . affirmation that Israel would be based on, ensure, and guarantee basic rights and fundamental freedoms because they are inseparable from our humanity.

Perhaps reconsideration of the precious inheritance enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence could assist both sides in assuaging the rage roiling the country. Bold and conciliatory, the nation’s founding document promises not merely a Jewish state, or a free state, or a democratic state, but that Israel will combine and reconcile its diverse elements to form a Jewish and free and democratic state.