Hello, I’m very fascinated with understanding more about Israel as a Christian high school student studying religion. I’ve recently stumbled upon a controversial theologian, Marc H. Ellis, who believes that the events of the Shoah are now used to justify the Israel-Palestine conflict, and that Jews believe more in Israel than G-d. I would love a perspective on this opinion, because in my, albeit limited, view, I can’t imagine such a big shift away from G-d. Thank you for providing such an amazing service, and for reading, Amelie

Believing in Israel is synonymous with believing in the God of Israel (“Israel, God and the Torah are actually One”; see also Chronicles II, 35, 3, “… serve God and Israel, His nation). God was seen in the world through the prophets of Israel, and today (since there are no longer prophets), through Jewish history and the actual fulfillment of those prophecies, to redeem and return the Jews to the Land of Israel for the 3rd time, after a difficult 2,000 year exile (see Deut. 30). As in all over the world, also some Israelis are not religious (especially those who were educated and emigrated from the communist Soviet Union, and the traumatized angry survivors of the Holocaust and their children), but the vast majority, about 80%, are traditional or religious. I don’t know anything about Ellis, but can tell you that the Jews lived in the Land of Israel 3,700 years ago, that’s thousands of years before anyone ever heard of these Arab “Palestinians”. The Holocaust of the Jews of Europe during WWII, just proved to Jews who didn’t yet see, that it’s time to come home, to Israel. For those who didn’t come because of the Bible’s command for Jews to live in Israel, the Holocaust helped them understand that in the modern world, when 6,000,000 Jews could be systematically murdered with modern technology in just 6 years, we clearly need a Jewish State, with a Jewish army, and Jewish nuclear bombs, to deter any future anti-Semite from carrying out his lunatic wishes of mass-murder. The Arabs massacred Jews in Israel decades before the Holocaust, in the riots of 1922, ’26, ’29, ’36, etc. and way before the Six Day War in '67 and the "occupied territories". The behavioral problem of Islamic terrorists threatens the entire world (including the Islamic countries themselves!), and was not caused by the Holocaust or the State of Israel. Anyone who doesn't see that, is denying reality and apparently has a slanted and/or selective knowledge of history, unfortunately not uncommon even among some intelligent people, when the Jews are involved. Just check the facts objectively.