It’s easy to debate leftists: just show that their policies are in fact ad hoc solutions, often contradictory and canceling the gains made from previous moves. Add that their solutions amount to wishful thinking with no historical basis. The leftists continue disliking our values, as they dislike any firm values, because firm values impede their ad hoc moves. But at least the audience begins to doubt the left’s wisdom.

It’s much harder with haredim, especially anti-Zionist Satmar Jews. Besides the questionable interpretation of the Talmudic injunction to return to the Holy Land by force, their arguments make a great deal of sense to me. The existing Israeli state is abominable: socialist, militantly atheist, opposed to Jewish tradition and values, utilizing garbled slang in place of the beautiful Biblical Hebrew, gentile-leaning, westernized, and insecure. Jews can easily conduct a more Jewish life under Muslim jurisdiction. Historically, Jews lived amicably with Muslims: even the touted jizyah tax was less than what we’re now paying in Israel. Besides a few isolated incidents, Jews lived safely in the Muslim world until the advent of Zionism; naturally, Arabs opposed the Jewish threat to their sovereignty. Sharia law, harking back to the Torah, is far more just than the twisted western law of Israel. There were many inconveniences, but it’s worse in Israel: religious Jews are forbidden to pray at the Temple Mount, cannot easily access our sites in Schem and near Bethlehem, and are semi-officially frowned upon. Worst of all, Israel’s future is murky: surrounded by a sea of Muslims and betrayed by Christians, a fourteen-mile-wide Israel with a hostile Arab population is not a viable state. Add the nuclear proliferation by Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran, the missile and chemical weapons potential of Syria, the modernized Egyptian army, and the ongoing terrorism, and the picture looks very grim. Jews in Iran are more secure than in Israel, suffer fewer religious restrictions (none, actually), and pay smaller taxes than in Israel.

For the last 2,500 years, Jews have lived as an administrative autonomy. In the ancient world, that was called a protectorate, but the essence is the same: a self-governing community controlled by an external power in military and foreign-relations matters. If anything, Roman protection was more reliable than American protection. Israel was continually overrun by enemies even in the era of foot-armies and feuding mini-states all around. In our era of aircraft and Arab unity against Israel, Jewish chances for lasting sovereignty are still less.

Jews never possessed anything like the entire Eretz Israel, and religious Jews never controlled the state. Even in the times of monarchy, idolatry was widespread except for short recesses under righteous kings. Greeks had had their towns in Eretz Israel since time immemorial, and practiced idolatry there. Roman troops in our land also worshiped in pagan temples. Muslims are monotheists and therefore far better than the Romans; it is even questionable whether mosques are places of “strange worship” which Jews must purge from Eretz Israel.

The real Temple, where God abided on Earth, was gone. The Second Temple that replaced it was a house of worship like any other, as it lacked the unique, immense sanctity of the Arc. It is unimaginable that God revealed himself to the corrupt high priests of Herod Temple.

Jewish thought flourished in the Exile. National creativity always receives a boost in tight circumstances; the Golden Age of Russian literature coincided with tsarist oppression. The Exile made Jews notoriously smart; sharpness of mind was a positive evolutionary feature, enabling the survival of the fittest. That would change in Israel, where Jews did not need to compete with severely antagonistic gentiles.
Jews tried rebuilding both the Temple and the state on several occasions during the Exile, without success. The current attempt is different in that it stakes everything: Israel has drained the entire Diaspora; European, Middle Eastern, and American Jewry won’t last long under the onslaught of assimilation. So if this attempt fails, we will have many Israeli emigrants all over the world at best and refugees at the worst. Haredim, who live in or near Jerusalem, won’t be targeted in a nuclear strike on Israel.

So the anti-Zionist haredim have valid points. They can be opposed on many grounds. In religious terms, living in Eretz Israel and establishing Jewish jurisdiction there are major obligations; but we have never possessed the entire land in history, and our jurisdiction rarely followed strict Jewish guidelines. In political terms, Jews need a safe haven; but Israel now is more dangerous than even  such cursed places as Berlin or Warsaw. In national terms, secularized Jews quickly assimilate in the Diaspora. They assimilate, however, even in Israel, which has imported hundreds of thousands of fake Jews and outright Slavs. In nationalist terms, we’re sick of living under foreigners’ rule; Israeli politicians and bureaucracy are often worse than gentiles. So I don’t see a clear-cut answer to Satmar.

My only certain answer to them is that a Jew should stick to his nation, right or wrong. That, however, is refuted by, “You shall not follow the multitude to evil.”