After October 7, many a Jew is asking the question: It is a simple question that has within it the deepest of existential questions: Why do I live? Our basic instinct pressures us to find the best way to survive. If someone is trying to kill us, we assess our fight/flight options to maximize our chances of survival. When Muslim peoples are threatening our existence, a number of alternatives present themselves.
We could move to a democratic state that allows freedom of religion. However, today those countries have been inundated with Muslim fanatics fueling good old-fashioned antisemitism. No one really knows where this will end, but history has shown that comfortable places for Jews in the Diaspora do not remain so forever.
Indeed, that was the very reason modern Zionism began (see Theodor Herzl’s ). We could renounce our Judaism and become Christians or atheists. But this would only delay the Muslim wrath that has its eyes set on world domination in the form of forced conversion to Islam.
We could convert to Islam. But besides capitulating to a murderous death cult, we would be joining a benighted culture that seeks to destroy everything we hold dear about life – freedom, equality, opportunity, education – only to aid in their endeavor to return the world to a medieval fiefdom ruled by ayatollahs. We could find some remote place in the world where Jews are not recognized and simply assimilate.
But besides such places being few and far between, such a move could entail .