Israel’s Attraction Not Religious

Many professed Christians claim to see an analogy between the return of the Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem in 537 B.C. and the return of the Jews to Israel today. However, back there the incentive was religious; the Jews who returned and those who remained all lived in the same land of Babylon, and those who returned had to face hardships rather than improved economic and political conditions. Today, however, it is quite apparent that the opposite is true; the main reasons are political and economic. Proof for this is seen, on the one hand, in the fact that as anti-Semitism rises immigration to Israel increases, as noted in the recent and current returning of Jews from Hungary, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Poland, all of whom have reason to hope to improve their economic and political condition. On the other hand, the records show that during the first seven years of the existence of the State of Israel, upward of 5,000 more Jews returned from Israel to Western lands, where conditions are more favorable, than went from those lands to Israel during that time. Obviously, no comparison can be made between the purposes and motives of those who returned to Israel in 537 B.C. and those who are returning in modern times.