Author, historian and commentator Professor Gil Troy speaks to Israel National News at the Conference of Presidents in Jerusalem.
He explains he has a very optimistic messages to convey about the State of Israel as it soon celebrates its 75th anniversary.
“I challenge everybody to smile, to enjoy, to remember that we are the people of hope and if you think in historic terms how lucky we are to be living in 2023 I’m saying this to my right-wing friends and my left-wing friends, my gay friends my straight friends, my Israeli Arab friends, everyone. I ask them what year would you rather be living in Israel than 2023. Go back 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, we”ve never been safer, we’ve never been more prosperous, we’ve never been prouder,” he says.
Speaking about the protests over judicial reform, specifically the fear mongering coming from opponents of the process, he comments:
“We’ve been always very good at coming to the precipice, coming to the edge, and then pulling back. I”m a historian, it’s hard enough for me to predict the past, I can’t begin to predict the future, but all I know is that when I travel around the United States of America and I see the way people don’t talk to one another, the way people don’t have a sense of common destiny, the way they don’t really recognize common enemies&hellip I speak to people from the left and the right, I speak to religious people and non-religious people, and I still believe that Israel has what we call the “habits of the heart” that are democratic, the ‘habits of the heart” that are Jewish.”
I continue to see so much strength in this country and so much resilience in this country that I think we will overcome the challenges we have but we also need a path of love from both sides. We need the centrist voice to come out of the 64 percent who want some kind of pathway,” he adds.
Speaking about the “miracle” that a Jewish State exists today after all the tragedies of Jewish history, he remarks that “I’m a historian so I’m not allowed to use words like “miracle.””
But he goes on to explain: “One of the things I like to say is that it was secular Zionists who created the miracle and Jews gave it legitimacy, because the secularists were really building but without it being a Jewish State and a Jewish place it wouldn’t have happened,” Troy says. “Or my religious friends say the Jews created the miracle and the religious dimensions, and it was a secular people who gave it legitimacy because the International Community needed to speak a different language. And the answer of course is yes to both.”
Troy, who made aliyah 15 years ago after visiting Israel on a sabbatical with his wife and four children, notes how “fragile” Israel and its future was in 1948 and in 1967 compared to today.
“We are lucky and we have to leverage that luck into loving one another, working together, solving our problems together, not against one another,” he says.

When asked how much he believes the diaspora should be allowed to influence the Israeli government”s policies, such as on judicial reform, Troy answers that before he moved to Israel he felt it necessary to practice a humility when speaking on topics related to Israel, such as the Gaza disengagement.
“At that moment in time wasn’t paying taxes to Israel, I wasn”t voting, I wasn’t my sending my kids to serve in the army, and I wasn’t serving in the army, and so while I expressed my opinion, I did it with a certain limit,” he says. “I want my brothers and sisters in the diaspora to give us lots of advice, because they do have different experiences that can illuminate, but I also want them to do it with humility and I want us to accept it with love.”