I had an interesting conversation with my brother tonight. He suggested that Jews were safer in the exile, when they were chased from place to place. He said that the proof of this was that they had survived 1900 years of this. On the other hand, the return of the Jews to Israel puts them all in harm's way. He therefore concluded that the Jews should not have come back to Israel.
I told him that his argument was true only for those who have no faith in G-d, (which he does not unfortunately). I said that if you don't have faith in G-d, you cannot see that the return of the Jews to the land is part of an obligation to fulfill a covenant with G-d.
Having said that, I told him that the modern state of Israel as it is today, is not the complete fullfilment of the return to Zion. It is in someways, more dangerous for the Jews to have an Israel today that is weak and secular. A state that has democratic rights for those people who want to eliminate the state is insane.
Nasrallah (ym"sh) stated that if the Jews all gather in Israel it would save them the trouble of going after them worldwide. Ahmadinejad (ym"sh) wants to launch nuclear weapons into Israel. So it is true that a modern state of Israel is worse than the exile. But I told my brother that while it is true that the Jews coming to Israel simply to die is worse than the exile, the best thing would be to have a Jewish state where Jews go to live. If the modern state of Israel could be a strong state that eliminated its enemies before the enemies could eliminate them, that would be the best thing. A state that remembered the principle "if someone comes to slay you, slay him first", would be the best thing for the Jews.
The exile was an obscenity. A weak Jewish state is an obscenity. The only answer for the Jews is a strong JEWISH state. A secular Israel is not a Jewish state! A capitulating Israel that allows murderers to go unpunished and worse to continue the killing of Jews is not a Jewish state! Unfortunately, the state of Israel, as it exists today, is a weak, guilt-ridden, secular ghetto. The Jews that live there who understand their purpose have no voice.
So I ask you, which is/was worse, the horrendous exile of 1900 years, or this incomplete and unfulfilled return to Zion that is the modern state of Israel? It can be argued, by the way, that the weak, leftist leaders of Israel have created a state that is a pre-manifestation of the proud and independent Jewish state that we all dream of. And in that sense, perhaps the diaspora has not yet ended?