As President Bush sets out again for Israel, this time to mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state, it is tempting to focus on grim news. The prime minister is mired in scandal and indecision. Lebanon is in flames. The Iranians are preparing a nuclear weapon for use against the Jewish state and arming proxies on Israel’s borders, over which enemy artillery arcs on a daily basis. The best universities around the world, including right here in New York, are crowded with those who want to boycott or disinvest from the Jewish state, and in some of our intellectual journals Zionism itself is being set down as a mistake.

We don’t gainsay these problems, but we tend to a more optimistic view. Israel may be in heavy seas, but it is hard to remember a time when it wasn’t. At the time political Zionism arose, Jews were being oppressed in most of their big population centers. Travel and education for Jews in Eastern Europe was forbidden or regulated. Pogroms were a constant danger. America, the Golden Land, started closing its doors in 1924. By the time the Jewish state came into existence, Germany’s war against the Jews had run its course and the creation of the Jewish state had become a matter of moral urgency.

History is full of surprises. We remember meeting Menachem Begin in the summer of 1982. The man who helped lead the revolt against the British in 1948 was, by then, prime minister of a Jewish state that had just invaded Lebanon and was dismantling enemy headquarters there. He gave his first major interview of the war to the Wall Street Journal, which sent three reporters, including the editor who now conducts these columns. Begin received his guests in his office at Jerusalem, a modest room crowded with books on law and Jewish history. He sat on a couch and cradled a cane.

Begin turned out to be in the mood to talk in sweeping terms. He spoke of the Bible and of the gift of the Sabbath. He told us he wanted to write a book about the generation of the Holocaust and the redemption of the Jews in Israel. When the conversation turned to Britain, Begin sent his secretary, Yechiel Kadeshai, into a side office to retrieve a letter he’d received from Prince Charles, heir to the throne of England, and Princess Diana. Their note, which was lovely, and was passed around the room, while the man whose face not so many years before had been on wanted posters issued by the British mandatory authority kvelled about the royal couple.

What tricks history can play — and within a lifetime or even half a lifetime. Theodor Herzl’s own rise to greatness happened over the space of little more than seven years. He was, after all, but a dashing foreign correspondent in Paris, assigned to cover the trial of a French Army captain named Dreyfus, when he walked out of court and, in a fury of inspiration, wrote, in Der Judenstaat, the essay that, along with the Zionist congresses he launched, made him what many, ourselves among them, see as one of the greatest figures of all time.

Not that the idea of the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the promised land was his invention. For centuries, Jews have ended Passover seders with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.” The dream was echoed even by some of America’s own founders, who tended to view the world in the light of Sinai. The inscription on the Liberty Bell (“Proclaim liberty throughout the land …”) is from the Hebrew bible. Madison himself spoke Hebrew. John Adams, we are reminded in the book “Israel in the Mind of America,” voiced in his later years the hope for “the Jews again in Judea an independent nation,” though his hope was tinged with supersessionism.

When David Ben Gurion declared independence on May 15, 1948, he did so in face of opposition from many among the world powers, including virtually everyone at our own state department. The world’s “realists” never liked the Zionist enterprise — and, Mark Steyn reminds us in the adjacent columns, still don’t — but Ben Gurion was fond of saying that in the Middle East only dreamers can be realistic. Years later, Ariel Sharon liked to speak of Israel as a worldwide project of the Jewish people. And, one could add, given the aid and encouragement it has received from America and other governments, not only the Jewish people.

What stands out when we look back at the history of Israel is the wisdom of the strategic decisions made by its founders. They sided with Britain and the Allies in World War II even while aspiring — and conspiring — to throw off British colonialism. They plunged ahead, despite partition, even though it was detested by many. They stood in opposition to the designs of the Soviet Union, even though many of them came from Russia and favored a socialist approach. Israel made a profound bet on democracy, establishing a famously fractious parliament and independent judiciary and uninhibited press.

Our contributing editor, David Twersky, observes that the notion, so widespread in the world, that a small nation state with a Jewish majority somehow reflects the worst of the last century rather than the best, turns political thought on its head. The Israelis, whatever the resolution of the territorial arguments about their ancient homeland, have established a decent, humane, and richly cultural life. It is among the best of what civilization has accomplished over the last century of blood and war, hopes crushed and millions destroyed. The anniversary that Mr. Bush will join in celebrating with Israel this week is a cause for celebration for all of us.