Vision, identity and justification

Not because a social-democratic state cannot succeed. Israel and many Western countries are examples of prosperous states that combine a market economy with a broad government and public welfare systems. But such states already exist. There is little reason to invest an enormous effort in establishing another Jewish state that would reproduce, with minor variations, an existing model.

The choice of the libertarian model is first and foremost a choice of values. Yehodaya is founded on the view that a person’s natural rights precede the state and are not granted by it. The role of the state is to protect life, liberty, property, contracts, and equality before the law—not to design the lives of its citizens or decide for them how the fruits of their labor ought to be distributed.

The social-democratic model assigns the state broad responsibility for reducing disparities, distributing resources, and providing services. To do so, it requires high taxation, extensive regulation, and a large public apparatus. Even when the intentions are good, such systems tend to accumulate power, expand, create dependency, and become influenced by pressure groups and sectoral interests. Once entitlements, subsidies, and large public systems have been created, they are very difficult to scale back even when they are no longer effective.

The libertarian choice does not express indifference toward the vulnerable, nor is it based on the principle that every person is left to fend for himself. Yehodaya will fund essential education and healthcare services through vouchers, operate a negative income tax for low-income workers, and provide assistance to those who are unable to work. The difference lies in the method: the state will finance the safety net and supervise basic standards, while the services themselves will be supplied competitively by private providers. In this way, social solidarity is preserved without turning the government into a single monopolistic provider.

Establishing a new state creates a rare opportunity to build the system from the ground up, without inherited obligations, outdated institutions, and entrenched interest groups. It is possible to establish a lean, digital, AI-based government; to set constitutional limits on taxation, debt, and public expenditure in advance; and to place competition, personal responsibility, and freedom of choice at the heart of the economic and social structure.

Yehodaya does not seek to prove that every state must be libertarian, nor is it intended for every person or every Jew. It seeks to offer a genuine option for those who prefer a state in which government serves the citizen but does not manage his life. Precisely because Israel offers the Jewish people a national home based to a considerable extent on a social-democratic model, there is value in creating an additional Jewish center founded on a fundamentally different model.

Yehodaya is not intended to be another Israel in another place. Its purpose is to offer a fundamentally different alternative.

The straightforward answer is that Yehodaya is not a purely libertarian state, and it should not claim to be one. It is a Jewish-libertarian state: a sovereign state founded on a constitution with distinctly libertarian foundations, while consciously accepting several exceptions that it regards as necessary for its existence and stability.

The term “libertarianism” encompasses different schools of thought. Under an anarcho-capitalist definition, the very existence of a state that exercises coercive power, collects taxes, and maintains an army and police force is non-libertarian. Under a minarchist view, a limited state that protects life, property, and contracts can be justified, although even within that framework there will be debate over the level of taxation and compulsory service. Under a broader conception of constitutional liberalism with libertarian foundations, the state may also fund a safety net and basic services, provided that its power is defined, limited, and subordinated to individual rights.

Yehodaya belongs to the third category. In its constitutional structure it is close to minarchism, but it is not purely minarchist in the scope of services it undertakes to provide.

Its libertarian character is reflected in the center of gravity of its system of government:

• Human rights are regarded as natural rights that are not granted by the state.
• The Bill of Rights stands above the Constitution, legislation, and government regulations.
• The powers of the state are defined and limited, and every power not granted to the state remains with the individual.
• The market is based on private property, contracts, competition, and free trade.
• There is no VAT, no customs duties, no subsidies, and no state-owned companies.
• Tax rates are constitutionally capped and cannot be increased by an ordinary government decision.
• The state is prohibited from taking on debt and shifting the cost of present expenditure to future generations.
• There is a complete separation of religion and state.
• Education and healthcare are provided through choice among competing providers rather than through a government monopoly.
• The ability of public authorities to expand their power is constrained through separation of powers, single terms of office, constitutional review, and referendums.

Nevertheless, taxation and compulsory service are genuine exceptions to the principle of liberty, and it would be wrong to portray them otherwise.

Taxation

Every tax is collected coercively and, from a purely libertarian perspective, therefore constitutes an infringement of a person’s property. The fact that a tax rate is fixed, transparent, and uniform does not make it voluntary. A combined tax burden of roughly one-third of income is also substantial and does not fit the description of a state with minimal taxation.

Yehodaya’s justification is practical: taxes are intended to finance a defined set of functions—defense, justice, policing, the basic machinery of government, basic vouchers, and a targeted safety net. In return, the state forgoes VAT, customs duties, hidden taxes, government debt, money creation, and an unlimited authority to increase expenditure.

The prescribed tax rates are ceilings, not targets that the government is required to exhaust. If the functions of the state can be financed at lower rates, there will be no justification for collecting the full constitutional maximum. The libertarian safeguard does not lie in claiming that the tax burden is low by every standard, but in the fact that its maximum scope and the purposes for which it may be collected are limited in advance.

Compulsory Service

Compulsory service is the deeper departure. It does not merely take part of a person’s income; it takes part of his time and liberty. It therefore cannot be claimed that compulsory military service is fully consistent with the principle of self-ownership.

Its justification derives from the choice to establish a small, new, Jewish state that must be capable of defending itself from its first day. Without security, the rights to life, liberty, and property have little practical meaning. Yehodaya prefers to acknowledge the conflict between these principles openly and define a limited exception rather than conceal it behind ideological wording.

To prevent that exception from becoming a general authority over the citizen’s life, compulsory service must be subject to strict conditions:

• It will exist only for the defense of the state and its resilience in times of emergency.
• Its duration and scope will be set by law and will not be subject to administrative expansion.
• It will apply equally, without sectoral or political exemptions.
• Civilian service will serve as an alternative directly related to home-front defense, medicine, rescue, and the operation of essential infrastructure—not as a pool of cheap labor for whatever purpose the government chooses.
• Its necessity will be reviewed periodically, and if the state can be defended through a professional military and a voluntary reserve system, there will be grounds to reduce or abolish it.

Without these restrictions, national service can easily evolve from an exceptional security obligation into a principle under which the state may require citizens to work for general public purposes. Such a principle is not libertarian.

Taxation and compulsory service are not the only areas in which Yehodaya departs from the pure model. Publicly funded vouchers, a negative income tax, mandatory pension savings, and intervention against monopolies also require the exercise of state power. Every such mechanism must therefore be tested against the same question: does it protect individual rights and the state’s ability to exist, or does it merely expand government in the name of a desirable objective?

Not every practical compromise negates the libertarian character of a state. It does so when the exception ceases to be defined and limited and instead becomes a precedent that allows government to intervene in every sphere. The distinction between a state with libertarian foundations and an ordinary state is not the complete absence of coercion, but the attitude toward coercion: is it the government’s default instrument, or an exceptional measure that the government must justify and confine?

Nor does the fact that people will voluntarily choose to move to Yehodaya turn taxation and service obligations into voluntary coercion. The choice to join provides the framework with a high degree of prior consent, but once a person becomes a citizen, the law applies to him. The protection of his liberty must therefore rest on the Constitution and on limits to state authority, not merely on the argument that he chose to join.

The most accurate description is therefore “a Jewish-libertarian state” or “a Jewish state with a constitution and distinctly libertarian characteristics.” The term describes the state’s constitutional direction and center of gravity; it does not claim an ideological purity that does not exist.

If Yehodaya presents itself as a purely libertarian state, criticism of that claim will be justified. If it states candidly that it seeks to realize the greatest possible degree of liberty within a sovereign, sustainable, and defensible state—while explicitly acknowledging its exceptions and constitutionally limiting them—the description “Jewish-libertarian” is appropriate and accurate.

Yehodaya does not choose an ideological purity that would make its own existence impossible, but neither does it use the necessities of existence as a pretext for granting government unlimited power. It seeks to build a state capable of surviving without turning survival into a license to rule the individual’s life.

Because Yehodaya is not a project to establish just any libertarian state. It is a project intended to add a new sovereign option for the Jewish people—and libertarianism is the model through which it seeks to do so.

The combination of Jewish identity and a libertarian outlook does indeed narrow the potential audience. Many people who identify with their Jewishness are not libertarians, and most libertarians in the world are not Jews. But Yehodaya’s objective is not to appeal to the largest possible audience. It needs an audience large enough, and sufficiently committed to the vision, to establish a state and live in it.

A state is not merely an efficient system of laws. It is also a body of people who see a reason to live together, build common institutions, defend one another, and bind their future to the same place. Libertarianism can define the limits of government, individual rights, and the structure of the economy very well; by itself, however, it does not create a people, a language, a shared memory, or a sense of mission.

A general libertarian state might have a theoretically broader target audience, but that audience is dispersed across countries, languages, and identities. Many supporters of liberty would prefer to improve their situation in the country where they already live, move to a low-tax jurisdiction, or adopt a mobile lifestyle. A preference for libertarian policies is not necessarily a sufficiently strong reason to invest capital, uproot a family, and devote years to establishing a new state.

Jewish identity adds what ideology alone cannot provide: a real community, a historical bond, mutual responsibility, and a shared mission. The Jewish people already sustain a global network of communities, institutions, human capital, entrepreneurship, and international connections. They share a history, a culture, and a language, as well as an enduring experience of the need to protect their continued existence. From this human infrastructure, a substantial founding core with the ability and willingness to act can emerge.

Yehodaya is also intended to address a specific Jewish need. It offers a sovereign home to Jews who do not choose to live in Israel, to Israelis who wish to live in another country without giving up Hebrew and their Jewish identity, and to future generations of Jews who may need an additional option. A libertarian state without a Jewish identity might be a good place to live, but it would not assume this mission and would not guarantee a right of return to members of the Jewish people.

The narrower target audience is therefore also a source of strength. A founding community is not built on loose agreement around the broadest possible common denominator, but on deep agreement around a distinctive idea. The clearer the vision, the more readily people can know whether it suits them, and the stronger the commitment of those who choose it.

Nor, in numerical terms, is it necessary to persuade a large share of the Jewish people. The Jewish people number approximately 16 million. One quarter of one percent is about 40,000 people; one percent is about 160,000. A new state does not need millions of settlers on its first day. It initially needs several tens of thousands of people with commitment, skills, and capital, together with the capacity to grow later.

The target audience is also not limited to people who explicitly call themselves “libertarians.” Many may be drawn to strong constitutional protection of individual rights, limited government, fixed and low taxes, economic freedom, personal responsibility, and separation of religion and state even if they do not use the ideological label. The choice will be about the model of life, not the name attached to it.

Yehodaya’s Jewish identity will not turn it into a halachic state and will not give the state authority over a person’s beliefs. Jewish identity will determine whom the state is intended to serve as a home, what its language is, what public calendar it follows, what historical story it carries, and toward which people it accepts responsibility. The libertarian Constitution will determine what the state is forbidden to do to the individual in the name of that identity.

The two choices complement one another:

• Jewish identity answers the questions of for whom the state is being established, why it is needed, and who may be willing to build it.
• The libertarian outlook answers the questions of what the state will look like, how it will allocate powers, and how it will protect the liberty of its citizens.
• Identity creates a community and a mission; the Constitution limits the power that the community exercises through the state.

Without its Jewish identity, Yehodaya could become just another initiative to establish a free economic zone, without a natural community that would see it as a historic undertaking. Without its libertarian foundations, there would be insufficient justification for establishing another Jewish state with a political model fundamentally different from Israel’s.

The union of the two is not a compromise that diminishes the vision. It is the heart of the vision. Yehodaya does not seek to be the state suited to the largest number of people, but to establish a distinctive state that a sufficient number of people will want to devote themselves to building.

Israel is not a failed project in need of replacement. It is the nation-state of the Jewish people, their national and historic home, and one of the greatest achievements in their history. It is right to work to strengthen and improve it, and the establishment of Yehodaya is not intended to replace that effort.

Improving Israel and establishing an additional Jewish state, however, address different needs.

Israel is an established state with a history, institutions, commitments, population groups, and a political system that have developed over many decades. Its social and economic structure is the product of historical circumstances and compromises among different parts of society. Transforming Israel into a libertarian state would require profound changes to arrangements on which millions of citizens rely and would impose a model that most of them would not necessarily want. Such a move would be neither practical nor democratically appropriate.

A new state makes possible something that is almost impossible in an existing one: starting from the foundations. Constitutional limits on government power, taxation, debt, and public expenditure can be set in advance; institutions can be built without historical baggage or entrenched interest groups; and a society can be created in which those who choose to live there voluntarily accept its basic principles.

In addition, roughly half of the Jewish people live outside Israel. Even in the face of antisemitism, insecurity, or deterioration in their countries of residence, not all will choose to immigrate to Israel. Improving Israel, important as that may be, will not necessarily change that choice. Yehodaya seeks to offer them another option: a Hebrew-speaking state, with English as a second language, with a Jewish identity, located in another part of the world and founded on a different social and economic model.

There is also an existential dimension. Concentrating almost all of the Jewish people’s sovereign, military, and diplomatic capacity in one state and one geographic region creates a single point of risk. An additional Jewish state would not eliminate that risk, but it would disperse it. In an extreme emergency, it could serve as a strategic rear base, absorb population, and assist Israel out of Jewish and historical commitment.

A Jewish community, an autonomous city, or a special economic zone cannot perform all these functions. Only a sovereign state can defend its borders, determine immigration and citizenship policy, maintain an independent constitutional system, possess a security force, and act on behalf of its citizens in the international arena.

Yehodaya is not intended to compete with Israel for status or to replace it. It is intended to be a strategic partner and an additional center of Jewish strength, creativity, and continuity. Just as the existence of strong Jewish communities around the world does not weaken Israel, the existence of another state with a Jewish identity need not weaken it and may strengthen the Jewish people as a whole.

The choice, therefore, is not between improving Israel and establishing Yehodaya. Both can and should be pursued. Israel is the national and historic home of the Jewish people; Yehodaya seeks to add another option, greater diversity, and greater security for the future.

Establishing a new state is an extraordinarily difficult undertaking. At this stage, Yehodaya has no territory, no interstate agreement, no committed capital, no founding population, and no international recognition. It would therefore be irresponsible to claim that its success is assured or that its chances can already be meaningfully assessed.

But difficulty is not the same as impossibility, and an ambitious vision is not necessarily a utopia.

A utopia generally describes a perfect society based on the assumption that human beings will behave perfectly. Yehodaya assumes no such thing. On the contrary, its proposed structure is based on the recognition that people also act out of self-interest, and it therefore includes constitutional limits, dispersed authority, transparency, competition, and oversight mechanisms designed to reduce the opportunity to accumulate and abuse power.

The international system is not static either. Borders, sovereignty arrangements, and political frameworks have changed many times throughout history as a result of agreements, wars, economic interests, and political change. That alone is sufficient to establish that creating a new state by agreement is possible in principle.

The practical possibility rests on creating a transaction from which all parties benefit. A country with a vast territory, low population density, and a need for capital and development may find value in an agreement that offers substantial financial consideration, infrastructure investment, job creation, trade, and long-term cooperation in exchange for an uninhabited area of which it has an abundance. It does not need to support Yehodaya’s Jewish or libertarian vision; it needs to be persuaded that the agreement serves its own interests.

For such a transaction to become possible, Yehodaya must approach it as a serious project rather than an abstract idea. That will require a founding team with proven capabilities, legal and geopolitical due diligence, assessment of potential territories, an economic and security plan, capital commitments, and a genuine core of people prepared to participate in the establishment process.

The process must be gradual and tested against clear milestones:

• Establish a professional Founding Council.
• Develop an economic, legal, security, and geographic feasibility plan.
• Identify suitable countries and territories.
• Establish initial contacts with relevant governments.
• Secure capital commitments and a founding human core.
• Obtain a framework agreement for the transfer of territory and sovereign powers.
• Build infrastructure and begin gradual settlement only after the agreements and resources are in place.

At this stage, Yehodaya is a vision and an initial plan. The purpose of this document is to mobilize the people, knowledge, and resources that can turn the vision into a practical program.

The way to determine whether Yehodaya is possible is to break the vision into tasks, begin to act, and see whether reality responds.

Because the document is not an invitation to decide at some future point what kind of state should be established. It proposes the establishment of a specific state, with an identity, principles, and limits on government defined in advance.

“General principles” are a direction that can be interpreted in different ways, changed, or abandoned when disagreement arises. Phrases such as “a free state,” “efficient government,” or “Jewish identity” can be given entirely contradictory meanings. Without explicit commitments, almost any system of government could claim to fulfill them.

“Binding principles” means that the Founding Council receives a mandate to translate those principles into a plan, a constitution, and institutions—not to reopen the choice of the principles themselves. The state’s Jewish identity, protection of natural rights, limited government, separation of religion and state, free market, tax ceilings, prohibition on debt, and political sovereignty are not starting points for negotiation. They are the reasons for establishing Yehodaya.

Yehodaya is not yet a state, and this document has no governmental authority. The binding force is internal to the project: it defines the conditions for joining it and the boundaries within which the Founding Council will operate.

Every person is free to agree with the idea, reject it, or propose a vision for a different state. A person who chooses to join Yehodaya does so because he accepts its founding principles. Joining the project in order later to change its central purpose would betray those who invested time, money, and their future on the basis of the original promise.

This is also why there is no advantage in mobilizing a broad public around vague formulations. Thousands of people who agree on a general slogan but disagree on every decisive question are not a foundation for establishing a state. A smaller group united by clear agreement on the principles and by a willingness to act to realize them is a genuine founding force.

The binding principles also protect against gradual erosion. Without clear boundaries, every principle may be softened in the name of a temporary compromise: the tax ceiling becomes a recommendation, the prohibition on debt acquires exceptions, limited government creates another ministry, and separation of religion and state is postponed for political necessity. After several such compromises, a new state may remain—but not the state for which it was established.

Even after the state is established, democracy will operate within the constitutional framework. Citizens will elect a president, legislators, and judges, determine policy, and be able to amend the Constitution by the special majority prescribed for that purpose. But the purpose of a constitution is precisely to limit the power of a temporary majority to abolish rights, breach constraints, and transform the state into something else.

The word “binding” is intended to tell the reader something simple and direct: this is the Yehodaya being offered to him. He is invited to choose it and build it—not to join a blank page and discover later what kind of state was written upon it.

The first practical step is to establish the Yehodaya Founding Council—a professional body with responsibility, a budget, a timetable, and defined deliverables that will translate the vision into a plan of action.

A state is not established by a document alone. For governments, founders, and investors to treat Yehodaya seriously, there must be an identifiable and credible body capable of negotiating, raising capital, presenting plans, and accepting responsibility for their execution.

The Founding Council will consist of people with proven experience and practical commitment. Its work will be organized into four principal divisions:

• Constitution and Law Division: to draft the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the structure of state institutions, and the agreement for the transfer of sovereignty.
• Economics and Finance Division: to build the fiscal model, tax system, currency framework, Foundation Fund, and financing plan.
• Infrastructure and Resources Division: to assess territories and plan water, energy, transportation, communications, cities, and physical security.
• Human Capital and Society Division: to plan absorption, education, healthcare, welfare assistance, and recruitment of the required professionals.

Alongside them, an executive and diplomatic team will lead relations with governments, strategic partners, investors, and Jewish communities. Council members and teams will be selected for their ability to build and execute, and each will bear responsibility for a defined field and defined objectives.

In its first stage, the Founding Council will be required to produce several clear deliverables:

• Establish a legal entity capable of raising funds, entering into contracts, and employing a team.
• Set rules for internal governance, transparency, auditing, and prevention of conflicts of interest.
• Establish the Foundation Fund and publish, in real time, the sources of funds and how they are used.
• Prepare a full feasibility study including costs, timetables, risks, and population scenarios.
• Examine possible territories and prepare a detailed diplomatic and economic proposal for each suitable country.
• Complete drafts of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the agreement for the transfer of sovereignty.
• Build a database of founders, professionals, investors, and prospective residents willing to commit to the project.

The call to like and share is intended to identify the public to whom the idea speaks and to broaden its exposure. The next step is to convert general support into practical commitments: working time, professional knowledge, connections, capital, and a willingness to move to Yehodaya when the project becomes reality.

The Founding Council will not be the government of Yehodaya, nor will membership in it entitle anyone to a position in the future state. Its authority will be temporary and limited to establishing the project. Once the state’s elected institutions are constituted, the Council will conclude its work and transfer authority to them.

Once the Council, the legal entity, and the initial plan have been established, two tracks can proceed in parallel: raising initial capital and opening discussions with countries that meet the criteria. Progress on either track will strengthen the other—capital will demonstrate execution capacity, and diplomatic progress will attract additional capital.