There is a famous quote from Achad Ha'Am: “More than the Jewish people have kept (i.e. observed) the Shabbos, the Shabbos has kept (i.e. preserved) the Jewish people.”
In 1948, the fifth of Iyar was on a Friday, and the British Mandate ended that Friday night at midnight. According to international law, the Jews could not have declared the founding of the "new" country until Friday night which was the sixth of Iyar. However, some of the people who signed the declaration of the medinah were shomer Shabbos, so the document was signed, and the declaration was made, on the fifth of Iyar.
In the Sefer Kol Hator, which was written by one of the students of the Vilna Gaon and printed well before 1948, three specific days are singled out as special days that would turn out in the future to lead to the geulah: the fifth Iyar, the sixth of Iyar, and the twenty-eighth of Iyar. Professor Elazar Hurwitz, sheyichyeh, who taught in our yeshiva for many years, remembers that when the medinah was declared Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlop was dancing in the streets of Yerushalayim and he remarked, “now we understand what it said in the Kol Hator about the fifth and the sixth of Iyar, but we still don't know what is to take place on the twenty-eighth of Iyar". Rav Charlop did not live long enough to experience Yom Yerushalayim on the twenty-eighth of Iyar years later. The reason both days (the fifth and the sixth) were singled out in the Kol Hator is because the declaration was signed on the fifth but, according to international law, it did not take effect until the sixth.
According to news reports, one of the candidates who wants to become prime minister of Israel is running on the platform that he will see to it that the government will allow buses to run on Shabbos. The whole founding of the medinah in the first place on the fifth of Iyar was based on shemiras Shabbos. If we should take away the public shemiras Shabbos, chalilah, this may cause the whole collapse of the Jewish state. Rabbi Herzog (the second chief rabbi) would often quote midrashim which point out that the prophets told us that there will not be a third churban of the medinah. I think that means that from Heaven they will not cause the medinah to dissolve. But human beings have bechirah chofshis and if the government decides to take away the public observance of Shabbos we have, in effect, dissolved the medinah.
Every morning when we recite pesukei d'zimrah in the paragraph which begins with "v'choros imo ha'bris”, we quote the pesukim which state that Eretz Yisroel was promised to the descendants of Avraham, i.e. zera Avraham. Tosafos in Yevamos shows that there are two differences between the term "ben" and the term "zera". When one plants an apple seed in the ground it will grow into an apple tree. And when one plants seeds from that apple tree they will grow into additional apple trees, and so on and so forth. The term "zera", which means a seed, only applies if it is a zera kasher, i.e. that the descendants follow in the footsteps of Avraham Avinu. “Zera” does include, however, all such descendants in all future generations. The term "ben", by contrast, refers to a biological offspring whether it follows in the footsteps of the parent or not, and only applies to the first generation, not subsequent generations. Eretz Yisroel was promised to the "zera Avraham", i.e. to all the future generations who will follow in the footsteps of Avraham Avinu.
For many years the policy of the Orthodox Union was that Jews in America should not take a stand on political issues in Eretz Yisroel. After the Israeli government forced all the Jewish settlers to evacuate Gush Katif, the OU had a convention in Yerushalayim. At that time, it was reported that the Israeli government was only concerned with what the reaction of the Jews in America would be. If the American Orthodox Jews would have publicly expressed their opposition to that evacuation program, the government never would have gone through with it. Representatives of the government told people from the OU that they are only concerned about the reaction from the Orthodox Jews in the diaspora, because the Orthodox always support the medinah, while the other factions of the Jewish community do not always support the medinah, and therefore their opinion did not count too much as far as the Israeli government was concerned. As such, at that OU convention, a resolution was passed that from then on, the OU would speak out on political issues in Eretz Yisroel.
I feel that all the Orthodox organizations in America should make it clear that this suggestion of introducing public chilul Shabbos in Eretz Yisroel should not be considered at all. Achad Ha'am was very far from being a "chareidi", but he understood that more than the Jewish people kept the Shabbos, the Shabbos preserved the uniqueness of the Jewish people.