I am frequently asked if I have visited Israel, whereas yet, it is simply assumed that I have. Well, I don’t travel. I really don’t, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic, I was not. I said: what are we doing? We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea. The Muslims will never forget nor forgive, and Israel, as long as it exists, will be embattled. I was laughed at, but I was right. I can’t help but feel that the Jews didn’t really have the right to appropriate a territory only because 2000 years ago, people they consider their ancestors, were living there. History moves on and you can’t really turn it back. (#92 ff.)

In between he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station. During his oral examination shortly thereafter Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he received. He especially worries that Israel has been created among hostile neighbours and that Jews have merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".

His only works in the 100s—which covers philosophy and psychology—were forewords for The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982) a festschrift in honor of philosopher Sir Karl Popper's 80th birthday. He often provides nationalities birth dates and death dates for the scientists he mentions as well as etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.