Israel's Tenacity

Which other country surrounded on all sides by intransigently bellicose neighbours furious at the existence of a tiny piece of geography in their midst has had to defend itself in six wars in six decades of its existence? With contiguous borders of larger countries, all of them led by militant rulers, the sole democracy among the sheikdoms, kingdoms and tyrannies defended itself so successfully that none of the wars forced upon it managed to dislodge it from its historical perch representing its heritage.

Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Two peace agreements were forged with its neighbours, uneasy truces in a general atmosphere of edgy suspicion. Demands were made and continue to be made on the tiny country that it absorb people who fled its fledgling declaration of itself as a state reborn. At the same time the neighbouring countries which had summarily exiled members of the same ethnic and religious heritage as that of the new country, saw no reason that they should restore to the exiles their appropriated properties.

Now the tiny country has prospered immensely, after its long struggles to survive its hostile environment. While its neighbours remain dependent on their monosource of income related to fossil fuels resources, Israel has distinguished itself as a high-tech economy, a member-country among other industrial nations of the OECD. In seven decades of its rebirth its population has grown ten-fold, absorbing Jews from the countries that spurned their citizenship.

Praying at the Western Wall, Jerusalem

As a thriving democracy in a sea of undemocratic theocracies, kingdoms and kleptocracies, the country's last election saw a 85% electoral turnout at the polls. Israelis live on the edge of suspense, never knowing when the next suicide attack will erupt out of the West Bank or even from within its own borders, by Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Rockets continue to make their way from Gaza into Israel, threatening border communities.

An Aryan country in a broader Arab geographical region threatens often on the world stage that it intends to destroy the State of Israel, and its threats are echoed by its proxy terrorist groups, funded and employed by the Islamic Republic of Iran to make the occasional foray abroad to strike at vulnerable Jewish targets. This is the country that other international countries recognize strives to attain nuclear arms to match their long-range missile batteries.

A relative island of calm and enterprise in a larger area of eruptive violence, where Islamist jihadists have been wreaking havoc in a chaotic abyss of disorder and terror creating millions of refugees fleeing privation and death, Europe's peace has been shattered by the desperation of hundreds of thousands of migrants risking death on the high seas to find haven elsewhere than their countries of origin wracked by civil war and sectarian enmity.

The mass persecution, rapes, slaughter, unspeakable atrocities that Muslims are foisting on one another in tribal and sectarian rage speaks to an implosion of pathological dysfunction. In the midst of a regime barrel bombing and chemical bombing its own populations, where jihadists enslave women and minorities, and archaeological treasures of world renown are  being destroyed, Israel looks outward nervously and inward calmly.

Israel's seven universities and five medical schools continue to generate royalties and licences for new technologies in the commercialization of its wide scientific and medical knowledge. Discoveries of significant natural gas reserves off Israel's coast will further make it more independent and capable of supplying its neighbours with a source of energy.

From its biblical-era past to its present-day reincarnation as a home for the world's Jews and a haven from traditional persecution suffered over the millennia , Israel lives triumphant.