The 3761-year-old Nation Celebrates a Reborn 75 Years

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the newborn State of Israel read the Israeli Declaration of Independence in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, known today as Independence Hall, affirming the biblical roots of Judaism with legitimate rights to the establishment of a state in the Judaic ancestral homeland.

Seven Arab armies marched on the nascent state with its population of 600,000. Six thousand Jews died. The 1949 truce saw Israel with an increased border even as 700,000 Arabs fled, some in fear, others awaiting Arab victory over Israel. These are the Arabs who now call themselves Palestinians.

Throughout the Muslim world in the Middle East and North Africa an enforced exodus ensued when 850,000 Jews were exiled from the Arab lands they had lived in for generations upon generations, arriving in Israel to become Israeli citizens.

Since 1973 after a succession of wars the last one the Yom Kippur War, Arab armies never again attacked Israel; in their place skirmishes and attacks have taken place between Israel and Palestinians represented by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, (provocations and attacks by Hamas have led to two wars between Israel and Hamas), both of which continue to reject the presence of a Jewish state, both of which have a mandate to destroy it; one posing as a 'partner for peace' in a public relations ploy to influence the international community to the belief that the PA's intentions are peaceful.

David Ben Gurion reads the declaration of independence on May 14, 1948 at the museum in Tel Aviv, below a photo of Theodor Herzl. Photo by Zoltan Kluger/GPO via Getty Images

Since that time, Israel has evolved dramatically, no longer a struggling community of Jews collected from the world-wide diaspora to join the Jewish presence that had never left their ancestral land. The remnants of European Jewry, surviving the Holocaust that accompanied the Second World War made their weary way abroad, mostly to Israel. Their ancestral home, Zion. Jews today committed to Israel as the reborn homeland of the Jewish people whether practising the orthodoxy of Judaism or ethnic, non-religious Jews, this is their homeland, they are Zionists. Jews are welcomed in Israel as a haven and homeland committed to their future.

Israelis drained swamps to create arable land, transformed desert to forests, became expert pioneering agriculturalists, scientists who solved the problems of a shortage of potable water. Even desalinization of the soil had to be undertaken to make the ground suitable for growing food. A vast experiment in collective life through the Kibbutz idealization of 'back to the land' inspired Israelis through commitment to hard labour and equal sharing of the fruits of their labour. 

Israel today is not the Israel of yesterday, but it is the Israel that resulted from yesterday's Israel pulling itself up by its proverbial bootstraps to forge a modern, technologically savvy, stable and advanced country committed to democracy and the rule of law. The world's highest number of tech startups per capita distinguishes the country. Its medical facilities reflect medical science's most advanced capabilities. It has an unemployment rate under 4 percent of the population, among the world's best.

A life expectancy of 82.7 years places the country seventh in the world in that category, and Israelis post a happiness index that places it at ninth in the world. Its expertise in water management and conservation makes it in high demand to steer other water-vulnerable nations toward self-sufficiency. Its familiarity with conflict in its never-ending need to defend itself from hostile neighbours has driven Israel to design and perfect self-protective systems like its Iron Dome, the missile defence system envied wherever nations see a need to defend themselves.

Israel's GDP per capita at $40,500(US) places it at the OECD average. Israel's rate of higher education ranks among the highest in the world. Eight wars and two intifadas has taught Israel how to look after itself and the welfare of its citizens, 20 percent of whom are non-Jews with full citizenship. Vigilance against terrorist attacks is never relaxed, for it remains a country under constant threat by its nearest neighbours. Reason enough for the tiny nation to have a legal, obligatory compulsory service of two years in the Israeli military when a citizen, male or female turns 18 years of age.

Service in the Armed Forces (Israel Defence Forces) is a requirement to ensure that the country will be able to call upon its citizens who have been militarily trained, had experience in discipline and awareness of conflict situations, given the fact that in the country every few hours there is a pipe bomb, rocket attack, stabbing or attempted vehicular attack on members of the military and the civilian population in random acts of lethal violence. 

 

When diaspora Jews begin feeling the sting of adversity simply because they are Jews, when antisemitism begins rising, when threats and violence target Jews and their sense of insecurity grows in countries where they were born, where their parents and grandparents were born, but no longer offer stable security, they turn to Israel, to make Aliya, to go home to haven, comfort, security and the assurance of being wanted.

"When something must be done, people try. And try. And just do not give up."

"This intensity has given rise to so much reactivity and inventiveness that it often defies logic."

"Failure, really, is just another step on the way to success."

"[A] sense of imminent disaster is real and deeply embedded in the national DNA."

"So much of 'normal' daily life is saturated with an urgency you simply don't feel in most places."

Vivian Bercovici, head, Tel Aviv news site, Tel Aviv 

An 1850 painting of the 70ad destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Photo by David Roberts