10 | MAY 11 • 2023
essay
Israel At 75: A Richer, Stronger Nation
T
oday’s Israel is much
different from the
Israel of my youth. It
is richer, stronger and much
more diverse. I grew up in a
seemingly egalitarian Israel,
where our economy rested on
socialist principles. The kibbutz
(collective farm
community) was
the symbol of our
society’s success
well into 1970s
and beyond, and
it produced most
of our military
and political lead-
ership. Capitalism was almost a
dirty word, yet Western culture
permeated much of our urban
life in the state’s early decades.
Growing up in the shadow
of the Holocaust made Israel
determined to overcome the
odds against it. In its first
war for survival, the 1948
War of Independence, Israel
prevailed over the combined
Arab armies of Egypt, Jordan,
Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, who
openly declared to the world
their world intention to destroy
us. George Marshall, President
Harry Truman’s secretary of
state, didn’t think the nascent
Jewish state could survive. He
cautioned Truman against rec-
ognizing the Jewish state.
The early years were bleak.
Between 1949 (immediately
after the War of Independence)
and 1951, the country absorbed
more people than it previously
had on May 14, 1948, when
David Ben-Gurion (Israel’s
founding father and first prime
minister) declared the indepen-
dence of the Jewish state.
The absorption of over a
million Jews, Holocaust sur-
vivors and Middle Eastern
Jews expelled from Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya,
etc., necessitated an auster-
ity program. This era in the
early 1950s was called Tzena.
Families received coupons for
basic foods such as milk, eggs,
potatoes, etc. Meat was scarce
and expensive. Private cars
were rare, and such essentials
taken for granted today, includ-
ing refrigerators (we used ice
boxes), telephones and tele-
vision sets were the property
of few. Those individuals who
owned a TV could only receive
broadcasts from the Arab states
and Europe. Israel launched its
TV broadcasting in May 1968.
Another dramatic rise in
Israel’s Jewish population came
in the early 1990s with the
influx of Jews from the former
Soviet Union and Ethiopia.
Almost 1.5 million arrived and
impacted the demographic
balance between Israelis and
the Palestinians. Yasser Arafat’s
threat that “Palestinian-Arab
wombs would bury Israel”
didn’t materialize.
Israel’s population grew
from around 806,000 in 1948
to about 9.7 million in 2023,
with the Jewish population
numbering 7.1 million (figures
given by Times of Israel). Today,
Jewish birthrates in Israel are
in parity with the Palestinians.
Most remarkable has been the
nation’s many decades of suc-
cessful integration of people of
widely diverse backgrounds.
TECHNOLOGICAL
ADVANCES
Not long ago, Israel was
energy-dependent and water-
starved. But with freedom of
thought and creativity encour-
aged, the discovery of signif-
icant gas deposits off Israel’s
shores are making the country
a potential energy exporter. Its
desalination plants, a model for
the world, makes Israel water
self-sufficient.
Still, lacking natural resourc-
es, Israel’s brain power and
ingenuity have made it a world
leader in the crucial areas of
medicine, water technology,
desert agriculture and environ-
mental protection, recycling as
much as 90% of its wastewa-
ter. Israel has been sharing its
important advances and con-
servation practices with nations
rich and poor throughout the
world, enhancing our parched
planet.
The country has become
known globally as the Startup
Nation, being the next country
after the U.S. in companies
represented on the USA Stock
Exchange.
For decades, the Arab League
economic boycott of Israel
aimed at stifling its growth and
causing its people to abandon
the country didn’t succeed.
The privatization policies of
Benjamin Netanyahu in the
21st century propelled Israel
into becoming a major eco-
nomic success story. It resulted
in the Arab boycott disap-
pearing and Israel’s growing
acceptance among its hitherto
enemies in the Arab world.
This ultimately translated
into the Abraham Accords
of September 2020, when
Bahrain and the United Arab
Emirates signed a peace treaty
with Israel, to which Morocco
and Sudan (still pending) also
joined. Egypt and Jordan,
acknowledging Israel as a for-
midable neighbor, signed peace
treaties with Israel in 1979 and
1994, respectively.
TODAY’S CHALLENGES
Domestically, Israel has some
challenges, as do all nations.
Constitutional issues that in
Israel are referred to as Judicial
Reform have sharpened
some divisions in the country
between left and right, secu-
lar and religious Israelis. Yet,
democracy and free speech
have been on full display.
In the foreseeable future,
Israel is facing a gathering
storm. The Islamic Republic
of Iran and its proxies are
threatening to attack Israeli
population centers from mul-
tiple fronts. Saudi Arabia, until
recently a major prospect to
join the USA-backed Abraham
Accords, has instead turned
and reached a rapprochement
with Iran via Chinese media-
Joseph
Puder
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