Israel at 40: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

One of Israel’s leading poets wrote recently that the State of Israel is the realization of the greatest collective effort of the Jewish people since Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt. In the forty years since the leadership of a small community of 600,000 souls proclaimed the establishment of the state, this effort has shown dramatic results indeed.

On the very first day of Israel’s existence, we were invaded by the armies of seven countries, whose combined populations outnumbered ours by more than a hundred to one. A full one percent of Israel’s population was killed in our war of independence—in American terms today that would mean the loss of two-and-a-half million people.

In relation to its size, the country’s borders were longer than any other country’s, and virtually indefensible. Its infrastructure was embryonic, and its economy based mostly on agriculture and light industry. Yet in its first years Israel successfully repelled the military onslaught, defended itself against a continuous terrorist campaign, and absorbed and integrated 1.2 million Jews, twice the number of its original Jewish population.

Contrary to common perceptions, most of these immigrants were not the surviving remnants of the holocaust, but Jews from Arab countries, indigenous to the region, whose lives had become intolerable after World War II, and who were often in danger of annihilation. Almost 800,000 of them came to Israel, and now more than half of Israel’s population is of Middle Eastern and North African origin.

Other immigrants, white, brown and black, arrived from over a hundred countries, speaking almost as many languages and dialects. They came from areas of unimaginable poverty and from the most prosperous lands on earth, from totalitarian dictatorships, medieval tyrannies and the most enlightened democracies. Afflicted by differences, irritations and incompatibilities, they have nevertheless become one nation, all pulling—albeit often contentiously—in the same direction. And despite the natural volatility of such a mix, they have created a sound and secure society. Violent crime in Israel, for instance, including terrorist acts, is among the lowest in the industrial democracies—and one-tenth of that in the United States.