Israel at 60
The celebrations surrounding the 60th anniversary of Israel provide an opportunity for reflecting at length on the development – and, let’s face it – extraordinary success of that country.
The story is known, and there is no need to be reminded of it. But as generations come and go, as memories fade and thoughts and fears and criticisms triggered by headline news fill the communication arena, the success of Israel’s development over 60 years of existence is disappearing under the tyranny of immediate concerns and, even more, under an implicit and apparent evidence: We take it for granted, say our English-speaking friends – as if such development was a given. But nothing was a given.
Of course, military capacity has been strengthened: out of a motley collection of military units, without any aircraft, has come one of the most powerful and efficient armies in the world, on the leading edge of technology.
A country deprived of oil resources – located in a part of the world that is far from fertile and whose major export product for a long time was citrus fruit – has been transformed economically into a power whose GDP far exceeds that of its neighbours, despite the fact that they are far more populated and richer in natural resources.
Science and technology have flowered exceptionally, with world-class research in many key areas and an intellectual and artistic environment whose liveliness expresses itself in every creative sphere.
Demographic transformation has multiplied the population tenfold in 60 years, and the new arrivals have been included in the labour market. Do we remember the forecasts of unemployment of apocalyptic proportions that some were predicting for Israel when one million immigrants arrived from the Soviet Union, in just a few years, representing 20% of the country’s population, at a time of economic hardships?
A COMMON HERITAGE
And what of the cultural integration which has enabled immigrant Jews coming from very diverse and far flung countries to study, work and fight together, while rekindling the specific riches of their common heritage. From Ethiopia to the Caucasus, from Iraq to Romania, from Yemen to the United States, a common Israeli citizenship with common obligations, values and dignity.
There is the attraction exerted on the vast majority of Jews around the world, as seen in the solidarity of the Jewish community in France and its mass migrations during vacation periods. There is the balance between the world of the datiim and the hilonim, the religious and the secular – such opposing views of what it means to be the Jewish people. A difficult but essential balance, that grows slowly out of dialogue and does not put up with scorn.
There is the presence of an Arab population which, over and above the difficulties, temptations and propaganda, largely plays the game of Israeli citizenship with its advantages and constraints.
There are governments and services which have succeeded in establishing a generally enviable security, when many, just a few years ago, were predicting an unbearable increase in the number of terrorist attacks.
There are Israel’s young people who, despite their apparent attraction for consumer society, have always answered “present” when the State needed them.
And finally there is a freedom of opinion and criticism that is quite unique in the world, and a totally democratic society surrounded by more or less openly avowed dictatorships.
“KOL HAKAVOD”
Yes, I know, I have put on rosy spectacles to write these lines. One could counter them with a list of recriminations, fears, anger, conflicts, anathemas and failures. There are some who do not hesitate to do so, and that too can be useful. But what is the main thing in the long term?
Let us remove from our thinking any idea that human scale solutions will make the problems disappear once and for all. That is something for Messianic times, and I will not give an opinion on when those days will come, so many have been the disappointments in the past.
Israeli society’s resilience, creativity and capacity to rise to challenges are remarkable.
Let us hope that today’s chief risks, those deriving from a deterioration of the educational and demographic levels, will be taken charge of in the same way as other risks in the past.
In the limited range of my human experience, which is about as long as the existence of the State of Israel, if we look at where it was in 1948 and where it stands today in 2008, it is with admiration and confidence that I write: Bravo, Kol Hakavod!
Richard Prasquier
President of CRIF
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