Birthdays and Anniversaries are a funny thing. Of course, they are a time for
celebration. But if we are really going
to bring meaning to our lives, then we would be well-advised to use these
milestones as an occasion for introspection as well. Birthdays and anniversaries are a perfect
time for taking stock and asking oneself:
Are things turning out the way I’d really like them to? If not, what can I do to change things? Looking ahead to the next year, what might I
do differently?
As with personal milestones, how much more
so with collective milestones! When a
country celebrates its annual holiday, it is certainly a time for celebrating
everything that’s good about that country.
All of her successes and achievements.
All the ways that the country’s very existence has enriched and improved
the lives of her citizens.
When approaching Israeli Independence
Day, it is not difficult to celebrate in this way. That the lives of most of her citizens are
vastly better because of the outcome of the events of 1948 is, as the kids say
today, a no-brainer. In her earliest
years, there were two predominant realities of the citizens of Israel. One: they survived the Shoah, the Nazi Holocaust
and did so with their spirit, strength and initiative intact and even
sharpened. The second: that they were forced out of the homes in the
Arab World that their families had dwelt in for – in some cases – thousands of
years. And their host nations’
punishment to them for the Palestinian Jews’ daring to declare and found a state? To force them to move en masse to that
very state…a state set up in a homeland for which they had been praying for
thousands of years! So, whether a Jew
found his or her way to the State of Israel as a refugee from the ashes of the
destroyed civilization of the Jews of Europe, or from homes in the Arab World
lost because of the state’s existence, here is no doubt that their
moving to Israel represented an Aliyah – a going up – in every sense of
the word.
Go to Israel and the most outstanding
feature of the landscape which you’ll note will be the extent to which she is,
and I say this at the risk of using a phrase which has become cliché, a land of
contrasts.
Travelling through Israel, one cannot
escape the reality that she is an ancient land; the physical reminders of past
civilisations confront the traveler at almost every turn. Never have I seen a country whose populace
has such a passion for archeology, as Israel.
And I have also lived in Greece, where ancient ruins are everywhere. But in Israel it’s not just the stones of the
land that serve as a constant reminder of ages past. Travel around, and one sees people whose
dress and behavior hearkens to past centuries.
People who refuse to change their ways just because of the passage of
epochs. And I don’t mean only Jews; I
think of communities of Christians, Muslims and others who live out a mindset
for preservation. And I also don’t mean
this in a negative sense – it is wonderful to have a living link to the past.
On the other hand the State of Israel
is, at the age of 67, a relatively young country – barely through adolescence
as these things go! Not only is the country
young; her population is relatively young. The median age of Israel’s population is 29.3
years. This compares to 37.5 years for
Australia, 36.8 years for New Zealand, 40.5 for the United Kingdom, and 36.9
for the United States. Given this fact, it
is not surprising that there is in Israel a palpable vibrancy in the air. It’s a young land, full of young people, who
are full of energy and optimism. And
yet, Israel ranks 18th in the world in life expectancy – 81.38
years. She is just behind Switzerland,
and ahead of Iceland. For comparison,
Australia is number nine at 82.15 years, New Zealand 25th at 81.05
years, the UK 30th at 80.54 years, and the USA 53rd at 78.88
years.
Israel is a country with one of the world’s highest standards of
living. According to the UN’s 2015 Human
Development Index, Israel ranks 19th of 187 nations in the world. This is an incredible achievement and would
seem counter-intuitive for several reasons.
First, so many of her citizens arrived as refugees, penniless and often
without education, from places where they were severely persecuted. One would think that the costs of absorbing,
feeding, housing, educating and assimilating all these refugees would impose an
economic cost that would drag Israel’s standard of living far lower. And then there’s the crushing defence
burden. Per 1,000 population, 21.4
Israelis are serving on active duty in the defence forces – third highest in
the world after North Korea and Eritrea.
And total military service – including reserves and paramilitary forces –
is, at 78.8 per 1,000 the fifth highest in the world after North Korea,
Armenia, Singapore and China. And the
percentage of the Gross Domestic Product that is spent on defence is the fourth
highest in the world at 5.6 percent – behind Oman at 11.6, Saudi Arabia at 9,
and Afghanistan at 6.4. And the hidden
cost of having so many men and women under arms at any given moment – and of
paying and equipping them – should logically be a far lower national
productivity and standard of living. But
Israel, in so many ways, defies logic.
Speaking of Gross Domestic Product, Israel ranks 32nd in the
world at $32,491. This compares to Australia,
19th in the world at $43,202; New Zealand, 28th at $34,731;
UK, 24th at $38,259; and the USA 10th at $53,042.
Lists of achievements by Israel and
her citizens frequently circulate the Internet; assuming that they are
accurate, Israel is the world’s leader in so many critical sciences and
technologies. It is a country not only
with an incredible amount of brainpower, but with a cultural climate which
makes for the unleashing of an amazing amount of creativity in so many fields.
I almost hesitate to use Nobel Prizes
as a measure of a nation’s level of achievement, since the 2009 award of the
Nobel Peace Prize to Obama, for the potential for peace that his
election to the US Presidency offered to the world. That was certainly an empty-headed gesture on
the part of the Nobel Committee. But
that aside, 12 Israelis have won Nobel Prizes.
Whilst this is not a high number in absolute terms, it is important to
note that Israel ranks 11th in the world for Nobel laureates per
capita. And this, from a country
that has only been a country only about half the years since 1here the
annual awarding of Nobel Prizes began in 1895.
(It should be noted that Alfred Nobel was a Lutheran, not a Jew
as is popularly, and erroneously thought.
But in any case, Nobel died a year after the institution of the prize
bearing his name. Furthermore, the Nobel
Committee is made up of Swedes and Norwegians.
There are some 15,000 Jews in Sweden, 0.158 percent of the population. And some 1,300 Jews in Norway, 0.026
percent. So it is highly unlikely that successive
Nobel Committees were inclined to load their choices with Jews or Israelis…more
likely the opposite.)
Having said the aforementioned,
it is good to acknowledge the elephant in the room. The Arab citizens of Israel, at least some of
them, join the Arabs of the world in mourning Israeli Independence Day as an
Nakhba, the Catastrophe. This, opposed
to the Miracle that the Jews are celebrating the same day. The point is that the Arab world insists on
seeing the birth of the State of Israel as a terrible thing for the Palestinian
Arab people not to mention the Arab peoples as a whole and even all of the
realm of Islam, imposed on them by the Western World as a way of placating
their consciences for allowing the Holocaust to happen. Ignoring the assertion that Israel was imposed
on the Arabs as far too complex for the current drash, this raises the question: by what objective measure is the
establishment and existence of Israel a Catastrophe for the Palestinian Arabs? Did Israel’s independence rob the Palestinians
of their independence? Hardly. UN Resolution 181 of 28 November 1947,
commonly called in Jewish circles “The Miracle of Lake Success” after the town
on Long Island where the UN headquarters was located at the time, called for
the partition of British Mandatory Palestine into two states: one for the Jews and one for the Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the UN vote and
never declared or established a state. In
the wake of the Israeli War of Independence, most of the land that the
Resolution 181 had ceded to the Arab Palestinians, were occupied by Jordan and
Egypt, obviously two Arab nations. They
could have helped the Palestinians to set up a state anytime from 1948 until
1967, but they did not. So there never
was a Palestinian state, and during the 20 years that the Arab world had the
ability to create one unilaterally, they did not. So the ‘Catastrophe’ of the Palestinians’ not
having a state, iff one can reasonably call that a Catastrophe,
cannot be blamed on Israel or anyone else in the world.
That said, what is the living condition of the “stateless” Palestinians? It is possible to take a very objective
measure of this. Remember the life
expectancy of Israelis, 81.38 years? The
Palestinian territories come out considerably lower at 75.01 years. But compare that to neighbouring Arab
countries: Egypt at 73.7 years; Syria at
75.59 years; Lebanon at 75.9 years; and Jordan at 80.54 years. So life expectancy among Palestinians in the
territories is on par with three of the four neighbouring Arab countries whilst
Jordan is not far behind Israel. And let’s
go back to the Human Development Index, in which Israel ranks 19th of
187 countries. The Palestinian
territories rate considerably lower at 107th. But compare that to Egypt at 110th
and Syria at 118th. Jordan
ranks considerably higher at 77th, whilst Lebanon scores an even
better 65th.
So what are we supposed to learn from all these figures? That the Palestinian Arabs enjoy a quality of
life that is on a par with the other Arab countries in the neighbourhood. And those countries did not experience a ‘Catastrophe’
in the sense of losing some territory that might have belonged to them, to
Israel or anybody else. On the other hand
Jordan scores considerably higher on most indices of quality of life, than her
Arab neighbours. Why do you think that
is so? I would assert that it’s because
Jordan has the most stable and free society, including constitutional
government, of all the aforementioned Arab countries. And Israel could be said to have one of the
most stable, free, and constitutional governments in the world. It is this atmosphere of stability and
freedom that gives Israelis and Jordanians a better life than the citizens of
Egypt, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority.
Lebanon is a different case; it has a legacy of legitimate government,
but the ethnic coalition that flourished in the country in the past has been
rent by the interference of Syria and the Palestinians.
One more statistic to cite, and then I’ll lay it to rest! Remember the median age of Israeli citizens, 29.3
years, and how that is much younger than the countries that those in this room
are likely to represent? For the
Palestinian territories, the median age is 20.7. That implies a high birth rate, sign of a
healthy and optimistic populace, combined with a low infant mortality rate,
sign of excellent diet and health care. As for the last item, that is primarily he Israeli
health care system – and Israel’s generosity in giving access to it to
Palestinians from the territories. In
fact, the Israeli health care system cares for any Arab from a neighbouring country
who presents at Israel’s border. If you
did not attend the recent United Israel Appeal dinner at which Brigitte Gabriel
spoke, you missed a living testimony to this.
More recently, since the outbreak of civil war in neighbouring Syria,
Israel has treated thousdands of Syrians injured in the fighting.
I have focused on the secular aspects of Israel in assigning credit for
her successes. But to get the whole
story, it is necessary to go to the sources of Judaism. And to the unique relationship of Hashem to
His people. In Israel, even the
completely secular are likely to be informed and infused by the spirit of rachmanut
towards their neighbours and one another, not to mention towards the entire
world. In so many catastrophes and natural
disasters that occur far from Israel’s borders, Israeli relief crews are the
first to offer assistance. And that
assistance is often among the most robust on the scene. This spirit did not come from a vacuum. It came from the Torah.
That said, there is no more unanimity regarding the role of Torah and
Halacha among Israelis Jews, than there is among diaspora Jews. The Orthodox think the country is not
religious enough, whilst the secular think it’s too religious. And the non-Orthodox religious think that Orthodoxy
has far too much power and influence over the affairs of state, whilst the
non-Orthodox sector often feels marginalized.
But in all this noise of disagreement, there is agreement on an
all-important principle. The State of
Israel, whilst offering equal rights and opportunities to her non-Jewish
citizens who comprise a fourth of her population, exists to serve as the haven
and the centre of the Jewish world. To
serve as a focus for the manifold aspirations of the Jewish people, wherever
they live. The exact relationship of
diaspora Jews to the State of Israel is a difficult path that will always be
fraught rough spots. But let’s be
patient; remember that Israel, at 67, is barely out of adolescence! For now, each Jew must make his or her own
context for connection with the Israeli state.
Trust me, it will be grist for Jewish disagreement for a long time!
I started my discourse tonight with the premise that an anniversary such
as this should be an occasion for collective introspection. And so it should be. But not for the reasons that the Jew-hating
world would have you believe. Israel
faces many difficult challenges as she enters her 68th year. How to bring about a better life for more of
her citizens. How to further open
opportunities to all. How to relate
better to the Jewish, not to mention he gentile world. How to tell her story to a skeptical world. How to approach the immanent acquisition of
nuclear arms by Iran, who has sworn to wipe Israel off the map. Israel’s challenges for the future are far
from trivial.
Celebrate Israel! Celebrate the
unique energies that have created such a successful state under very difficult
conditions. And pray that the Arab world
will someday learn to stop reflectively hating Israel. Because only then will they learn to find
similar success for themselves. Shabbat Shalom.
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