Israel, the Jewish people’s miraculously reborn state, faces many serious and concerning current issues. Nevertheless, it is good from time to time to stand back from the periodic crises in order to appreciate the modern democratic polity’s resilient, ongoing strength and truly remarkable achievements. That Israel confronts many cascading and reinforcing threats is self-evident. From the rapidly deteriorating “Arab Spring” affecting its already unstable neighborhood, to the Palestinians’ unilateral campaign for UN state recognition under the aegis of the “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas, to the worldwide UNled “delegitimation” campaign, not to mention a resurgent Islamist Turkey with “Ottoman” pretensions, Israel must juggle, and overcome, multiple existential threats.
The Islamist resurgence throughout the region (Muslim Brothers, Salafists, Wahhabites) has already had multiple effects: the post-Mubarak imperiling of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace accords, resumed Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza in the South, the dangerous destabilization of the minority Alawite regime in Syria, and renewed Iranian-backed Hezbollah threats from Lebanese soil. And most serious of all is the imminent nuclear threat issuing from a clearly genocidal Shi’ite Iran, essentially unopposed by a weakened Obama led United States and an appeasement-oriented “international community”.
Nevertheless, as this current issue of ISRAFAX amply demonstrates, Israel is a flourishing Jewish democracy, whose resilient and resourceful people have forged a modern, “first-world” state, a creative, dynamic society, and an IDF which is one of the world’s great militaries.
Israel, a global leader in high-tech innovation, start-ups and medical research, boasts a remarkably resilient economy attracting major foreign investment capital. Culturally, tiny Israel’s universities are world-class, book-sales per capita are extraordinary, the film industry flourishes, and the Jewish society wins, especially in relation to population, an extraordinary number of Nobel prizes.
Despite the extremely heavy burden of defense expenditures imposed by having to face ever-hostile neighbors, which mandates one of the highest per-capita tax rates in the world, Jewish Israel is today a shining example of a flourishing Western, democratic state and a vigorous civil society.
Remarkably, and despite constant internal and external security threats, Israel not only among the region’s polities, but on a world-wide scale—is an exemplar of the human values enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its large Muslim and Christian minorities enjoy freedoms unknown in the surrounding despotic regimes. Its Parliamentary democracy and vigorous Knesset party-political life, as well as its proliferation of extra-Parliamentary NGOs and citizens’ organizations, more than holds its own with longstanding European and “AngloSaxon” democracies.
Here, it is important to note that much of reborn Israel’s success is owed to its Judaic foundations. Respect for the individual and for due-process is built into the religious vision of the Tanakh, the Jewish people’s Bible, reinforced by the checks on monarchical power enshrined in Hebraic injunctions against idolatry, the Prophetic books’ invention of speaking truth to power, and the Talmudic tradition’s emphasis on rational, critical dialectics and the questioning of authorities.