Howard Epstein – LETTER FROM ISRAEL
Does Israel have any peers? Given that life here is a series of miracles, I suggest not.
Next month sees the 73rd anniversary of the birth of the Jewish State. Ben Gurion did not even decide upon its name until two days before he intoned the Declaration of Independence, on Rothschild Boulevard, erev Shabbat, 14 May 1948. The orchestra that had been the Palestine Symphony became the Israeli Philharmonic before they had played the last bars of Hatikvah under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. As the first telegram of recognition was received from Truman’s America (courtesy of Chaim Weizmann) seven minutes later, the infant state, still covered in birth fluids, the umbilical cord just severed, marked seven months of warfare with the indigenous Arabs and the prospect of invasion by five Arab armies.
When, two weeks later, the first UN truce was imposed, the Egyptian army was at Isdud (later to become Ashdod) merely 40 kms (27 miles) south of the centre of Tel Aviv; Jerusalem was all but lost (the so-called Burma Road not yet complete); and the Galilee was a hotchpot of competing Jewish and Arab militias. By a miracle, Israel survived all this, to join the community of nations, as the only one voted into existence to that point by a UN vote (want to debate its right to exist anyone?) and as the one closest to bankruptcy.
Then, broke as it was, Israel began to absorb more Jews from Arab lands than Arabs were persuaded by their leaders to leave the former Palestine; not to mention the Jewish starved, abused and bereft from the displaced persons camps (a nice euphonism for European ears for those who had escaped the ovens and survived the death marches) in the reviled Germany and Austria – and those who emerged from the Exodus experience to fester for years in the camps the British built for them on Cyprus, tantalisingly only 150 nautical miles away from the Promised Land.
Today, Israel has the greatest foreign currency reserves per capita of any mixed economy (ie excluding Kuwait) and the fastest GDP growth in Q4, 2020 apart from that of China.
Did I mention miracles? Do not imagine for a moment that they ended in 1948. Every day here sees miracle built on miracle. The peerless state really has become a light unto the nations, most immediately in terms of its vaccination programme, but more generally with its the mind-boggling multi-billion dollar deals for hi-tech corporate acquisitions, the cornucopia of life enhancing gifts to the world that emanate from Israeli companies on a weekly basis, and in being world-leaders in more spheres than you could count on the digits of your hands and feet.
Israel daily sets milestones for others to seek to reach. This may be seen most starkly in Europe where countries who constantly berate Israel and vote financial handouts for the greatest enemies of the Palestinian people – their leadership – rewarding their revanchist, maximalist and nihilistic policies, yet cannot resist buying inter-active vests for their armed forces, and many other products designed and manufactured only or best in Israel.
We live every day now in an age that the smartest Intelligence operatives did not expect to see in their lifetimes: Gulf Arabs – Sunnis, like their Palestinian cousins – line up to sign deals (another mega one last week in such fields as efforts against pandemics, cybersecurity and data protection in healthcare, medical training, innovation, artificial intelligence and other high-tech endeavours) – and we have not even started yet with Morocco and Sudan forming an orderly queue outside.
Of course, the future for the Israeli economy is not entirely in the Arab world. Israel has markets all over the Far East, including China and Singapore, and in the Far West: the helmet for the Lockheed F35, the world’s most advanced fighter plane, was designed, and is built, in Israel as an integral part of the aircraft. Israel has more combat experience with the F35 than anyone else, including the USAAF, and has more in service and on order than the RAF is able to afford.
Perhaps you would like to ponder another miracle about Israeli life. In a recent poll conducted by the highly-respected Pew Research*, it was found that Israelis are more satisfied with democracy (at 55%) than almost every other OECD nation. (The UK scored 31% – the US 39%.) Not impressive to you? Then consider this: almost 100% of Israelis come, directly or through their forebears, from places that had no acquaintance whatsoever with free, fair and transparent universal suffrage elections, habeas corpus, independent courts, freedom of speech and separation of powers, let alone a vibrant free press and media – in short, all the components of a modern democracy. No. Almost all Israelis come from Arab or Soviet lands, where there is precious little, if any, democracy at all, to this day. A light unto the nations? Israel really is and I am proud to be, howsoever insignificant, a part of it. There is room here for you too.
* https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/02/27/satisfaction-with-democracy/
Howard Epstein © May 2021
