Things I've learnt about Israel

And it probably not what you think

I don’t know about you, but personally I am sick-to-death of taking the moral high ground. Over the last 10 months I have been called a genocidal baby killer, a piece of shit, a Nazi bitch, inhumane and many other colourful terms. Im sick of the virtue signalling, the repetitive chants, the emotional manipulation – with no true advocacy or solutions on how to help Palestinians. I always try to back up my work with actual evidence, and if I don’t know the answer, I dig deeper than Al Jazeera and TikTok. Despite that, I seem to have become somewhat of a pariah for holding the ‘extremist’ views that Jews have the right to self-determination and to live in a tiny slice of their ancestral homeland. Yes, I am an evil Zionist! For transparency I should add that I am not Jewish, not that it should matter, but people seem to be shocked that a gentile such as me would actually support Zionism – but here I am, in the flesh!

The funny thing is, the more I learn about Israel, and the people who call Israel their home, the more I am impressed – that this tiny little country, that is about 3/4 the size of New Jersey, or for the Aussies, about 1/3 the size of Tasmania, has not only survived against all odds, but thrived. This tiny little sliver of a country, bordered by Arab countries that pose a constant threat, is bounded to the north by Lebanon, to the northeast by Syria, to the east and southeast by Jordan, to the southwest by Egypt, and to the west by the Mediterranean Sea.

Fun fact: Israel land mass is around 1% of the Middle East. See that little blue sliver? Yep, that is Israel (minus Gaza and the West Bank).

So I am going to assume at this point, anyone who is still reading already knows that Israel was re-established in 1948 after WWII, when it became clearly apparent, after 6 million Jews were exterminated, and many countries refused to take them in, that this group of people, probably more than any in history, needed a safe place to land and call home. Indigenous to Judea, it made sense to offer them this teeny tiny piece of land. What they were handed was a lovely, if not dusty and barren slice of land.

Holocaust survivors began arriving in the new State of Israel immediately and all limitations on Jewish immigration to Israel were lifted.

For the next 75 odd years, the Jewish people cried victim for the horrific persecution that had been heaped upon from the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Roman Empire to the Ottoman Empire and of course the genocide of the Holocaust, demanding that the International community prop them up till the end of time ! Hang on. That never happened.

Since 1948, Israel’s population has grown tenfold. Israel was founded with a population of 806,000. Today there are 8.5 million Israelis; about 75% of them Jews, the rest a mix of Muslim, Christians, Druze and others. Israel sits as the only democracy in the Middle East, with Israeli citizens enjoying equal rights, free speech, freedom of the press and a healthy LGBTQI community. For those who feel the need to inform me of everything that is wrong with Israels democracy, try living in Yemen or Syria for a few months.

Not only has Israels’ population flourished, Israelis have literally made the desert bloom, producing vast amounts of fruit, vegetables and flowers in the Negev and the Arava desert areas and Israel exports more than $1.3 billion worth of agricultural products every year. Israel has one of the highest standards of living, in terms of education, life expectancy (highest in the world – 82), safety for minorities, and economic prosperity, in the Middle East.

Rather than whinge and moan, the Israeli government has made good use of their time. Rather than devising ways to eradicate her neighbours, in order to protect its citizens from attack, Israel developed the revolutionary “Iron Dome” defence system, which accurately shoots down missiles fired at Israel. Instead of spending billions on a complex network of tunnels, Israeli created a law that determined that all homes, residential buildings, and industrial buildings to have bomb shelters.

Despite the ongoing threat their neighbours pose, Israel has the highest ratio for their population size, of university degrees. They have also been on the forefront of medical breakthroughs, pioneering treatments for HIV, cancer, epilepsy, autism and dyslexia. Side note; Israel's Save a Child’s Heart organisation performs life-saving heart operations for children worldwide, including many Palestinians, free of charge.

Not to be outdone, the Israel tech industry is also booming, with many achievement such as being the home of the development of Microsoft Windows, Intel computer chips, instant messaging, the cell phone and many medical devices. Dubbed the “start-up nation”, the country is one of the most promising startup ecosystems in the world— it's the third highest ranked country in the world for startup activity, behind only the United States and the United Kingdom, with the highest rate of entrepreneurship among women.

I don’t know about you, but Israel sounds pretty cool to me! Sure, it’s not perfect, name a country this is. But what I have learnt is that Israelis value life, they live life to the full, valuing education, family, medical advancement, music, culture (Israel has the highest number of museums and orchestras per capita in the world) and entrepreneurship. And if you don’t like their government – which a lot of Israelis don’t– it’s a free country, so you are free to say so, free to protest and free to vote for someone else when the next election comes around.

Israel is much more than a tiny piece of land in the Middle East. It is living proof that the Jewish people have survived and thrived, against all odds, and will continue to survive – not as victims, but as a thriving, resilient, enriched loving community – that don’t sit around bemoaning their past, they find solutions and get on with it!