I watched an educational film today about how the state of Israel came into being and how it managed to survive. What struck me most was how precarious its beginning was. On the second day after Israel was founded, neighboring countries attacked from multiple directions. At that time, Israel had no real army and lacked heavy weapons such as aircraft and tanks. It seemed on the verge of being wiped out.
At that critical moment, Jews around the world showed extraordinary solidarity. People donated money and supplies, and some went directly to Israel to enlist. With manpower and weapons finally in place, Israel won that war, which became the First Arab–Israeli War. Several more Middle East wars followed over the next decades, but none, in this telling, felt as perilous as the first. After surviving repeated conflicts, Israel secured its place in the region. From then on, the surrounding states were no longer able to destroy it.
Today, Israel is widely seen as the most developed country in the Middle East, with its people enjoying a stable and prosperous life. By contrast, some neighboring countries, such as Lebanon and Iraq, are still mired in turmoil. Sometimes I find myself wondering: if the entire region, its land and its people, had been governed with Israel’s level of state capacity, perhaps many more people there would be living well today.
The moral question, of course, is not simple. The Jews took land that Arabs had lived on, and from that perspective it is hard to say everything was just. But from the Jewish side, the situation also seemed desperate. After millions died in World War II, many no longer wanted a life of wandering. They wanted a stable home of their own. If Jews and Arabs could have lived together peacefully, then a single state shared by Israelis and Palestinians might have been the best outcome. But in this view, religious conflict proved impossible to reconcile, leaving partition as the only realistic option.
Even then, the surrounding Arab countries could not accept it. One can argue that the original partition plan was unfair, but if so, negotiation and political struggle were still possible. There was no need to try to drive the Jews to extinction. What followed instead was a series of wars in which the Jews kept winning, and Israel emerged with even more territory.
The Middle East is a region where religion is extraordinarily complicated, and for many people faith stands above everything else. In that environment, countries may fail to develop, human rights may be trampled, and innocent people may be killed, all in the name of belief, with little regard for so-called universal values. Afghanistan is an example that comes to mind: the United States supported it for decades, only to see everything collapse almost overnight. The American conclusion, in blunt terms, seems to be this: if even your own people will not fight for a better future, why should we sacrifice ourselves to secure happiness for you?
Against that backdrop, Israel’s founding was anything but easy. Yet over several decades it turned itself into a developed country, with education and technology standing among the world’s leaders. More and more countries have recognized it and established diplomatic relations. Meanwhile, Palestine under its feet has never abandoned guerrilla attacks and bombings, and still has not managed to achieve a prosperous life.