Israel at 68: Flourishing Despite Everything

In honor of Israel’s Independence Day, celebrated last Thursday, Boaz Levi reflects on the Jewish state’s accomplishments: rising immigration, declining emigration, a robust birthrate, and high wages. And that’s not all:

Although there are people who want us to think otherwise, it turns out we just have it good here. Israelis are happy with life. The world happiness index recently placed Israel at eleventh. An internal CBS survey had 86 percent of Israelis saying they were satisfied with their lives, as opposed to 83 percent in the beginning of the 2000s. It’s therefore no surprise that according to a new report, Israel has a suicide rate lower than that of every European country but one.

Israelis’ happiness finds expression in other impressive statistics as well. According to the data, Israeli life expectancy is 1.5 years higher than the average for the developed world. . . .

Our national challenges have not ended, and probably never will. But still, . . . Israel has done the impossible in the 68 years of its existence. Starting off with many difficulties and unending obstacles, Israelis have managed to build a model society: a society that grants the long-suffering Jewish people cultural prosperity, a thriving economy, and damn it—the strongest army in the Middle East.

Read more at Mida

More about: Demography, Israel, Israel & Zionism, Israeli economy, Israeli Independence Day

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF