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.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.