In the United States we celebrate the 4th of July. The French observe it on July 14. The world over, countries large and small observe their Independence Day. Last Monday, Israelis celebrated their 59th year.
But Israelis rejoice in more than their independence. They rejoice in having survived.
The United States does not expect to be threatened by Canada and Mexico. The French today do not worry about possible attacks from their once powerful neighbor, Germany, now its ally in the European Union.
Israel has fought six wars in its brief existence. Enemies are on its borders - the Chezbollah and Syria in the north, Chamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Behind them, figuratively and financially, looms Iran, with its relentless pursuit of nuclear arms and long-range missiles, and its funding of Israel’s enemies. Iran’s president has vowed to “wipe Israel off the globe.”
Israel declared its independence in 1948, even as armies of five Arab countries attacked the fledgling Jewish state, the first since Judea was destroyed by the Roman armies nearly two thousand years earlier.
Today, Israelis, whose country is the size of New Jersey, are almost evenly split on whether their nation will last a century, until 2048. According to a poll published by Yediot Achronot, an evening newspaper, 48 percent of Israelis are concerned as to whether their country will even exist on the centenary of its founding. However, 52 percent of Israelis are not.
Moreover, according to a poll conducted by Maariv, the country’s other evening paper, twenty six percent of Israelis, or one of four, reported they had been thinking in the past year of moving abroad. It also is a fact that Israelis having moving to the United states for better opportunities for decades. Many are professionals, such as physicists, chemists and physicians. An estimated 200,000 of them live in the Los Angeles area, and a larger number in New York City and its suburbs. A contingent of Israelis lives in the Philadelphia area and in New Jersey. Many have family in Israel and visit home frequently.
In an ironic development, Israelis in goodly numbers call Germany home, especially in the Frankfurt area. On a trip to Germany years ago, my wife and I heard Israeli music coming out of a cafe.
On the other hand, Israel’s birth rate rose by 1.8 percent in the past 12 month to a record total population of 7.15 million, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. A total of 148,000 babies arrived in the small state. In fact, however, Arab Israelis multiply at a higher rate than Israeli Jews. Massive immigration prior to and shortly after the creation of Israel, followed by more than a million immigrants from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, helped create a base population for the Jewish state. Today, immigration has trickled to a few thousand annually. Some 1,425,000 Arab and Druze citizens comprise 20 percent of the population.
A small land in a sea of enmity, that is Israel today and so it will be tomorrow. It is the first home of the Jewish people after millennia of persecution, being fenced in behind ghetto walls, burned at the stake, gassed by the millions - the first home since the destruction of their country early in history.
Will the western democracies help Israel survive? Will anyone help Israel survive? As Israel enters its 60th year of existence, it seems as if this little country must depend on itself for survival.
