IMPORTANT WORLD CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL 

 

Am Yisroel Chai, Israel lives, a modern country of fifty seven years comprising a people and an historical nationhood and major world faith that has existed for over 3,000 years and is still today a major force in shaping the world.  The Jewish people, Judaism, the modern State of Israel—has its existence on the world stage been the result of a divine plan?  To be the messenger of the holy one?  To be the conscience of the world?  To be the guiding light for ethical behavior?  To be a major catalyst for the progressive advancement of humankind? 

 

Several world renowned figures have characterized the importance of the State of Israel in the following ways.

 

President John F. Kennedy—“Israel was not created in order to disappear—Israel will endure and flourish.  It is the child of hope and home of the brave.  It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success.  It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.”

 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel---“The love of this land was due to an imperative, not to an instinct, not to a sentiment.  There is a covenant, an engagement of the people to the land.  We live by covenants.  We could not betray our pledge or discard the promise….Intimate attachment to the land,…is part of our integrity, an existential fact.  It is a commitment we must not betray.  Three thousand years of faithfulness cannot be wiped off.  To abandon the land would make a mockery of all our longings, prayers and commitments.  To abandon the land would be to repudiate the Bible.”

 

Rabbi David Polish---“Why do nations rage?  …How dare the nations rage against Israel?  What right have they to set up a double standard by which they repeatedly condemn Israel while turning a blind eye to the outrages in other parts of the world….We cannot be like all the nations unless we are capable of protecting our security as they, and if necessary, to wage war as effectively as they.  At the same time, we stand at the Torah and proclaim that we are different.  This is a contradiction which we can either ignore or try somehow to resolve.  If we ignore it, the very contradiction will tear us apart.”

 

Polish goes on to write “If we decide that it is in our best interests to survive by military might like other major powers, then we cannot claim to be chosen.  And make no mistake, we cannot ever again relinquish so much power that the only way open to us is either Masada or the chimneys.  But when power becomes a people’s way of life, the claim to chosenness becomes a mockery.  To be chosen means to reject being like other nations, to seek a higher way of national existence.  This is difficult, and may even be impossible for a sovereign state.  But we must face up to an excruciating choice.  We cannot be both chosen and like all the nations.  Chosenness means that we have not been permitted to live by the rules of the world….

 

Polish then raises the question of whether this contradiction can be resolved?  “Can Israel remain a normal nation and also a people designated for a sacred task?” he asks.  For him, a clue is found in Torah. “Not because you are the most numerous of peoples do I set my love upon you, but because you are the least.”  Polish explains this as “God loves us not by virtue of physical greatness but precisely because we are a small people.”  He concludes that “Our greatness lies not in bigness but in inner might.  Let Israel show the way.”

 

 

Israel is the 100th smallest country with less than 1/1000th of the world’s population.

Yet the achievements of the modern State of Israel surely make it unlike any other nation large or small.  The following represent major achievements of Israel:

 

  1. The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.
  2. Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel.
  3. The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.
  4. Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.  The Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely made in Israel.
  5. Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.  Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.
  6. The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.
  7. Israel has the fourth largest air force in the world.
  8. According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry’s most impenetrable flight security.  U.S. officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.
  9. Israel’s $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.
  10. Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.
  11. Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.  Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin—109 per 10,000 people—as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.
  12. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world.  In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the U.S. (3,500 mostly high-tech companies).
  13. With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups, Israel has the highest concentration of high-tech companies in the world—apart from the Silicon Valley in the U.S.
  14. Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the U.S.
  15. Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.
  16. Israel has the highest living standard in the Middle East.  The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,5000, exceeding that of the UK.
  17. On a per capita basis, Israel has the highest number of biotech startup companies.
  18. Twenty-four per cent of Israel’s work force holds university degrees—ranking third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland, and 12 per cent hold advanced degrees.
  19. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. 
  20. When the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day and saved three victims from the rubble.  Israel’s expertise in finding people buried in collapsed buildings is so world renowned that they are often called to help out in tragedies around the world.
  21. Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 in the world.
  22. Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant absorbing nation on earth.  Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom and or commitment, economic opportunity, and to escape persecution.
  23. Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as “conflict free.” 
  24. Israel has the world’s second highest per capita of new books.
  25. Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert.
  26. Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.
  27. In the field of medicine Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.
  28. An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus limiting human error from medical treatment.
  29. Israel’s Givun imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill.  Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.
  30. Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with heart failure.  The new device is synchronized with the heart’s mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.
  31. Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the work force, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U.S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany.  With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions, Israel places first in this category as well.
  32. A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the ClearLight device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct—all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue.
  33. An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant, in southern California’s Mojave Desert.
  34. Two Israeli chemists have just been awarded Nobel Prizes in medicine for their research in the destruction of only cancer cells while sparing healthy cells.  In addition, three former Israeli prime ministers have been awarded Nobel Peace Prizes.

 

 

All of the above have occurred while this tiny state has been surrounded by hostile neighbors that have sought its destruction since the inception.  Its economy has continuously been strained by having to spend more per capita on its own defense protection than any other country on earth as well as the expense of controlling territories it gained during the Six Day War.

 

These accomplishments with world wide implications make Polish’s remarks prescient.

The bible confers chosenness on the people of Israel because they are small in number yet they seek a higher way of national existence than the rest of the world.

 

Am Yisroel Chai, yes indeed!

 

Seymour J. Schwartz

Chairman, Israel/ARZA Committee