Optimism for Israel at 60

David Bernstein, Guest Writer

Israel’s upcoming 60th birthday provides a great opportunity to take a step back from the day to day and assess the bigger picture.

It’s easy to be drawn into a pessimistic outlook about Israel’s future. There’s plenty of evidence to support such gloominess: much of the Arab world’s continuing rejection of the Jewish State’s right to exist; the rising tide of Muslim extremism; the menacing threat of Iran; the growing social, economic and religious cracks within Israeli society.

These problems are all very real and must be taken seriously. But they only tell part of the story, and can dangerously obscure our view of the larger, more positive portrait of Israel’s remarkable achievements. Such “we’re doomed” pessimism is dangerous, for it can skew our vision, sap our resolve, and wind up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Author Gregg Easterbrook sheds light on the human propensity to deemphasize good news in favor of “the tyranny of the small picture” in his book The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. The preference for bad news, he argues, causes us to focus on smaller remaining problems after larger ones are addressed.There are all sorts of reasons for this tendency, not least being the insatiable 24-hour news cycle, which inflates bad news – natural disasters, war, crime, etc – and ignores success. Bad news has “better” pictures. As the old saying goes, “If it bleeds it leads.” Take a look at the front page of your morning daily newspaper. How many articles are covering a positive event versus a negative one?

Unfortunately, no story receives more airtime and, hence, more bad news, than the Arab-Israel conflict. We Jews thus tend to emphasize, in AJC Executive Director David Harris’ words, the “oy” over the “joy.”

And there’s plenty of joy to go around. Israel just concluded an international meeting, in Annapolis, with an eye to resolving the conflict. It already is at peace with two of its Arab neighbors. The Jewish State enjoys a strong military and strategic advantage over her enemies. The country has managed to nearly completely halt suicide terrorist attacks in the past two years. And, Jerusalem’s relationship with Washington, and the larger world, has never been better.

Let’s not forget that 60 years ago many doubted Israel would survive the onslaught of a hostile Arab world. While we still may worry about Israel’s safety, who can discount the remarkable progress the country has made in achieving security for its citizens and for enhancing Jewish life around the world?

More good news is that Israel’s economy is growing at a record pace, producing advanced technological innovations in everything from computer security to medical nanotechnology. Such discoveries not only help Israel, but the rest of the world.

Take the water issue, for example. The lack of this precious resource was once a major stumbling block in peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Today, Israel’s experiments in desalination technology are bearing fruit, diminishing the importance of water aquifers, and increasing the potential for long-term reconciliation with the Palestinians. The technology also provides an unprecedented opportunity for cooperation with Gulf States, such as Oman, who share Israel’s parched landscape.

In the early years of Israel’s existence, it was common for American Jews to send boxes of used clothing to Israel. Today, my Israeli relatives send me emails about hi-tech companies to follow. A cousin whose Iraqi Jewish parents lived in tents upon arriving in Israel in the 1950s owns a five bedroom, four-story house with a pool in Rishon Letzion.

There are, of course, plenty of Israelis left behind during these boom times, and plenty of social and economic problems that still need to be fixed. But that doesn’t mean we ignore the incredible progress of the past six decades.

AJC will begin marking Israel’s 60th year celebration by highlighting the November 29, 1947 UN vote to partition Israel into a Jewish and Arab State. The future of the Jewish State was highly uncertain as the Arab countries prepared for an invasion.

Faced with the unthinkable threat of annihilation just two years after the end of the horrors of World War II, Jews around the world managed to muster a profound optimism. On that day in 1947, the father of Israel’s greatest novelist, Amos Oz, told his young son that “from now on, from the moment we have our own state, you will never be bullied just because you are a Jew and because Jews are so-and-so’s. Not that. Never again. From tonight that’s finished here. For ever.”

Sixty years later, blessed with a far more secure and prosperous Jewish state, let us be similarly optimistic about Israel’s future. As with pessimism, optimism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy too.