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Israel's Problems Are Real, But So Is Its Progress
(JNS) Jonathan S. Tobin - Israel has too many cars and not enough roads to accommodate them. Israel needs more hospital rooms to deal with the needs of its growing population. And while some high-tech entrepreneurs have gotten rich, many poorer Israelis and those in the middle class feel left behind, as is the case in many other prosperous nations. But a little historical perspective is needed. Israel is only 71 years old. A century ago, Zionism was a dream dismissed as a fantasy. Even after the state was declared, smart people thought it could not survive. Who could have predicted that a poor community of 600,000 Jewish souls could withstand the might of the rest of the Middle East and then, with the financial help of the diaspora, provide homes for hundreds of thousands of survivors of the Holocaust in Europe and a still larger total of Jews who were forced to flee their homes in the Arab and Islamic world? For the last five decades, we've been told that Israel cannot thrive or survive in the long run without peace with the Palestinian Arabs, only to see it grow stronger and wealthier even though an end to the conflict is nowhere in sight. Today, Israel has become a First World powerhouse, with many of its enemies recognizing that the nation is simply too strong and too wealthy to be destroyed. Its dramatic makeover is the envy of the world.