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Israel at 75 Is a Modern Wonder

(The Sunday Times-UK) Josh Glancy - The other day I had my first journey on the sleek new Tel Aviv-Jerusalem railway, which shuttled me from Ben-Gurion airport to the Holy City in about the time it took to skip the ads on a podcast. It embodies the best of modern Israel: fast, efficient, impressive. Israel turned 75 on Wednesday. It is one of the most astonishing achievements of the modern age. Every time I visit Tel Aviv, I still feel a shudder of awe over the sheer improbability of its existence, a thrilling modern metropolis built on little more than ancestral longing and borrowed guns. Israel at 75 has a GDP per capita notably higher than Britain's. It is 11 times richer than its neighbor Egypt. It has won more Nobel prizes per person than America or France. This country is a towering monument to the power of ideas. It is literally a dream come true. Who to blame for the predicament of the Palestinians? The Palestinians were let down repeatedly over the years by their Arab allies in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, who generally treated them as political pawns, not a sovereign people. They have been let down by their own leaders, who "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Their propensity for violent terrorism has also done them no favors, all but destroying the peace movement in Israel. Most Israelis see peace as a fantasy.
2023-05-01 00:00:00
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