My mother listened to Israel's Declaration of Independence on the radio, in our home in Tel Aviv. From there she, who was pregnant with me, went to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. At the time, my father served in the brand new Israel Defense Forces and was stationed elsewhere.
Shortly after midnight, as my mother told the story, the nurse came into her room and told her: "Mrs. Teplitzky, the British have left the country, you can give birth now." And then I was born, into an independent Hebrew state. Seventy years later it is a good time for a national reckoning, in hindsight and with an eye on the future.
Had someone told my parents that, 70 years later, this would be the state of which they dreamed and for which they fought, they would not have believed it. Israel is more successful than their most optimistic dreams. This is no trivial matter for my mother, who immigrated with her family to Tel Aviv in 1921 and lived in poverty; who fought the British as part of the Irgun paramilitary organization and was alternately imprisoned for about four years in their prisons. This is no trivial matter for my father, who immigrated to Israel with his brother in 1936 and lost the rest of his family in Poland to the Holocaust while he was fighting as a British soldier.
At the onset of the 1948 War of Independence, the Jewish community numbered about 600,000 people. In only a few years, it absorbed most of the Jews of the Arab countries and the survivors of the Holocaust in Europe.
It was not easy, and as the archives show us, the process was not free of hardship and discrimination against Jews that came from Islamic countries. This process may have been flawed but in the greater scheme of things, it was successful – despite its limitations.
In the 1990s we saw immigration from the Soviet Union – in tiny clusters before its disintegration and in a great torrent once the USSR was no more. Those years also saw Israel aid the immigration of most Ethiopian Jews, truly embodying the concept of the Gathering of Israel, a country whose people have returned from all exiles.
Has this process ended? No. The tremendous task of true integration, one that leaves no differences based on ethnic origin among us, still remains.
Miracles and challenges
Economically speaking, Israel has grown by amazing leaps and bounds, from a desert country to a global leader of innovation and technology, branding itself internationally as the "startup nation."
Israel's gross national product has exceeded the $300 billion mark and per-capita product is already at a European level. Future development will be affected by the discovery of Israel's offshore natural gas fields and by directing our technological efforts in the right way, now that Israel has identified the cyber sphere as critically important and has turned into a cyber power.
It is important that, despite its limited size, Israel remains at the top of global technology, which is the basis for both economic prosperity and security.
Israel is currently facing two major economic issues: the housing crisis and the economic disparities between its various social echelons.
Soaring housing prices is the lesser complex challenge of the two and dealing with it requires a three-pronged effort: the first, which is ongoing, focuses on transportation and aims to connect central Israel with the periphery. The second is cutting through the endless red tape to facilitate more construction projects; and the third is the national urban revitalization project, which aims to replace dilapidated housing areas with modern buildings. This project has four overlapping advantages: increasing the number of available apartments without additional land allocation, providing residents better wartime protection, providing better earthquake resilience and improving housing conditions for the middle classes.
Tackling economic disparities, however, is a far more complex challenge. The gap between the top and bottom economic echelons in Israel is one of the biggest in the world and, with respect to the Arab and ultra-Orthodox sectors, it also includes a cultural element.
The way to change it, if it is at all right to change it from the outside, begins with education. It is difficult to change ways of life that are based on culture or religion. It may be that the solution lies with more acceptance from the rest of society, which will enable these sectors to integrate into society at their own pace.
The other reason for these gaps is more problematic. The Israeli economy is based on high-tech and sophisticated services, which are naturally led by a small group of talented individuals.
When an Israeli company is sold for $1 billion, only a handful of people benefit from the sale, and the higher the payout, the more they – statistically – increase this gap. The question of the division of the wealth generated by private individuals is complex because imprudence could halt investments in the country, from which everyone would lose.
The question of the distribution of capital and social gaps is an economic one, but it also impacts national security, certainly in a society under constant threat, which must wage war from time to time. Since good education is a key to social mobility regardless of economic gaps, the state needs to improve education among the weaker sectors. In my opinion, this is the main economic challenge we face.
From a security standpoint, the State of Israel is nothing short of a miracle.
Against all odds, a Jewish minority surrounded by hundreds of millions of Arabs, in the heart of an area where all nations are Arab, Muslim or both, has succeeded in establishing a state that is an impenetrable fortress and whose success on the battlefield has led some of its neighbors to relinquish any hope of ever destroying it. The price paid for this success was – and remains – high, but Israel's success is extraordinary.
We must not rest on our laurels when it comes to defense and security. We must identify and overcome the weak points, as well as bolster the areas in which Israel's military might lies. The emphasis the IDF places on technology is correct, but it seems that is a need to invest more in human capital, especially in the junior command, in terms of quality and professionalism. History shows that the junior command is the key to victory, and in Israel's case, it is also the breeding ground for the senior command.
Israel's national security policy has proven itself. It is based on building formidable capabilities that are carefully and sparingly employed, as Israel must never appear to be eager to wage war.
It seems that we must reintroduce ourselves to the concept of using the ground forces without fear so as to mark decisive victories in the battlefields on our borders. None of the hostile countries surrounding Israel have regular armies that can threaten us and for the foreseeable future, the expected military confrontation will be with army-like terrorist organizations.
Israel must apply the Begin Doctrine, namely that it would not allow nations that aspire to destroy it to develop nuclear weapon-production abilities, and we should also not shy away from reintroducing the concept of "pre-emptive blow" to our defense vocabulary. Israel must be willing and able to strike an enemy even before it grows strong enough to attack.
Israel may be unable to bring about a cultural change that would inspire its enemies to relinquish the desire to destroy it, but it can employ the proper rhetoric to make it clear that the price exacted from any enemy seeking to destroy it would be so high, going to war would not be worth it. The implication is that any diplomatic arrangement would still need the backing of a strong military force.
A question of values
Israel is also a diverse cultural center. The number of books published in Hebrew is amazing, and cultural endeavors in all fields are thriving, from literature, art, music, theater and television series that are sold all over the world. Israeli universities and colleges consistently mark great achievements, and never before have there been so many individuals who pursue the study and research of the Torah.
Despite its achievements, Israel has two unresolved missions weighing it down. The first is the issue of borders and overall approach to the Palestinians, and the second speaks to the very nature of the state and where it would like to see itself in terms of its character and values.
The first issue boils down to the question of whether Israel should aspire for a single state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, preserving every inch of the Land of Israel – because it is our historical right and our religious duty – or whether we have the obligation to see to the establishment of a Palestinian state so as to prevent the need to absorb at least 2 million Palestinians into Israel.
In other words, would Israel rather deal with an enemy state on its immediate borders or become a binational state that is home to a hostile minority of up to 40% of the population, which does not recognize the Jewish nation-state's right to exist.
The second issue Israel must deal with is internal, namely, should it place greater emphasis on its Jewish character or on its universal and democratic nature. It is clear that both should serve as the source of the state's internal and external legitimacy, but which side of the "Jewish-democratic state" should be given priority when these values clash? This is not a matter for the judiciary to rule on, but rather one that should be left to the public.
Israel was established 70 years ago on a narrow perch – so narrow that many did not believe it would succeed in successfully overcoming even its first challenge, the War of Independence. Seven decades later, the results prove that the people living in Zion have what it takes to succeed and have fostered a democratic state and an open society that has succeeded in advancing in all areas.
About 25 years ago, the Americans sought to establish an "intelligence union" to share a formidable mission. They invited representatives from Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Australia and Israel to London. I was there in my capacity as head of the Military Intelligence's Research Division. I could not help wondering what my parents, especially my father, would say if he knew that less than 50 years after he was released as a British soldier from a POW camp in Germany by an American force, his son would be sitting there, with Israel's intelligence capabilities considered vital to accomplishing the mission at hand.
For me, one meeting in London marked the transformation that Israel's inception bred, which in essence is that the Jews are responsible for their fate and they have done well in looking out for themselves.
