How Is Israel Doing?

Israel is a small country that has had to fight three wars for its survival, in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and well as numerous lesser campaigns against terrorist groups, including four wars in Gaza against Hamas, two wars in Lebanon against the PLO and Hezbollah, and a recent 66-hour campaign against Palestinian Islamic Jihad in both Gaza and the West Bank. Israelis now live under a threat of possible annihilation by the genocidal Iranians, who make no secret of their desire to destroy the Jewish state and are rushing pell-mell to be able to manufacture nuclear weapons to accomplish that aim. Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, all threaten Israel from close up. Within the country itself, yet another threat looms, that posed by some — not many — Israeli Arabs who are disloyal to the state.

1. Israel and the Democracy Index

Yet despite all these wars and rumors of war, Israel remains a steadfast democracy, upholding the rights of free speech, assembly, and religion, holding free elections, respecting the decisions of the electorate. On the latest Democracy Index, Israel comes out ahead of the United States as a strong and successful democracy. That story is here.

Israel’s enemies need little excuse to criticize—and more often condemn—the world’s only Jewish state. Their baseless accusations of apartheid, genocide, slaughter and European colonialism seemingly respect no requirement of proof or rules of evidence.

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Thus, despite Israel’s superb record of civil liberties, elections, rule of law applied to all citizens and equal opportunity at all levels of society, the country receives outsized doses of vitriol for its alleged lack of democratic values.

Such condemnation, of course, is rarely fact-based, but rather springs from ignorance and, in too many cases, irrational bigotry. These attacks are usually targeted at presumed treatment by Israel of its Arab citizens … as well as, especially, of non-Israeli Arabs living in surrounding disputed territories.

In stark, refreshing contradiction to unsupported accusations against Israel, the new “Democracy Index 2021” by the EIU—Economist Intelligence Unit—ranks Israel twenty-third among modern democracies, scoring it higher than the United States, Spain, Italy and some 139 other nations.

The index ranks countries according to 51 criteria, covering each nation’s performance according to its 1) electoral process and pluralism; 2) functioning of government; 3) political participation; 4) political culture; and 5) civil liberties.

Israel’s 2021 ranking shows consistent improvement in its democratic processes compared with the first such report in 2006, when the Jewish state came in at No. 47. In the current report, Israel was lauded for its inclusion of an Arab party in its ruling government coalition.

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No surprise, since Israel’s robust democracy has a vibrant electoral tradition, stable governing institutions, high political participation among its citizens, a vigorous, even boisterous political culture, and broad, equal civil liberties for all its citizens.

Unfortunately, even as Israel’s democracy improved in the past year, the EIU noted that democracy globally actually deteriorated. This was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it said, which caused “an unprecedented withdrawal of civil liberties,” including “a huge extension of state power over large areas of public and personal life.”

In contrast to Israel, the next highest ranking Middle East nation was Tunisia, which only reached seventy-fifth place—and then not as a democracy, but as a “hybrid regime.” The Palestinian-controlled territories were ranked as a frankly “authoritarian” regime, at No. 109.

Like all countries in the index, Israel’s performance in the EIU evaluation was based on the health and performance of democratic institutions among its citizens.

While critics often unfairly blame Israel for a lack of democratic freedoms in Judea and Samaria (“the West Bank”) and Gaza, they ignore the fact that the Oslo Accords give governance responsibilities over Palestinians in those territories almost entirely to their respective dictatorships—the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

Unfortunately, neither of these Palestinian governments holds regular elections, supports basic civil liberties—like freedoms of speech, assembly and religion—or enforces rule of law. Neither respects women’s equality, and both violently persecute members of LGBTQ and religious minorities….

Israel is often also faulted for passage of its “nation-state law” in 2018—which declares that the country exists to fulfill the Jewish people’s “right to self-determination.” This attack, however, is a red herring, attempting to discredit a statute that in no way limits Israel’s democratic liberties.

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Note that this law does not infringe on the rights of individual Israelis, including its two million Arab citizens. Like many other nation states, it merely formalizes symbols of its people—in this case the Jewish people—such as the flag, national anthem and holidays.

Note, too, that while the nation-state law declares Hebrew to be the national language, this is not different than in the United States, in which English is the mother tongue. Nor does Israel’s nation-state law establish any official religion—unlike some seven European countries that declare state religions in their very constitutions….

Note finally that the suffering and political plight of the Palestinians has little to do with Israel and is in fact almost entirely the result of authoritarian governance by its terrorist dictatorial regimes and their obstinate refusal to make peace.

2. Israel and the World Happiness Index

Given all the threats Israel faces to the lives of its citizens, worries over rocket barrages that can strike at any minute, forcing Israelis to race to shelters, or a terrorist cell intent on murdering Israeli civilians, one might have thought the Jewish state would score low on the “World Happiness Index.” After all, war has always been considered to be the greatest source of national unhappiness. But Israel, whose history is one of incessant warfare thrust upon it, nonetheless has been judged on the basis of many indicators to be the ninth happiest country in the world. Despite everything. Israelis remain an optimistic and happy people.

And in 2022, for the first time, Israel has appeared on the list of the Top 10 Happiest Countries, now ranking 9th, ahead of the United States at #16, and much farther ahead of any Arab or Muslim country.

The Arab countries closest to Israel in rank are Bahrain, at #21, the UAE, at #24, and Saudi Arabia, at #25. One, Kuwait, is ranked #50. No other Arab state ranks below #100.

The only countries considered to be “happier” than Israel are the five Scandinavian countries (Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway) and three small European states (Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg). Unlike Israel, none of these countries has been forced to constantly engaged in conflict, none of them have to devote so many resources – of men, materiel, and money – to defending the nation. None of them has fought a war since the 19th century (though Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway were occupied during World War II).Yet here is Israel, with all that it has had to live through and endure: the wars, the terror, the traumatized Holocaust survivors who arrived by the hundreds of thousands, emotionally scarred and impoverished (there are still 168,000 such survivors in Israel today), and that other traumatized and impoverished population of Jews, those who fled Arab countries and Iran, 700,000 of the total of 850,000 who fled those countries after 1948. Yet tiny Israel, with no natural resources, but only the industry and intelligence of its citizens, managed to integrate both of those refugee populations totaling about 1.3 million, or twice that of the Jewish population of Israel in 1948, which was approximately 650,000, along with 150,000 Arab citizens. To grasp the enormity of the task, imagine that today the United States, with all its wealth, suddenly had to take in, make room for, support, and integrate into its society twice its current population, or 660 million people. How Israel managed to accomplish this is perhaps the greatest of modern Israel’s many miracles.

And instead of the weeping and wailing of the Palestinians, with their hands always out in the eleemosynary position, as they ask year after year for ever greater sums from the foreign donors on whose billions of dollars in aid they have become dependent, without making discernible efforts to stand on their own feet and improve their lot, Israel accomplished its integration of traumatized and impoverished Holocaust survivors, and of Jewish refugees fleeing from persecution and pogroms in Arab lands and Iran, all the while having to fight off a ruthless enemy. How did Israel do this, and at the same time make both its economy, and its military, ever stronger? Hard work and entrepreneurial flair are the secret of the little country’s economic success, and a spirit of constant innovation, in tactics, training and, above all, weaponry (think only of the Iron Dome and Iron Beam anti-missile defenses), as well as a fierce will to survive and to prevail, help explain Israel’s military success.