When Malcolm Turnbull welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his historic first visit to Australia last year, he spoke movingly of the Jewish state as “a miraculous nation” that has “flourished despite invasion, conflict and an al most complete lack of natural resources, other than the determination and genius of its people”.
Turnbull was right. As Israel prepares to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its foundation, in all the narrative and incessant contest of ideas that surrounds the country there is no better way to describe its survival in a hostile world.
Israel’s success in emerging as the Middle East’s solitary functioning democracy where the rule of law and religious freedom prevail, and as a prosperous nation hewn from arid wasteland that is now a world leader in global science and technological innovation, is nothing short of miraculous.
As Turnbull emphasised, “in a region racked by war, (Israel) succeeds as the sole liberal democracy, a world leade r in every field of science and technology, its culture of innovation the envy of the world”.
After the Arabs had rejected a UN-proposed partition, Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion declared the birth of a new nation on May 14, 1948, and became its first prime minister.
Less than 24 hours passed before Israel found itself under attack from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. The fledgling state won its war of independence, but a pattern had been established. The heroic task of nation-building would be punctuated by security crises — from the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, through conflicts in Lebanon and terror attacks within Israel to today’s Hamas-engineered turmoil.
As Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, has observed, there is continuity in the fact that Israel today faces complex challenges, just as it did in the era of Ben-Gurion.
Australia played an unwitting role in the path to Israel’s foundation. Last October, Turnbull travelled to Israel to mark the 100th anniversary of the Australian Light Horse charge at Beer Sheva against a sizeable Ottoman contingent. It was a feat of arms that helped British-led forces go on to establish supremacy in Palestine, with profound consequences for the future state of Israel.
Read the article by Bruce Loudon in The Australian.