The Semitic tiger

Carlos Alberto Montaner

First there was talk of four “Asian tigers”: Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. They were countries that, in the course of one generation, leaped from abject poverty to development. Then came New Zealand (the Anglo tiger), Ireland (the Celtic tiger), and even Chile, whom people are starting to call the “Latin tiger,” a country that seems decidedly on its way to become part of the First World.

Curiously, nobody includes among those success stories the most impressive account of all: Israel. In mid-May, it will mark 60 years since its tumultuous founding on the inhospitable sands of the Middle East. At the time, almost nobody would bet on the survival of that small state, which emerged in the tense spring of 1948 amid the first combats of the Cold War.

The founding fathers were barely a handful of dreamers, besieged by tens of millions of Arabs ready to crush them. They had no army and no money, and some of them came from the horrendous Nazi slaughterhouse where 6 million Jews had recently been executed in the most sinister genocide in the history of mankind.

They did have, however, a desperate conviction: to build a safe and decent space where the tormented Jewish people could survive the brutal anti-Semitism sporadically practiced by almost all the other monotheistic nations that descended from Abraham, the common father of Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Everything militated against Israel: the geography, the neighbors, the miserable and arid soil, the scant and varied population -- even the language, because Hebrew was a ritual tongue, practically dead, confined to the synagogue and the reading of holy books, which had to be revitalized while the Jewish population communicated in the vernacular languages of the countries whence they came. Some communicated in German, others in Polish or Yiddish; others spoke only Turkish, Arabic or Greek.

Besides, their ethnicity was deeply divided between two communities that didn't always get along: the Ashkenazi, generally of German-Polish origin, and the Sephardim, originally from Spain, from where they were expelled in 1492.

Therefore, there was no such thing as a Jewish people, but several Jewish populations forged in the Diaspora, including those who emigrated from Yemen, Morocco, Ethiopia and, above all, Russia. Nor did they have a dominant phenotype that might characterize them physically. In addition, they attached themselves in different ways to the religious and cultural tradition of the new and unknown land, exhibiting very different levels of intellectual and academic development. A variety that, no doubt, was not the best cohesive to unify the toddling nation, which took its first steps amid an invasion intended to “push the Jews into the sea.”

What did the Israelis do in 60 years with that cluttered and difficult mosaic? They created an enormously complex parliamentary democracy, a reflection of the diversity of a vibrant society of more than 7 million inhabitants who live in a tiny country barely 20,000 square kilometers in size, and enjoy all individual rights. The nation's powerful armed forces are subordinated to the authority of civilians.

They created a reasonably effective government, more honest than most, despite the turbulence in which they've had to live. They built a nation with a highly educated population, with the world's lowest index of social violence. Sixteen percent of them are Israeli Muslims, a not easily assimilable minority, even though they constitute a group (men and women) with more freedom and prosperity than any Arab group on earth.

Israel today has a per capita (PPP) of US$29,000 and -- according to the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which measures the quality of life -- is among the world's 30 leading countries, between Germany and Greece, a span that includes no other Middle Eastern (or Latin American) nation. This, despite the fact that it has to devote no less than 8 percent of its production to its defense, because it has bled in at least three costly wars and tomorrow might have to plunge into the fourth.

How has Israel achieved this economic miracle? Essentially by cultivating its enormous human capital and civic virtues, on the basis of intelligence, rigor, intense work and respect for the law. All this has permitted it to become very efficient in agriculture, communications, electronics, the manufacture of medical equipment, aviation and the arms industry, and even in space exploration, because Israeli satellites now circle the earth.

Of course, not everything is perfect in the country, but before judging Israel one always has to wonder where one can find another society as free and developed, which in barely six decades, emerging from nowhere and sailing against all elements, has achieved what the Hebrew people have. It is time to begin talking about the Semitic tiger. We must study closely what has been accomplished there. It's almost miraculous. 

May 6, 2008

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