Avi Benlolo: Israel at 78 — winning is a mindset |
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Avi Benlolo: Israel at 78 — winning is a mindset
The Jewish state has taken nationhood from the ordinary to extraordinary
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This week marks 78 years since Israel achieved independence in 1948. The story of the Jewish people is the story that any leader with a winning mindset can understand and draw inspiration from. This is a story of a people who were exiled from their homeland, the land of Israel, more than 2,500 years ago. Despite untold hardship culminating with the Holocaust from 1939-1945, they rose to establish one of the most successful democratic nations in modern times.
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Israel has taken nationhood from the ordinary to extraordinary. It is defined by a people who refuse to be defined by others, who have turned passivity into action, victimhood into strength and oppression and subjugation to brilliance and determination. In its remarkable 78 years, Israel has made the desert bloom. It has turned saltwater into drinking water and looked not to the land for natural resources to create economic wealth, but to its people.
Avi Benlolo: Israel at 78 — winning is a mindset Back to video
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Remarkably, even while Israel has been fighting a seven-front war since the tragic events of October 7, its economy has been booming and its hi-tech sector has managed to raise over $50 billion. The biggest exit in Israel’s history occurred just last month with Wiz being purchased by Google for a staggering $32 Billion. The cyber platform can be tailor made to secure any application and is run on the cloud.
Israel is a power-engine for economic growth. Despite the wars with Hamas, Hezbollah and most recently, Iran, Israel’s economy is expected to grow by a minimum of 3.3 per cent to possibly 5.2 per cent this year. Israelis are innovators, builders, and dreamers. Despite wars, tragedies and uncertainty, remarkably, Israel is ranked eighth in the World Happiness Report.
With all this in mind, it’s truly remarkable that Israel’s population stands at 10.2 million, which is about 12 times the number of citizens since independence. What I find most promising about Israel’s future is the sheer number of young people: 27 per cent of its population is aged 0-14 and only 13 per cent are 65 and older. It’s a country that values family and sees a future. About 177,000 babies were born last year, showcasing incredible promise and resilience for the future of the Jewish State.
Things did not always look promising for the Jewish people in history. For centuries they drifted from land to land, persecuted for their religion. The Spanish Inquisition of 1492 saw Jews forced out of Spain and then Portugal. Those who remained, were forced by the church to convert. Jews were chased from village to village, accused of murdering Christian babies to make Matzah or for causing the Black Plague or poisoning town wells. Without a place of refuge to call home, the Jews were constant targets of haters who taxed them, marginalized, and penalized them, put them into ghettos and when all that wasn’t enough, murdered them in pogroms and finally, the Holocaust — the largest genocide in history.
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The Jews without their homeland were never safe. Each morning, afternoon, and evening they prayed the words, “next year in Jerusalem” — a longing cry for salvation — a return to their homeland, the land of Israel. They were exiled from the land of Israel for more than 2,000 years since the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Yet, despite the horrific sacrifice of their exile, they kept faith, tradition, and knowledge. The sacred texts, the Torah, which forms the foundation of their religious identity was transmitted from one generation to the next — a truly remarkable achievement considering the slaughter, uncertainty and persecution they experienced.
The dream to return home never faded. That dream was lived by millions of children and adults alike for centuries. They would wonder foreign lands, but they would never see the Promised Land. Their dream is our present-day reality. It is embedded in the lyrics of Israel’s national anthem (called The Hope) so that we may never forget our people’s longing to be free: “the soul of a Jew yearns, and forward to the East, to Zion, an eye looks. Our hope is not yet lost, the hope of two thousand years, to be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.”
But hope is not a strategy, and it took one man to ignite the match that would lead to the eventual establishment of the State of Israel. Theodor Herzl was an assimilated Jew covering the trial of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris in 1894. Shocked by the obviously fabricated charges of treason of one of France’s most decorated soldiers who just happened to be Jewish, Herzl concluded that the answer to antisemitism was for Jews to have a place of refuge — their own state — that would provide them with safety and security. Hope was turned into a Jewish liberation movement, which saw the return of the Jewish people to their homeland, the land of Israel.
“If you will it, it is no dream,” said Herzl. Today, despite the incredible rise of antisemitism in every corner of the globe, the Jewish people’s dream has been fulfilled and we are free. This is a story of a small people with an incredible legacy. It is a true story about human resilience, fortitude, and achievement. We are still here. Our enemies are not. Winning is not just a dream, it is a mindset. Happy Birthday Israel.
Avi Abraham Benlolo is the Chairman and CEO of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative, a Canadian think-tank
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