Sixty years of success.(ISRAEL)

JUST 60 years ago, David Ben-Gurion declared that after a lapse of two millennia the state of Israel had resumed its existence. There was dancing in the streets of this revived state. At the time, the Nazi Holocaust had just dealt Jews what was virtually a deathblow, and survivors might have been expected never to recover. In a magnificent, perhaps desperate, assertion of human vitality, they instead came together to create their own state. Jews were at last in a position to take their future into their own hands. An ancient identity, complete with its long-since-unspoken language of Hebrew, acquired a modern expression. There is no other example in history of a national comeback like this.

By now, the success of the experiment speaks for itself. Since the state's creation, the number of Israeli Jews has risen tenfold, to some 6 million today. The number of Israeli Arabs has increased in similar proportions, to over a million. Arabs are represented in parliament and the cabinet, and in the higher ranks of the diplomatic service and the military. Though the country is only about 8,000 square miles, and devoid of natural resources, it has a first-world economy. It is a leader in the sciences, in technology, and in medicine, with more than its fair share of Nobel prizes. Its art, music, and literature stand comparison with any elsewhere.

Israel is a country that the United Nations voted originally to approve, and there is no other example of this either. What had formerly been the British Mandate of Palestine was henceforth to be Israel and a Palestinian-Arab state, side by ...