Yom Huledet Sameach, Yisrael - Israel Turns 60

Israel turns 60 today, I believe. Yom Huledet Sameach, Yisrael. 

Earlier this week, Alan Dershowitz wrote an ope-d for the New York Post, Israel's Gift to the World:

"As Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, the world should recognize the enormous gifts the Jewish state has given the world. Israel has exported more lifesaving medical technology to the far-flung corners of the earth than any nation of comparable size. It has done more to protect the environment, to promote literature, music, the arts and sciences, to spread agricultural advances and to fight terrorism within the rule of law."

As Debbie Shussel writes along those same lines today:

"Despite being a tiny state, just smaller than the size of New Jersey, the Gross Domestic Product of Israel is greater than that of all of its Arab neighbors."

From the National Catholic Weekly blog, Michael Sean Winters takes note of Israel's birthday and he discusses the Catholic-Jewish relationship:

"As Catholics, our relationship with the Jewish people could hardly be more complicated or more shameful. Antisemitism had flourished within and without the Church. Pogroms in Catholic Poland betrayed this hatred. The Dreyfus Affair in France was largely the work of reactionary Catholic monarchists. And, of course, the sad history of the Spanish Inquisition showed before the Holocaust the irrational extent to which hatred of Jews could lead a people and a nation in Catholic Spain."

"The Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II changed all of that. The Council denounced the charge of deicide against the Jews and brought about a new appreciation for the Covenant with Israel and the Hebrew Scriptures."

"...As Americans, we have a different reason to celebrate Israel. She is our best ally in the world. Part of this is strategic: ever since Harry S. Truman, over the vigorous objections of the State Department, recognized the State of Israel 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state's existence in 1948, Israel and America have been in a strategic partnership. In an often chaotic part of the world, we had an ally that was stable and secure."

"But, there is a deeper reason than strategic necessity for the alliance. It has to do with shared values. Israel may have been born physically in what was once Palestine but it was born intellectually in the heart of the West. Its founders were European liberals and socialists, people familiar with the Enlightenment and its views on the proper role of government."

Winters tells an amazing anecdote about Ben Gurion ordering the fledgling Israeli army to sink the Altalena, an order carried out by the young captain, Yitzhak Rabin.   

A list of local activities to celebrate this vibrant country can be found here.