Despite the cultural achievements mentioned, I don't know that you can make the argument, at all, that Israel is a success. At best, it is very much premature.
First, it a subsidized state, heavily so. It receives more assistance from the United States than any other place on earth, no matter how needy. It is a virtual flood of assistance - taking the form of money, credits, shared technology, access to the top officials, and many other forms.
Remember, Israel is a country with a population the size of Ecuador, or roughly the population of Greater Chicago, and it is not a third-world land, yet its assistance outweighs vastly that received by countries like India (over 140 times the population of Israel) or Nigeria (nearly thirty times the population).
Second, Israel has been immensely more subsidized than the American government assistance alone indicates. Germany has paid many billions in reparations - I'm not questioning the rightness of this for a moment, only pointing out its role in Israel's present state and that it is not something that continues indefinitely.
Private interests in America and other Western nations send a continuous flow of donations and assistance of many kinds to Israel. I have no idea how large this is, but I know from childhood experiences of growing up in Chicago that it is very large.
For countries like Mexico or the Philippines, amounts sent by family members working abroad are very important economic factors. Considering the average economic success of Jews in America and Europe and their religious as well as nationalistic ties to Israel, one suspects this is a pretty remarkable amount.
Third, Israel has received many special privileges from the United States and others, privileges which are very important to the economy, privileges of which other, developing nations must be envious. These involve degrees of free trade, technology sharing, the free movement back and forth of dual citizens, and indeed the granting of and recognizing dual citizenship in the first place.
Fourth, Israel remains sixty years after its birth a garrison state. The size of its armed forces and the large amounts of late-model equipment and institutions like The Wall and the immense labyrinth of security checks plus a nuclear arsenal make Israel unlike almost any state on earth. This is not a long-term sustainable situation.
Fifth, in the ethical sphere, Israel truly must be said to set one of the lowest standards on the planet. It keeps an entire people effectively enslaved. It launches invasions and assaults against virtually all its neighbors. It imprisons thousands illegally. It assassinates and tortures on a large scale.
The argument is so often made that Israel is the Mideast's only democracy, but what kind of democracy is it? Remember, The American Confederacy and Apartheid South Africa were democracies in much the same sense Israel is.
Israel does not have a Bill or Charter of Rights, nor is it likely it ever will have one. There are so many specialized laws in Israel, privileging some and greatly disadvantaging others, that such a document would be impossible to construct. The entire purpose of such a document is to protect various minorities - whether in religion, ideas, or origins - from the tyranny of a majority. Israel, as constituted, can only continue as a tyranny of the majority.
Longer term, there are many fundamental problems. Perhaps the greatest of these is the differential in birth rates between most Israelis and their Arab neighbors. Arab populations at current rates are doubling every 24 years or so. Israel, like most advanced Western countries, can't even replace its own population. It has depended entirely on migration.
But Israel is actually starting to experience significant out-migration flows. People who have a choice now sometimes choose to go where long-term prospects for prosperity and peace are superior, even to Germany, a country which goes out of its way now to welcome back Jews.
If one looks at the prospects for places like America or Britain or Canada or France or Scandinavia, places where millions of Jews live in peace and prosperity, Israel, with its perpetual state of war and its natural limits and its complex social and ethnic difficulties, does not look glowing.
