I was less than eight years old when in our regular talks around the dinner table with my brothers, sister and parents every night,my father had told us that God did not give Israel many natural resources, none, in fact, that I know of. Then my father taught us that it was probably because this little piece of land had so much to teach, so much history we as Christians should know, and so much to offer. He said it is the people, not the gifts in the earth, who would do so much themselves rather than relying on natural resources to make the world a better place.
I was in grammar school when I learned the Christian importance of Israel, and learned the joy surrounding its becoming a nation on its own when it took over a piece of land occupied by Palestine and David Ben Gurian announced its independence and proclaimed Israel an independent state. It remains the only nation on earth where its indigenous people returned to their own land after thousands of years of forced exile.
I learned throughout my high school years how brilliant the people of Israel are, and how they combined brilliance with hard work and innovation, becoming the inventors and creators of so many things that make our everyday life so much better and easier. I admired the fact, that although they are the 100th smallest of all the nations in the world, they also have had more Nobel Peace Prize recipients, some 22 per cent of all those ever presented, a staggering percentage considering the small population and youth of it as a recognized nation.
I was the mother of a Marine whose ship pulled into Israel when he learned, and shared with me, how wonderful the people were, how even the women had to serve in the military and how people live in kibbutz’ to make each other’s lives better and help each other on a daily basis, all doing their share. He was the first I knew who visited there and I was happy to hear his stories of how they loved our military and America.
I learned through reading over the years the statistics on how Israeli people have made their nation the country that brought in more trees into the 21st century than any other nation, all of whom are still talking about preserving the environment. And that’s in spite of it being a desert. I learned it is in the process of building the world’s largest desalination plant and right now using more treated salt water for a variety of uses than any other country in the world. I learned that 90 per cent of its homes heat their water by solar power.
When it comes to science, Israel can’t be beat. They’re second in the world in space science, and its people hold more patents than are held in Russia, India and China combined.
Nobel prize winners for literature are as varied as the humorous Melissa Bank or the essayist Isaac Singer, or David Stromberg and so many more.
And it’s the only country in the world that revived its own unspoken language after thousands of years.
But it’s all its advances in medicine for which I love Israel the most. They’ve made great strides against diabetes…look at Oramed, insulin that can be taken orally, and Orcin to fight blindness, or ReWalk Robotics, the exoskeleton that helps the lame to walk. Israelis knows how to create medicine and make healthy bodies.
It’s more than five years since I had the faith in a Freehold radiologist NJ and an Israeli innovation to enter a trial for cryoablation, a simple, easy, painless way to kill a cancerous tumor in my breast. It was a procedure that took less than half an hour, let me keep a lunch appointment a couple of hours later, and took a band-aid to cover the tiny scar where the needle was inserted with the magic stuff that literally froze the tumor to death without even leaving the needle or injecting anything into my tissue.
I had the opportunity to visit Israel a few weeks after the procedure and was overwhelmed when I met with the men…and women, so many of them, who participated in the innovation and brought it to reality. I was humbled by their appreciation of me for entering the trial; I will never forget their warmth, charm and graciousness when they welcomed me to their part of the country .
Israel. A country smaller than New Jersey, a people who have spent their history in battling enemies that surround them, a bright and refreshing haven in the middle of a desert.
There are 26 official Muslim nations in the world, there are 18 official Christian nations in the world. But there is only one Jewish state in the world. Israel.
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