77 years of Israel: the experience of a state living in a state of chronic threat and its significance for Ukraine
Israel celebrates the 77th anniversary of its independence — statehood gained in conditions of fierce resistance, war and deep trauma. The country that emerged immediately after the Holocaust came under fire from five armies, today is a high-tech democratic state with its own space program, a developed army and paradoxical diplomacy. Her story is an example of how a state is built under the pressure of a constant threat. For Ukraine, which found itself in a situation of struggle for existence, Israel’s experience cannot be universal, but it is definitely valuable.
Israel: 77 years of struggle for existence, borders and recognition
On May 14, 2025, Israel celebrates the 77th anniversary of its independence — not a round, but symbolically important date. This age is not rich for a country that all this time lives in a state of constant mobilization, existential anxiety, between war and peace, between innovation and loneliness in the international arena. But at the same time, this is already a whole historical era, which contained more military conflicts than some have experienced in millennia. On May 14, 1948, on the eve of the end of the British mandate in Palestine, the Jewish National Council headed by David Ben-Gurion, relying on the UN resolution, announced the creation of the state of Israel, with Chaim Weizmann as its first president.
The day after the declaration of independence, a full-scale attack by five Arab armies fell on Israel. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon went to war hoping to destroy the fledgling country before it could consolidate. But the reality turned out to be different: Israel did not just resist, but expanded the controlled territory beyond the borders outlined by the UN plan. Already in the first months of its existence, this state began to build not only an administration, but also a defense strategy, which was based on the principle: “only the one who acts first will survive.”
In the following decades, Israel proved that it was ready not only to defend itself, but also to act in advance. In 1949, the Israeli army advanced to the south, capturing the Negev, and in 1951 to the north of the Sinai Peninsula. In 1955, targeted raids against Syria began. In 1956-57, Israel, with the support of France and Great Britain, captured Sinai and reached the Suez Canal. It was a war for control over strategic routes and freedom of navigation, but at the same time for the very right to exist. The Gaza Strip also came under Israeli control, which became a new point of tension.
Israel’s strategy has never been defensive in the classical sense. Even in those cases when the initiative was seized by opponents, Israel’s response was always large-scale. This happened in 1967 during the Six-Day War. Then, anticipating the attack, the Israeli army launched a pre-emptive strike against the aircraft of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. As a result of the lightning campaign, Israel captured Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This not only changed the map of the region, but also complicated the configuration of the conflict: from then on, it was not only about Israel’s right to exist, but also about the fate of the occupied territories.
A new war of attrition broke out already in 1969. Israel led it on the territory of the Suez Canal, exchanging blows with Egypt, and in 1970 the tension reached its peak: the Israeli army again struck Egyptian positions. After a brief respite in 1973, another Arab-Israeli war began. This time, the Arab countries acted in a more coordinated manner, but this did not change the overall result: Israel retained control over strategic territories.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the Israeli army repeatedly intervened in the situation in Lebanon. In 1978, the first major invasion began, and in 1982, Israel launched a full-scale operation known as the First Lebanon War. These actions were aimed at destroying pockets of Palestinian militants, but at the same time involved the country in a multi-year war on foreign territory. Only in 2000 did Israel withdraw its troops from Lebanon, but regional instability persisted.
Jerusalem occupies a special place in the history of Israel. This city, in which religion, politics, symbolism and conflicts intersect, has long ceased to be just an administrative unit. In August 1980, Israel decided to legally establish the status of a united Jerusalem as its capital. From the point of view of Israeli politics, this was the logical conclusion of the process of control over the city, which began during the Six-Day War of 1967. However, this decision was unacceptable to the international community. All diplomatic missions remained in Tel Aviv, and even those countries that had stable political or economic relations with Israel avoided public recognition of the new capital.
The status of Jerusalem has long been a point of tension between Israel and the rest of the world. From an Israeli perspective, it is the spiritual and national heart of the country, a city in which the foundations of identity, legal validity, and the symbolic space of the state are laid. But for most of the world, it was a territory with a complex and controversial status, weighed down by the memory of the Arab-Israeli wars, the fate of the Palestinian population and a general lack of political consensus.
This diplomatic stalemate remained unchanged until December 2017, when US President Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And already on May 14, 2018 — symbolically on the anniversary of the declaration of independence — the United States moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. No other major country repeated this step at that time. Some of the US allies openly expressed their disagreement, while others maintained diplomatic caution. At this moment, Jerusalem has once again turned from a historical center into a site of geopolitical confrontation, where every diplomatic decision is viewed not as a manifestation of the right to sovereignty, but as a declaration of a political position in the conflict.
For Israeli society, Trump’s decision became a sign of long-awaited support from the state, which is able to influence global balances. However, in the Arab world it was perceived as a demonstrative violation of all previous agreements, as unilateral support for Israel without taking into account the position of the Palestinians. The reaction was predictably tense, from diplomatic protests to new clashes in the Gaza Strip.
Despite all the technical, military and political capabilities, Israel is still in a situation where its right to determine its capital remains in question in the outside world. This is not an isolated case, but rather a pattern throughout Israeli history, where what is gained by force or argument within the country is not necessarily recognized outside of it. Jerusalem, in this sense, embodies the complex balance between national vision and international opposition.
What happened before Israel: the history of the land before the proclamation of the state
Everything that happened in the territory of modern Israel before the declaration of statehood in 1948 is a complex and deeply layered history, in which political forms replaced each other with such frequency that each new generation could see a different map of power. As early as the 15th–14th centuries BC, this land became the space for the formation of the ancient Jewish identity. Exodus from Egypt, resettlement to Canaan, gradual rooting – these plots are familiar to most of the biblical text, but they also have a specific geographical reference. It was in Canaan that the foundation of the future state of Israel arose.
On the border of the second and first millennia BC, approximately in the XI-X centuries, the period of flowering of the ancient Jewish monarchy began. However, this state soon split into two parts: the Northern Kingdom of Israel with its capital in Samaria and the Southern Judean Kingdom with its center in Jerusalem. This division had not only a political, but also a religious and cultural dimension. Each of the kingdoms formed its own identity, although both were based on common traditions.
In the 8th century BC, the Assyrian Empire destroyed the Northern Kingdom. Its population was resettled to Mezhyrechya, a region that became a symbol of forced exile. The Jewish kingdom lasted longer, but it also lost its independence. In 332 BC, the territory of Israel was captured by Alexander the Great. After him, this land became part of the Hellenistic world — first as part of the Seleucid empire, and later, after fierce confrontation and rebellions — under the rule of Rome.
In 64 BC, Judea was conquered by the Roman general Gnaeus Pompey the Great. It was with the Roman occupation that the destruction of the second Temple and the gradual expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem were connected. During this period, the Romans began to refer to the territory as Palestine, a term that would later acquire political significance and become part of the conflict between the Arab and Jewish populations. After the destruction of the Jewish state, the Jewish people did not have their own statehood for almost two millennia. It is scattered around the world – in Europe, North Africa, Asia, keeping only cultural, religious and historical ties with the land from which it was displaced.
A new political return to these territories began at the end of the 19th century. In 1882, after a wave of pogroms in Eastern Europe, the first Aliyah began – a wave of Jewish emigration to Palestine, which was then under the control of the Ottoman Empire. In parallel with it, the ideology of Zionism emerged — the Jewish national movement for the restoration of the state. In 1897, Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jew and journalist, convenes the First Zionist Congress, which officially declares the goal of establishing a Jewish state in historic Palestine.
After the First World War, the situation changed radically. The Ottoman Empire collapsed, and Palestine came under the control of Great Britain. In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued a famous declaration in which the government supported the idea of creating a Jewish “national home” in Palestine. This idea has been endorsed by several key Western powers. In 1922, the League of Nations officially approved the British mandate, and Palestine became a territory administered by London. It was during this period that the Jewish presence began to grow — both quantitatively and in terms of infrastructure.
Jewish settlements are being developed, the first economic structures, schools, hospitals are appearing, elements of political self-government are being formed. From 1904 to 1939, five major waves of Aliyah took place in Palestine, during which thousands of Jews fled from repression in the Russian Empire, Poland, and Germany, trying to find refuge in the “promised land.” After the Holocaust, world opinion finally shifted towards supporting the idea of statehood for the Jewish people. The horror of mass extermination in Europe has become a strong moral argument in discussions about the future of Palestine.
In 1947, the United Nations adopted a plan to divide the British mandate: 56% of the territory was intended for the Jewish state, 43% for the Arab state, and Jerusalem was to receive international status. Despite significant opposition from Arab countries, the UN decision became the legal basis for the future declaration of independence. A year later, on May 14, 1948, this declaration was proclaimed.
Memorial Day: why the Jews were exterminated by the Nazis and how the Ukrainians saved them
May 14 in Ukraine is the day when people who saved Jews during the Holocaust (also known as the Shoah) are officially commemoratedHebrew השואה, “catastrophe”). During the Second World War, the Nazis systematically and purposefully exterminated the Jews. Nazi policy was not chaotic, it was based on a clear racial ideology. Jews were not seen as a part of society that could be isolated or controlled, they were considered a biological threat that had to be eliminated physically. That is why in the case of the Jews it was about extermination as the main goal. Whole communities disappeared in a few days: first – registration, then – ghetto or simply an order to gather in a certain place, then – echelons or executions on the outskirts of cities.
Nazi Germany created an ideology where Jews were seen as “enemies of the race”, “the source of evil”, “a virus” that allegedly threatened all of humanity. In such conditions, even the very existence of a Jew was considered a crime. Bureaucracy, technology, transport, law were subjugated to this logic – all subordinated to one goal: not to leave a single Jew alive.
On the territory of Ukraine – one of the largest arenas of the Holocaust – approximately one and a half million Jews died – a quarter of all the victims of the Holocaust in Europe. This was a quarter of all Holocaust victims in Europe. Jewish affiliation became a sentence without the right to appeal. Extermination took place at all levels – women, children, old people, babies. They didn’t even leave traces – in many cases, after the shootings, the bodies were burned or buried in mass graves without any markings.
Shootings took place in the open air: in tracts, ravines, on the outskirts of cities and villages. The most famous of such places is Babyn Yar in Kyiv. But similar things happened in hundreds of settlements – in Berdychev, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Kharkiv, Rivne, Uman, Vinnytsia, Lviv, Zhytomyr. Often executions took place even without the creation of a ghetto. A list and an order were enough. Some mass killing sites contain the remains of thousands of people, still without proper burial or memorials.
Despite the terror and the threat of execution, Ukrainians — simple peasants, priests, monks, teachers, doctors — rescued Jews, hid them in basements, cellars, and forests. They made false documents, pretended to be their relatives, taught to pray in the Christian way so that the children would not accidentally impersonate themselves. There were cases when Ukrainian peasants saved entire families for years, hiding them in barns, barns, between walls. In the cities, especially in Western Ukraine, Jewish children were often hidden in monasteries, orphanages, and schools. They changed their names, taught them Christian prayers, so that in the event of an inspection they would not give themselves away. And all this — with a constant threat to one’s own family. Everyone then knew that everyone in the house would be shot for being a Jew.
Israel recognized 2,673 Ukrainians as Righteous Among the Nations. These are the ones we managed to find out about officially, in fact there were more of them. Many stories are not documented because the survivors themselves did not survive the war or later left without being able to submit documents. And those who saved often did not seek publicity, fearing persecution already after the war – this time from the Soviet authorities. But the facts remained. They were shot because they were Jews. They saved because they were human.
Modern Israel: facts that are truly impressive
Israel is located at the intersection of three continents – Asia, Africa and Europe. The territory of the country is only a little more than twenty-two thousand square kilometers, which is less than the area of Kyiv region, but the saturation of life, technologies, languages, conflicts and achievements here is as if several worlds were squeezed into the borders of one state. As of the beginning of 2021, the population of Israel was more than 9 million people. It is the 100th place in the world in terms of population and the 150th in terms of area, but the country is confidently in the top ten in terms of development and innovation.
There are two official languages here: Hebrew and Arabic. And if Arabic is natural for the local Arab population, then Hebrew is an example of language revival that has no analogues. For eighteen centuries the language was considered dead, but today it is spoken by the entire state, including government, universities, television, and the military. It is important that in the Declaration of Independence of Israel guarantees of freedom of speech were written in 1948 — a decade before the appearance of similar legal norms in many other states.
75% of the population of Israel are Jews, 20% are Arabs. But this simplicity in percentages is deceptive. In its cultural, religious and daily life diversity, Israeli society is almost a mosaic – Sephardim and Ashkenazim, emigrants from Russia, Ethiopia, France, Argentina, and the United States. Israeli cities can have separate religious laws, and in the neighboring neighborhood – completely different rules apply, and this does not surprise anyone.
Israel is the only country in the world where military service applies to both sexes, all women are required to serve in the army. Daughters and sons of ministers and deputies, all without exception, serve in the same way as the rest of the youth. The IDF is not only an instrument of security, but also a factor of socialization and national cohesion. This army has a battalion named after the hoopoe – “Duhyfat”. It was the hoopoe bird that was chosen as the national symbol of Israel in 2008. It may seem like a small thing from the outside, but in a country where every little thing matters, a bird with an open fan of feathers has become not only an emblem, but also the name of a combat unit.
Life expectancy in Israel is one of the highest in the world. The average figure is 82.5 years, which puts the country in eighth place in the global ranking. This is the result not only of high-quality medicine, although Israeli clinics today are considered to be among the most modern in the world, but also a combination of several factors: healthy nutrition, a developed system of early diagnosis, climatic conditions, a culture of physical activity and a relatively low level of household stress. Even in a war situation, Israelis maintain a rhythm of life in which health, education, technology, and family remain priorities.
In addition, Israel has the highest percentage of people with higher education in the world. Israeli society has a high level of education. As of recent years, 24% of the workforce has a college degree, and 12% has a science degree. But behind these dry percentages there is an important meaning: we are not talking about mass formal education for the sake of a diploma, but a system in which the emphasis is on practicality, knowledge, interdisciplinary, and applied thinking. Universities have strong faculties of physics, medicine, agricultural science, bioengineering, and linguistics. Academic mobility is developed in such a way that graduates smoothly integrate into the global scientific environment, in particular in the USA, Germany, Canada, and Japan.
The country, despite its small area, was able to build a model where education and health became not just social goods, but a survival strategy. At the same time, in the conditions of an external threat, the bet is not only on the army, but also on the fact that citizens are healthy, long-lived, educated and able to quickly adapt to the challenges of the times. It is this that creates the effect of Israel, which is difficult to describe with one number, but which is clearly felt by the results.
At the same time, Israel has the world’s largest number of museums per capita. Moreover, these are both classical art institutions and technical, military, ethnographic, and religious institutions. Moreover, it is the second country in the world in terms of the number of books published every year, and the first in terms of the number of translations of foreign books. A nation of readers and researchers.
It was here that the drip irrigation system was invented, a technology that made it possible to grow crops in desert conditions. Israel didn’t just master the desert, it turned it into a source of food. Today, this system is used all over the world, from California to Australia.
There are more than three thousand high-tech companies in Israel, more than any other country by area. That is why the country is called “the second Silicon Valley”, and it is here that more Nobel Prizes have been won in 77 years than in some countries in a century. Moreover, these awards are not limited only to science – they are also peace, and literature, and medicine.
Israel is one of the few countries in the world where the area of deserts has not become a sentence for agricultural development. More than half of the territory is rocky or sandy land, where it is practically impossible to conduct traditional agriculture under natural conditions. However, it was here that the drip irrigation system appeared, which later became the global standard in arid regions. The deserts here are gradually becoming greener, and millions of trees have been planted in Israel in recent decades. Each new planting is carefully planned, taking into account water, climate, and even how shade from trees affects moisture conservation. According to the rate of growth of forest areas in artificially created conditions, Israel is consistently among the world leaders.
In parallel with agricultural technologies, another seemingly unexpected area for a small country is developing – space. Israel has its own space program, which includes the development, launch and control of satellites. The country does not have large launch sites, but uses international cooperation, in particular with the United States and India, to launch its vehicles into orbit. The first Ofek-1 satellite was launched back in 1988. Since then, Israeli satellites have been in operation for communications, surveillance, scientific research and security purposes.
Social policy in Israel is built on a balance of support and demand. Help for low-income, unemployed or disabled people is available. However, the system is not designed to live on payments. It is a form of short-term support that encourages a return to an active life. At the same time, the state actively invests in retraining, employment programs and adult education. Israeli social workers often collaborate with the army, hospitals, and schools to create an effective model of care, focused not on passive compensation, but on integration.
The issue of housing in Israel is a separate topic. The price per square meter in major cities — Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa — is one of the highest in the world. For most young families, buying their own home is a distant and sometimes unattainable prospect. Therefore, most of the country’s residents rent apartments or live in shared housing with their parents, especially at the beginning of adulthood. Mortgages exist, but require significant initial capital and a stable income. This encourages mobility – young people often move from city to city, looking for profitable options or closer to the place of work.
So, Israel is surprising in how much it can fit into one small piece of land. It combines tradition and innovation, migration and indigenous communities, war and development, religion and technology. And all this is not parallel, but simultaneously.
The armed conflict in Israel has not stopped for a decade, it only changes its scale, forms, locations and opponents, but always remains a part of reality. What in other countries is defined as an emergency, in the Israeli case has become a long-term background of existence. At the same time, the basis is a constant desire to preserve life, ensure the continuity of statehood and stay in one’s territory.
International security mechanisms, on which certain hopes were once relied, in the Israeli case have over time turned out to be ineffective. The external structures that were supposed to guarantee the right to a peaceful life never became a real protection. This formed a stable attitude of Israel to the world – without hope for outside help. It has not become isolated, but the country does not rely on external guarantees as a main resource. This approach is pragmatic, tough, but can be especially valuable for countries that find themselves in conditions of protracted war. Not as a universal model, but an example of how the state adapts to protracted instability and builds a long-term strategy for its actions without external support, relying only on itself.
