In May 1948, immediately after Israel declared independence, Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, and Lebanon attacked it from the north, east, and south.
The Arab nations had a combined population of over 30 million; warplanes, tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, machine guns, and mortars; full supplies of ammunition, oil, and gasoline; the ability to obtain more arms as they desired from Britain and other nations; and local Arab allies already fighting the Jews.
Israel had a Jewish population of 630,000-720,000; initially, only small arms, some mortars, and older artillery pieces, and limited supplies of everything. The only additional arms that it could acquire were some covertly obtained World War II surplus, principally from Czechoslovakia, because the United States, Britain, and most of the rest of the world had imposed an arms embargo against it and the local Arabs fighting it.
Against these staggering odds, Israel somehow miraculously survived and prevailed against the array of attacking Arab armed forces.
Since then, the tiny and initially impoverished nation — continually threatened with total destruction by vastly larger Arab nations, since 1979 by Iran, and more recently also by its Palestinian, Lebanese, and Yemeni terrorist allies — has made itself a regional military powerhouse that has repeatedly defeated its foes.
It also has taken in millions of Jews from around the world, including those fleeing persecution by Arab nations and the Soviet Union and extreme poverty in Ethiopia; created legendary intelligence services, such as the Mossad; made itself a global leader in cutting-edge technology, science, medicine, water desalination, and agriculture (it famously “made the desert bloom”); and developed an economy with a per capita income that now rivals those of major Western European nations.
A person who has less wealth will exert more effort to achieve the same gain than a person who has more wealth.
How has Israel achieved all of this? Some have suggested cultural factors. Others have suggested divine assistance. And those with darker motives have asserted that international Jewish conspiracies manipulate the U.S. government and media, and many of their worldwide counterparts.
Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister in 1969-1974, offered an explanation that provides a key element of the answer: “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs — We have no place to go.”
An unexpected source appears to provide the most comprehensive and analytical explanation, specifically the work of the late economist Julian Simon (my father), concerning why some exert more effort and advance faster than others.
In his 1987 book, Effort, Opportunity, and Wealth, Simon set forth the following formula: Effort and resulting achievement increase (1) with the size of the potential gain, and (2) in inverse proportion to wealth.
A person who has less wealth will exert more effort to achieve the same gain than a person who has more wealth, and a person will exert more effort if the potential gain is greater.
“The data make especially clear that poorer people will expend more time and effort to increase their economic position than will rich people.”
Studies concerning Russian, Indian, Irish, Israeli, and American families, for example, all show “more work by the parents and by individual children” in families with more children and thus less wealth per person.
Simon’s subsequent book, The Economic Consequences of Immigration, provides more supporting evidence. While immigrants start out in this country with less wealth than native-born Americans, their children have a higher labor-force participation rate and a “higher propensity to start new businesses.”
For many decades, indeed, poor immigrants and their children, particularly East Asian, Indian, and Jewish immigrants and their children, have moved up the economic ladder with dizzying speed.
Israel is tiny; it is about the same size as New Jersey. In the early years after independence, Israel was very poor. Much of its population consisted of penniless refugees, Jews from displaced persons camps in Europe who had survived or escaped the Holocaust or persecution by Arab governments. It had a water shortage, no significant wealth-creating natural resources, and, other than agriculture, only a little light industry.
Simon’s lower wealth factor, especially in Israel’s early decades of existence, would alone have encouraged outsized Israeli effort.
Simon’s greater potential gain factor, however, has always impelled Israel to exert world-leading effort.
On every day since Israel declared independence, Arab nations and, more recently, Iran have imperiled Israel’s continued existence. Iran has made it a national priority to literally wipe Israel off the map and kill its Jewish population. Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and other Palestinian terrorist groups similarly have made this their single highest priority.
This continuous maximum-level danger has presented, and for the foreseeable future will continue to present, Israel with the greatest possible gain from unmatched effort: Survive and thrive or suffer national destruction and another Holocaust.
In other words, the drive to survive and prevent its annihilation has produced Israel’s amazing effort, ingenuity, and achievements.
David M. Simon is a lawyer in Chicago. For more, please see www.dmswritings.com.
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
