Opinion: Israel – a look back on 75 years

As I strolled into the shiny conference venue hosting a celebration of Israel’s 75th anniversary, I was struck by a flashback from days gone by.  

My mind was filled with vivid imagery from April 26th 1998, and the moment the coach that I and my fellow Hull Jews were travelling on to London drove past crowds of screaming, placard-waving anti-Israel activists.

But there was a key difference between the angry mob outside the Wembley Conference Center protesting Israel’s 50th and the loud but peaceful group clustered around the gates of the Expo Tel Aviv Convention Center.

They represented a cross-section of Israelis, waving their own country’s flag and demonstrating against controversial proposals to alter the state’s judicial system.

Inside the venue, Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, spoke with equal passion about the need for dialogue and debate as the country charts a period of internal strife with the same determination and vigour as it is used to employing against the external threats it has continuously faced.

President Herzog was addressing thousands of delegates attending the general assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America – the umbrella group of the local federations that criss-cross the United States and Canada, highlighting the views of Jews of just about every religious, political, sexual orientation and racial background demographic imaginable.

I was joining them in my role at World ORT, the global network operating schools and educational programs in Israel and 40 countries across the diaspora. Rather than focus on the division, my colleagues and I spent time engaging in the apolitical dialogue around education.

Having heard David Chinn, British expat and Managing Partner of McKinsey Israel, eruditely dissect the economic, health and employment disadvantages facing so many Israelis, especially from the Charedi and Arab sectors, delegates went on to learn how non-profit organizations are working tirelessly to make a difference across the country.

They met Sivan, a graduate of an ORT-affiliated school in the northern coastal town of Kiryat Yam. She explained how her parents had made Aliyah from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, before she was born, and gone on to raise their six children in a town whose minority communities have faced significant socio-economic challenges.

Softly-spoken Sivan described how she had become one of the first girls at her school to enrol on an electronics course provided by World ORT’s Israeli-arm, Kadima Mada. It changed her life, giving her the skills she needed to progress in her education, finish school with an electronics qualification, study at the Hebrew University, and look forward to a desired career in software engineering.

Such is her desire to make a difference in the Start-Up Nation, and to give something back to society, that she now works part-time teaching current ORT students in Jerusalem the same robotics skills she learnt at school.

Her optimism and inspirational story will stay with me – as will the experience of the deeply moving Yom Hazikaron ceremony alongside 7,000 others under the stars at the Latrun military memorial in the Ayalon Valley.

The atmosphere in Israel this week has been one that characterises the last 75 years: passionate debate, collective remembrance and a sense of unity in the face of complex challenges.

It seems sadly inevitable that wherever we celebrate Israel’s centenary it will remain necessary to bustle past protesters to mark the occasion. But how Israel, and Diaspora Jewry, tackle the trials they face, and what they both look and feel like in 2048 will be the enduring questions for us all over the next quarter of a century.

• Marcus Dysch is Head of External Affairs at World ORT