Lets move all the Jews!?

It has been suggested that having Jews live in the Middle East is an astoundingly bad idea. Since we came here, there has been only strife and we obviously are the cause of it all. We should have stayed away and let the sleeping desert lie. There is no oil here ... there is no gold ... what were those Zionists thinking? Were they challenged by the idea of building a country in one of the most inhospitable places on earth? Ancient historical claims aside, was there no better plot of land to set up shop? Did those poor souls escaping from Europe deserve to leave one war zone, only to arrive in another?

So what are we to do? Shall we move? If we could arrange a good deal with our local neighbours for every resident of Israel to get a million dollars - would we move? How would you get any of them to stay, is the real question? Ideally, we could all go buy some small country somewhere quiet (without Arab neigbours) and transform somewhere else into the R&D capital of the world. We could buy some small African game farm next to the Sahara, turn it into farms and grow watermelons and sunflowers. We must ensure the garrinim supply at all costs or I'm not going.

Imagine if Israeli's were not suppressed by the emotional and economic costs of wars and trying to survive .. what they could have achieved. Every tank that they had to build - could have funded another school. Every F16 they had to buy ... could have turned another 1000 square kilometers of desert green. Israel would have been exporting wood and feeding our starving neighbours luscious tropical home-grown fruit. Dream on!

There is an important lesson in this strange tale. What if you were offered a million bucks? Would you go? Would you give up on this piece of desert and not look back? I think not. Although this country was built by a different breed of Jew, toughened by a cruel world, it still holds an unmeasurable value. We Jews place value on education. We place value on learning from history. No-one wanted us when we needed it most and we shall never forget that. At a chaotic time in history when everyone was recovering from a war - we took the initiative and made this piece of land our home. We have not been lazy. In 60 years we've transformed it into a thriving hub of ingenious complexity with an annual 100 billion dollar economy - a model to every other nation on the planet. It's ours. We're staying. Get used to it.