Israel thrives on 60th Diamond Jubilee anniversary of the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in their ancestral homeland

Recommended to read: the comprehensive Israel at 60 feature in Canada's National Post.

Complementary op/ed from Barbara Kay: Why Israel should be the plaintiff in the court of public opinion.

In 1948, Israel, and the Palestinians—
The True Story by Ephraim Karsh in Commentary Magazine

The recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British Mandate (1920-1948) and Israel’s early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the “new historians,” paint a much more definitive picture of the historical record. They reveal that the claim of dispossession is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. What follows is based on fresh research into these documents, which contain many facts and data hitherto unreported. Read original May 2008 story.

Memorial Day Precedes Independence Day

Israelis honored their 22,437 compatriots who died in defense of the Jewish state.

Israel came to a halt Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning as sirens sounded across the nation to mark Memorial Day.

As on every year, entertainment venues shut down and radio and television broadcasters aired solemn programs out of respect for Israel's 22,437 fallen -- a figure that includes those killed while serving in the armed forces and in the pre-state Jewish underground. Another 1,634
Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks.

Caroline Glick condemns the international media's irrational anti-Zionist bias on the occasion of Israel's 60th year of statehood in The Jerusalem Post "Our World: anti-Zionism at 60":

Israel's 60th Independence Day is an excuse for the international media to weigh in on the state of the Jewish state. Given the anti-Israel bias of most of the international media, not surprisingly, most of the reports reveal less about Israel's status at 60 than they reveal about how anti-Zionists perceive Israel at 60.

Two critiques - both cover stories of major magazines - stand out in this regard. In Canada, Maclean's magazine's May 5 cover pictures three Israeli soldiers struggling to raise the national flag. The headline reads, "Why Israel Can't Survive."

In the US, the cover of The Atlantic Magazine's May edition sports a Star of David painted in Palestinian colors of red, black and green ensconced in a PLO flag. The headline asks, rhetorically, "Is Israel finished?"

The authors of the two articles - Michael Petrou in Maclean's and Jeffery Goldberg in The Atlantic come to their subject from different angles. Petrou writes as an emotionally disengaged observer. Goldberg, who made aliya in the 1980s, writes as a disillusioned Zionist who abandoned Israel and moved back to America. Petrou writes of Israel's certain demise with amoral detachment. Goldberg's dispatch is a deeply emotional attempt to justify his decision to abandon Israel. ...

While well written, Petrou's piece is a journalistic embarrassment. For his central contention is a fabrication. ...

In the end, the unifying factor in Petrou's and Goldberg's anti-Zionism is that both ignore Zionists. For Petrou, Zionists are irrelevant because they are doomed to fail whoever they are. For Goldberg, Zionists are no more than symbols. They cannot be moral because they are powerful.

Israel's success is a testament to the enduring ingenuity and strength of the Jewish people as moral actors. The longevity of anti-Zionism is a testament to the fact that no matter what Israel's accomplishments, there will always be those who fail to see them.