This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Jack Mintz, May 20, 2024
On Tuesday, Israel celebrated its 76th anniversary. Getting to 76 has not been easy. Since the malevolent, unprovoked attack by the terrorist organization Hamas on Oct. 7, Israel has been on the defensive in terms of both security and international reputation. As of May 9, the number of soldiers and members of other security forces killed since last year’s Memorial Day is 716, that on top of the 1,200 civilians murdered by Hamas’s October attack. With more than 130 live or dead hostages still being held by Hamas, how can Israelis celebrate their country’s founding? A two-state solution, which has been a goal since the British mandate ended in 1948, looks farther off than ever.
But Israel’s 9.2 million people did celebrate, if in a muted way. So should the rest of the world. Israel has made outsized contributions that have saved millions of lives around the world and helped raise millions of others out of poverty. Its innovative success is a tonic against the “river-to-the-sea” protesters who only want to boycott and extinguish Israel while harassing Jews in the Diaspora.
I was recently looking at World Bank data on per capita Gross National Income (GNI), trying to measure Canada’s progress compared with how other countries have been doing. To get to GNI, start with gross domestic product (GDP) — the value of what’s produced in the country — then subtract out payments to foreigners and add in payments received by residents from abroad. (In fact, Israel’s GDP and GNI were almost identical in 2022: payments from abroad basically equaled payments going out of the country).
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