2048 - The Rejuvinated State

Israel is one of the very few countries never to have known a moment of non-democratic governance, though it has never enjoyed a second of peace. It is the only democracy with a citizen’s army that has repeatedly proven its will and ability to fight. It is the only modern state that invests equally in innovation as it does in faith-based studies, balancing technology and tradition. It is a state with the highest birth rate in the industrialized world, and the only country to expand its original population twenty-fold in seventy years, largely through refugee absorption. Territorially miniscule, more than half of it desert, Israel is a multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious and multilingual country. By all measures, the state should have dissolved long ago, if not from internal divisions then from relentless external threats, yet it not only survives but thrives. What should Israel look like on its one hundreth birthday? How should Israeli society be reorganized to assure equal opportunity for individuals and prosperity for all? What must be the state’s relationship with its citizens, Arab and Jewish alike, as well as with its army, its national institutions, and the Diaspora? Which policies must Israel adopt to position itself influentially in international affairs and preserve its technological edge? How, moreover, can Israel grow into a more just, moral, and ultimately more Jewish state?