ABSTRACT
There are few explanations how Israel overcame so many obstacles to independence and creating a First World state. With the correlation of forces strongly favoring their enemies, the Jews had to make a conscious political effort on a scale unknown in other national independence struggles. For, as Nathan Rotenstreich has written:
The creation of the State of Israel . . . [was] accompanied by catastrophes, difficulties and stresses, by demographic and international problems . . . The State of Israel, as such, is first of all the culmination of conscious decisions taken by Jews. It is not a reality created by force of circumstances but a reality which we wanted to create and establish from the outset . . . The asserted element of artificial construction should, I suggest, be seen as an essential element. Essential is surely the opposite of artificial.1
