Israel's Defense

Israel is a small country surrounded by Arab and Moslem countries with an overwhelmingly larger population, many of whom have been taught for the generations to hate Jews and Israel. These surrounding lands have been generally ruled by dictators and monarchs who have used Israel as a scapegoat for their own shortcomings. The "democratic" governments that have recently replaced those autocracies in the "Arab Spring" have not shown themselves to be any friendlier to Israel than their predecessors. In fact, freedom of speech has often revealed more hatred than before. Israel over the years has come to an understanding with many of those Arab countries, but the instability of those governments has led to the question of how much can Israel trust those countries with the present shifting of power there. The armistice lines of 1948 have given Israel a long and tortuous border with all of Israel situated close to the border, particularly the areas of greatest population density. Attempts by earlier liberal governments to create 2 separate states, Israel and Palestine, failed miserably. The rapproachment between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs in the 1990s led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority but collapsed when Yasser Arafat rejected the Clinton/Barak plan for a Palestinian state and instead started the Second Intifada with suicide bombers. A first stage attempt to unilaterally force the creation of a Palestinian state by withdrawing from Gaza resulted in a Hamas government sworn to the destruction of Israel which caused or allowed rockets to be fired into Israel.
Israel's defense against a surrounding larger population in which most people detest israel and would be happy to see it disappear, is its greater technological advancement and military power.
In the Israeli population, the zealots and settlement people are a minority and the majority are mainly relatively secular Mediterranean people (probably most similar to the people of the European Mediterranean coast) who don't like the settlements, desperately wish for peace and normal life, and don't want to control the Palestinian territories. But the normal majority in Israel has been disillusioned by their experience with their neighbors over the years. Add to that a Jewish history of persecution for two thousand years culminating in the holocaust which killed 1/3 of all the Jews in the world. No wonder Israelis have elected a xenophobic government. But xenophobia is contrary to the Zionist ideal. Zionism is supposed to take Jews out of the ghetto, not turn Israel into a new kind of ghetto.
Israel's technical and military superiority is mainly because of the ingenuity, bravery, and hard work of the people of Israel, but it is also partly because of the help it gets from Jews and non-Jews in other parts of the world. Some of that help is given unconditionally, but some is given with the understanding that Israel has a purpose. In our tradition, we Jews are supposed to be a good example for eveyone else. The purpose of Israel should not be to repopulate the ancient Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel), putting real estate ahead of peace and fairness. Israel should be a beacon of modernity and democracy in a part of the world that desperately needs that. I don't believe in the concept of Jewish "birth right". Israel exists because it exists, however it came about. If the armistice lines happened to exclude part of Eretz Yisrael so be it. Smooth out the lines for a defensible position and move on. If everything else can be resolved, I'm sure some equitable solution can be ultimately found for Jerusalem. As intransigent as the Arabs might be, you have to keep trying to make peace. What else can you do? Israel is there and the Arabs live around it. That won't change.
Actually, there have been glimmers of hope. The SESAME project is one. It is a physics project located in Jordan which includes Israel, a number of Arab countries, Iran, Turkey, and Cyprus. Another glimmer is trade between Israel and its neighbors. It is conducted below the radar, but it exists. Another glimmer is in the reception by ordinary Iranians of the music of Persian Jewish Israeli singer Rita Jahanforooz. Her music is popular in Israel and has recently become popular among young Iranians in spite of the government.
So let us hope that the time will  come soon when Herzl's dream will fully come to pass, an Israel based on Jewish (Hebrew) values, democratic for all its inhabitants, a haven for oppressed Jews (and some non-Jews integrated into the Hebrew Israeli culture), which does not have to worry about its Jewishness, which can be an example of modernity to its region of the world.