By: Rohana R. Wasala

Continued from July 2, 2026

So, let’s adapt the Israeli leader’s cogent appeal to his historically wronged fellow innocent Jewish people and tell ourselves to Stand up. Don’t cower. Don’t be afraid. Fight back. Because people will only respect us if we respect ourselves. When our enemies (who are none other than a handful of defeated separatists from our kindred Tamil Hindu culture and a set of equally few, but dangerously brainwashed  religious fundamentalists from among the friendly, peaceloving mainstream Catholic/Christian and Muslim communities) level false allegations against us, retaliate with the Truth, which is on our side, and do it standing up. Stand up for the Truth. Stand up for Sri Lanka. Stand up for the people of Sinhale. Stand up for the friendly age-old Sinhalese Buddhist cultural identity of the island nation that provides a safe haven for a host of different cultures to coexist  peacefully” because we have every right to do so.

In our attempt to learn from Israel we should look beyond its current embattled state to the complex enlightened ways in which the general Israeli society faces existential threats to their present and future survival..

‘THE GENIUS OF ISRAEL: The surprising resilience of a divided nation in a turbulent world’ by Dan Senor and Saul Singer (first published by the highly respected UK publishing house Constable  in America in August 2023 and later in the same year in Britain) is a journalistic study of what keeps the tiny only Jewish state in the world thriving despite an over two thousand year long history of continuous political persecution.  I purchased a copy of this book (the 317-page UK published edition) in April 2024, particularly because I had been long impressed by the resonance I usually observe as a native Sri Lankan between the authentic history of Israel’s heroic existential struggle against imperial domination and global prejudice or antisemitism and the similarly genuine chronicled history of the Sinhalese people’s historic confrontation of foreign invaders and religio-cultural subversives. The seventeen seaborne invasions from South India during the first two thousand years of our history and three European incursions over the last five hundred years that Sri Lanka has weathered through were no doubt motivated by a desire for the economic exploitation of the country’s resources; only the three European mercantile powers resorted to religio-cultural subversion, as a strategy to reinforce their imperial control of the territories of the island that they had conquered for promoting their exploitative economic and geopolitical interests.

The authors, Dan Senor and Saul Singer, were already well known for their bestselling book ‘Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle’ (first published in November 2009). Dan Senor was formerly a US Defense Department official based in Baghdad, Iraq and at US Central Command in Qatar; in addition to this, Senor was a US Senate aide in the 1990s. He has written for the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and the Washington Post. He is also the host of the popular Call Me Back podcast. 

Saul Singer, who co-authored ‘Start-up Nation’ with Senor, is a former editor and columnist at the Jerusalem Post, and has written for publications including the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Before moving to Israel in 1994, he served as an advisor to US members of Congress for ten years. Singer has delivered keynote addresses at innovation conferences around the world including in Beijing, Sydney, Singapore, London, Madrid, Amsterdam. Oslo, Nairobi, and Sao Paulo. (This biographical information about the authors is partly derived from the last-page blurb of THE GENIUS OF ISRAEL.)  

In their book, Dan Senor and Saul Singer argue that the nation’s tough resilience and highly innovative industrial and agrarian capacity come from a unique societal “operating system” that focuses on a shared purpose through deep community ties, relying on a culture of tackling difficult problems. The authors highlight how strong social bonds, mandatory military service, and a high, optimistic fertility rate act as crucial unifying elements that allow the country to prosper despite intense external pressures and internal divisions. In the case of Sri Lanka, the last two obstacles to national development mentioned (external pressures and internal divisions) are apparently at their worst today since the sham independence of 1948.

Israel has the highest birth rate among developed nations, which is about 2.9 children per woman in stark contrast to the global trend of falling birth rates. Israeli society is a vibrant democracy, which passionately follows the ‘agree to disagree’ principle, while also preserving equality, unity, and justice within the country. It is a culture that ‘celebrates disagreement and lionizes unity’ as the writers say in the Authors’ note, which ends with an inspiring comment by American-born Israeli author and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi on what the world can learn from Israel about being democratic under challenging circumstances: Israel isn’t a paragon of democracy because it cannot be, …..But Israel is a paragon of the struggle for democratic norms under near impossible circumstances …. Israel is a laboratory for democracy under extremity, and that is its value for the world.”

In the Introduction to THE GENIUS OF ISRAEL headlined ‘The Israeli Paradox’, Senor and Singer refer to their previous book Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (2009) that explores how Israel, a small nation (with a population approximately 7.4 million at the time of its publication) bereft of any natural resources, constantly plagued by war, and severe security threats, transformed itself into a global powerhouse of technology, innovation, and venture capital. The central chapters of THE GENIUS OF ISRAEL echo the ideas developed in the Start-up Nation. (I have derived information about the contents of Senor and Singer’s 2009 book ‘The Start-up Nation’,  which I have not read, from an AI Overview). The core theme of ‘The Start-up Nation’ is that necessity-driven, resilience-based culture—rather than just superior technology—drives Israel’s “economic miracle.” The authors argue that Israel’s unique circumstances have fostered a mindset that embraces risk, defies conventional wisdom, and turns limitations into advantages, creating an environment where high-growth, high-tech startups flourish. 

The cornerstones of the “Start-up Nation” Model (with my ad hoc comments in parentheses) are as follows:

Adversity as a Catalyst: Israel’s history of conflict and lack of natural resources forced it to focus on human capital and “do more with less,” treating every challenge as an opportunity for innovation. (Prime Minister Netanyahu interprets this as the fulfilment of the famous prophecy in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible Isaiah 35:1-2)

Military Training (Unit 8200): Compulsory military service (specifically elite intelligence  units) acts as an incubator for leadership, teamwork, and high-tech skill development, providing young soldiers with experience that translates directly into the private sector. (Sri Lanka’s treatment of war heroes since the successful end of the internal conflict  comes to mind. Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father Sheikh Hassan Yousef was one of the co-founders of Hamas, left the organization. Famously known as ‘Son of Hamas’, Mosab Hassan Yousef has become a vehement pro-Israel critic of Islamism. He says that every Israeli is a combat ready fighter. We don’t need that. But we should be able to make proper peacetime use of soldiers.)

Cultural “Chutzpah” & Hierarchy: Israeli culture is characterized by a “Chutzpah” mindset (boldness, audacity), a lack of formality, and a “rosh gadol” (big head/responsible) attitude, which encourages questioning authority and finding unconventional solutions. (Among a largely silent but educated and enlightened youth, we in Sri Lanka constantly hear a few vocal brick heads blaming previous rulers for every calamity that happens, instead of well informed young leaders with a rosh gadol” attitude being allowed to be heard, that is the need of the hour.)

Smart Government Policy: The government fostered the ecosystem through strategic initiatives like the “Yozma” program, which successfully catalyzed a vibrant venture capital industry by providing matching funds and attracting foreign investors. (Our elected rulers over the decades have miserably failed to devise ways to solve the disastrous peasants vs elephants conflict, monkey, peacock and other pests in acceptable humane ways.)

Immigration as an Asset: Influxes of diverse, skilled immigrants—particularly from the Soviet Union—brought vast expertise and a risk-taking mentality that furthered technological development. (Unstoppable brain drain leaves behind unemployable idiots to do politics in competition with the brainy who really want to remain and serve the motherland)

Ultimately, the book argues that while Israel can learn from the world, the world has much to learn from Israel’s unique approach to innovation, particularly in fostering a culture that accepts failure, encourages teamwork, and breeds an “insatiable appetite for risk”. (Most mainstream politicians from the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community often take refuge in the hypocritical ‘political correctness’ policy for fear of alienating the minority electorate and fail to do the right thing, which even the sensible members of the minorities despise, for example, successive governments’ failure to protect the Buddhist archaeological heritage of the north and east provinces in violation of the Constitution) 

Concluded