In reading a recent
book, Start-up Nation, the authors give appropriate credit to the
Israeli Army as the source of national-political, commercial, social
and entrepreneurial success.
The IDF is based on a near 100% draft. The IDF trained the similar Singapore Army. Many other nations, South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark and Sweden have 100% service armies with reserves....yet none of these other armies produce the spectacular social and economic results the IDF generates for Israel.
In most other armies the draftees spend their time doing irrelevant training, shuffling papers and sitting on their asses. That is why I title this blog Jews have enemies. It is the presence of many, serious (partially insane) and dangerous neighboring enemies that makes the IDF so powerful, vital and effective.
Maybe the tired old adage that the enemies of the Jews have made the Jews so successful has some merit. The problem with such a thesis is that surrounding enemies haven't had such an effect on the Rom people.