Israel at 60 (or 3,000-plus).

• Author: Howell, Llewellyn D.

NO NATION HAS IMPACTED the globe or other countries and their peoples like Israel has. It is better known than any other nation-state. Its government has a global reach; its peoples are influential; its military is feared widely and respected universally. Israel has many friends and a like number of foes; no one is neutral, for no other state have there ever been so many waving the flags of a 60th anniversary celebration, nor so many out to try to tear down those flags.

From the size of its global footprint, one would have to say that Israel is among the world's largest nations. While the existence of its state stretches only 60 years, its nation dates back more than 3,000. Today, its population is just over 7,000,000, while its land is a mere 840 square miles; yet its reach clearly is more global than any other. Israel's modem-day power and the size of its pro-and-con 60th-year celebration have to be explained by the nature of its culture, the accomplishments of its peoples, and the sophistication of its sociopolitical system.

Israel's history (and, accordingly, Jewish history) can be traced to the 17th century B.C., sharing the development of early civilization with nearby Egypt and far away China. Over the next 3,000 years, its culture and peoples were battered by warrior states of the Middle East and Mediterranean. The land that had been the Israeli homeland was occupied beginning in 63 B.C., in turn, by Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, Malmuks, Ottomans, and the British. Until 1897, the Jewish nation slowly had been dispersed around the world, appearing in India and China, throughout middle Asia, and across Europe, Russia, and the Americas.

While they were away, in the midst of the age of empires, the concept of the modern nation-state--combining nationality and a state mechanism--was born with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Other nations who had not been dispersed gradually constructed state institutions that could push back at the imperial order. Jews, though, had not the ground on which to build.

Beginning with the First Zionist Congress in the late 19th century, a contraction of the Jewish nation began. In 1909, Tel Aviv was founded as an all-Jewish city in Ottoman-controlled Palestine. After the British defeat of the Ottomans in 1917, the return began to quicken. The League of Nations designated territory for a Jewish homeland in 1922 under a British mandate.

The World War II period Holocaust precipitated the...