The most spectacular story to come out of Israel in the first 75 years of its modern existence

In 1948, the Arab states surrounding the nascent state of Israel attempted what Azzam Pasha, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, in 1947 boasted would be “a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” It didn’t turn out as Azzam Pasha had so confidently predicted, in large part because of the weaponry the Israelis were able to obtain from Czechoslovakia when no one else would help.

Twenty years after Israel’s war for independence, in 1968, former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion recalled: “Czechoslovak arms saved the State of Israel, really and absolutely. Without these weapons, we wouldn’t have survived.” Fighting spirit, and the will to survive, became stronger in Israel as the war continued, and those Arab armies proved vulnerable. But victory could not have been achieved without those weapons from Czechoslovakia.

Never again would Israel be so dependent on others for weapons. After the end of the war, in 1949, the Israelis immediately established an arms industry, determined to minimize their reliance on others. Now it makes advanced weapons that not only meet the IDF’s own needs, but have turned the Jewish state into a major source of advanced weaponry for a dozen countries around the world. Israel, a speck on the world map, has become — after its latest sale, worth $4.3 billion, of its Arrow-3 air defense system to Germany — the 7th largest exporter of weapons in the world. Israel is now negotiating the sale of its Merkava tanks to two countries, one of them in Europe. Israeli weapons are sold all over the world, including to Arab members of the Abraham Accords, Morocco and the UAE. It is the second largest exporter of weapons to India, the largest exporter to Vietnam and Azerbaijan. It sells, among other items, ballistic missiles, air defense and electronic warfare systems, kamikaze drones and more.

Countries are lining up in the hope of being allowed to buy its Iron Dome anti-missile defense systems, with its 96% rate of successful interceptions. Others want Israel’s famed Merkava tanks, its Uzi machine guns, its Iron Beam, which uses inexpensive lasers to shoot down incoming missiles. And no sooner did both Russia and Iran announce that they had independently developed a “hypersonic missile” capable of traveling at five to ten times the speed of sound, and so would be “unstoppable,” than the unfazed Israelis announced that they are already well advanced in building an anti-missile defense system capable of shooting down the hypersonic missiles. Does anyone doubt that the Israelis will succeed? Or that when they do, that many countries in both Europe and the Middle East will come running to buy the latest Israeli advance in defense technology?