78 Things Israel Gave the World

A countdown for our 78th Independence Day

Seventy-eight years. In that blink of history, a nation reborn in 1948, a country the size of New Jersey, surrounded, outnumbered, and starting almost from nothing, has given the world so much that most of it is used, eaten, watched, and relied on every day without the credit. This countdown opens with lives saved and mouths fed, passes through everyday wonders, and ends where Israel itself began. Read it all the way down.

78. Drip irrigation. Simcha Blass and Netafim turned deserts green. Today, Israeli drip technology feeds hundreds of millions from India to sub-Saharan Africa, arguably the most lives-improving agricultural invention of the past century.

77. Israel Defense Forces Emergency Bandage: Bernard Bar-Natan's battlefield dressing, now standard in first-aid kits from Ukraine to the Boston Marathon bombing, where it was used to save strangers' lives. A quiet Israeli invention that has saved thousands of civilians worldwide.

Water Technologies

76. Desalination at scale. Israel now drinks the Mediterranean. IDE Technologies' plants quench cities from Carlsbad to Chennai, and Israel teaches arid nations worldwide to do the same.

75. Water recycling. Israel reuses around 90% of its wastewater, the highest rate on Earth, more than double the next country, and trains the rest of the world to do the same.

74. Watergen. Machines that pull drinking water straight out of humid air, now deployed in disaster zones from Syria to Gaza to Ukraine.

73. Solar water heaters on every roof. Zvi Tabor's work made Israel the first country in history to make rooftop solar heating standard.

72. The Volcani Institute. Agricultural research exported to 130+ countries, transforming how the developing world grows food.

71. The cherry tomato. Commercialized at Hebrew University by Haim Rabinowitch and Nahum Keidar, small, sweet, now everywhere on Earth.

70. Long-shelf-life tomatoes. The same team, a quiet revolution in the produce aisle.

Medical Breakthroughs

69. The PillCam. Gavriel Iddan's swallowable camera revolutionized how we see inside the human gut, now saving lives through early detection worldwide.

68. ReWalk. Robotic exoskeletons that let people with paraplegia stand and walk.

67. InSightec. Focused-ultrasound surgery, treating tumors and brain disorders without a single incision.

66. Copaxone. The landmark multiple sclerosis drug developed at the Weizmann Institute.

65. Azilect, Exelon, and Doxil. Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and cancer therapies developed in Israel.

64. Teva. One of the world's largest generic drug makers, making medicines affordable on every continent.

Providing International Help

63. Save a Child's Heart. More than 6,000 children from 65+ countries, including countries without diplomatic relations with Israel, have received free, lifesaving heart surgery in Holon.

62. United Hatzalah. The volunteer "ambucycle" network that reaches emergencies in under three minutes and has been franchised to Jersey City, Panama, Brazil, and beyond.

61. IsraAID. Israeli humanitarian teams that have responded to disasters in more than 60 countries, tsunamis, earthquakes, refugee crises, wars.

60. Israel Defense Forces field hospitals. The WHO awarded Israel's Haiti field hospital its highest-ever classification. Teams have since deployed to Nepal, the Philippines, Turkey, Ukraine, and beyond.

Cybersecurity

59. The USB flash drive. Dov Moran and M-Systems pioneered the DiskOnKey format in 1999.

58. VoIP. Vocaltec's Internet Phone in 1995 was the first commercial voice-over-internet product - the seed of Skype, Zoom, and every Wi-Fi call you take.

57. ICQ. Mirabilis's 1996 instant messenger, the great-grandparent of every chat app you use.

56. Intel's Pentium M, Centrino, and beyond. Designed in Haifa, the chips that made modern laptops possible.

55. Waze. Community-powered navigation for a billion drivers.

54. Mobileye. The eyes behind much of the world's driver-assistance and autonomous-driving technology.

53. Check Point and the stateful firewall. The foundation of modern network security.

52. RSA cryptography. Adi Shamir - the "S" in RSA, co-invented the public-key cryptography securing every banking session you've ever run.

51. Differential cryptanalysis. Biham and Shamir's breakthrough still shapes the ciphers the world trusts.

50. Unit 8200. An army unit that became the most productive cybersecurity school on Earth.

49. Startup Nation. More NASDAQ-listed companies per capita than any country except the United States.

48. Wix. Put a website in the hands of more than 200 million people.

47. Fiverr, Monday.com, Payoneer. A generation of Israeli founders whose tools are now used by millions of businesses worldwide.

Defense

46. CyberArk, Wiz, Palo Alto Networks. Israeli cybersecurity guarding most of the Fortune 500.

45. Krav Maga. Imi Lichtenfeld's self-defense system, now taught to police, soldiers, and civilians on six continents.

44. The Uzi. Uziel Gal's submachine gun - one of the 20th century's most recognizable small arms.

43. The Merkava, Tavor, and Galil. A self-reliant arms industry born of necessity, now supplying democracies around the world.

42. The Spike missile and Heron drone. IAI's precision systems, flown and fired by allied militaries on four continents.

41. Trophy. The active-protection system now fitted on American Abrams tanks, Israeli engineering protecting U.S. soldiers. Trophy is also being integrated into German Leopard tanks and other NATO vehicles.

40. Iron Dome. Rafael's rocket shield, proof that defensive technology can save tens of thousands of civilian lives.

39. Arrow, David's Sling, and Iron Beam. A multi-layered air defense system that other nations now study and buy.

Lifestyle, Culture, and Everyday Innovation.

38. Shakshuka, hummus, and the Israeli brunch. The flavors Israel helped carry from a sleepy Middle Eastern pantry to the world's breakfast menus.

37. Rummikub. Ephraim Hertzano invented it in his Ramat Gan backyard. Today it's played in homes from Berlin to Buenos Aires.

36. Bamba. The unassuming peanut puff that, per the landmark LEAP study, appears to dramatically reduce peanut allergies in children who eat it early — a humble snack with a global medical legacy.

35. The Epilady. Mepro of Kibbutz Hagoshrim launched it in 1986 and changed hair removal forever.

Historical Operation

34. Operation Magic Carpet (1949–50). Roughly 49,000 Yemenite Jews airlifted home, many of whom had never seen an airplane.

33. Operation Ezra and Nehemiah (1951–52). About 120,000 Iraqi Jews brought to safety.

32. The Soviet Jewry aliyah. After decades of Western campaigning, more than a million Jews were set free from the USSR and brought home.

31. Operation Moses and Joshua (1984–85). The first rescues of Ethiopian Jewry.

30. Operation Solomon (1991). 14,325 Ethiopian Jews airlifted to Israel in 36 hours, the first and only time in modern history that Black Africans were flown out of Africa into freedom rather than chains.

29. The Law of Return. A constitutional-level promise to every persecuted Jew on Earth: a door that is always open.

28. Operation Entebbe (1976). The hostage rescue in Uganda that became the modern playbook for counter-terrorism.

27. The Eichmann trial (1961). Israel brought the architect of the Final Solution to justice, and through the televised testimony of survivors, changed how the world reckons with genocide forever.

Institutions

26. Yad Vashem. The world's definitive Holocaust memorial and research institution, with 4.8 million names recorded and preserved.

25. The Righteous Among the Nations. Israel's program honoring more than 28,000 non-Jews who risked everything to save Jews during the Shoah, a permanent tribute to the best of humanity.

Historical Discovery

24. The Dead Sea Scrolls. Humanity's oldest biblical manuscripts, discovered in Israeli caves, painstakingly preserved, digitized, and now freely available to the world.

Authors and Researchers

23. Chaim Weizmann's acetone process. An Israeli-to-be chemist's wartime invention helped Britain win World War I - and helped open the diplomatic door to the Balfour Declaration.

22. Dan Shechtman's quasicrystals. A Nobel-winning discovery that rewrote crystallography against the ridicule of his entire field.

21. Ada Yonath's ribosome. Nobel-winning work now foundational to modern antibiotic design.

20. Ciechanover and Hershko's ubiquitin system. A Nobel-winning discovery of how cells tag proteins for disposal, now the basis of cancer drugs used worldwide.

19. Robert Aumann's game theory. Nobel-winning work on how rational actors cooperate and conflict.

18. Daniel Kahneman's behavioral economics. Nobel-winning work that reshaped how the world understands how we think and decide.

17. The Weizmann Institute and the Technion. Research engines producing Nobel laureates, founders, and breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science.

16. More Nobel laureates per capita than almost any nation on Earth. From a country of ten million.

15. Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens. A book that reshaped how tens of millions think about human history.

14. Amos Oz, David Grossman, Etgar Keret, Zeruya Shalev. Israeli literature translated into dozens of languages and read around the world.

13. Fauda, Shtisel, Tehran, In Treatment, Homeland, Euphoria. Israeli shows, and their global adaptations, now on every major streamer.

Culture

12. Gaga and Batsheva. Ohad Naharin's movement language, now taught in dance studios from Tokyo to New York.

11. Israel's classical musicians. Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Daniel Barenboim, Gil Shaham, voices the world's concert halls rose to hear.

Peace and Politics

10. Golda Meir. One of the world's first female heads of government, elected in 1969, long before most Western democracies imagined it.

9. The Abraham Accords and peace with Egypt and Jordan. Peace treaties with five Arab states. A widening path out of a century-old conflict.

8. A democracy in the Middle East. Free elections, a free press, an independent judiciary, and women in every institution, the region's only Jewish democracy and one of its only functioning democracies.

7. Jerusalem. Holy to billions - preserved, shared, and accessible to pilgrims of every faith.

6. The kibbutz. A 20th-century experiment in communal living that inspired intentional communities around the world.

Values

5. Tikkun Olam. "Repairing the world", the ancient Jewish idea that Israel has turned into a national ethic of relief, rescue, and repair.

4. The proof that a people can come home. A country founded with the explicit mission of taking in the persecuted, which has welcomed Jews from more than a hundred countries. For two thousand years, every empire on Earth said it couldn't be done. Israel is the answer.

3. The proof that a language can come back to life. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's revival of Hebrew, a dead liturgical tongue turned into a living, slang-making, meme-spewing mother tongue for millions, has no parallel in human history.

2. The proof that a desert can bloom. What was malaria swamps and rock in 1948 now feeds itself and a large part of the developing world.

1. Hope. Hatikvah, "the hope", isn't only the national anthem. Israel's deepest export is the idea itself: that a scattered people, after two millennia of exile, could come home; that a language could be reborn; that a nation could rise from the ashes of the worst crime in human history and, within one lifetime, defend itself, feed itself, heal itself, and still find the strength to run toward other people's disasters. Every other item on this list grew from that one word.

Chag Atzmaut Sameach. Am Yisrael Chai.