As Israel approaches its sixtieth anniversary it is clear that it has moved very far from its origins. From a poor agricultural country of 600,000 people it has become a wealthy center of high tech with a population of more than seven million. In its fifty-ninth year, though, slightly more people left Israel than immigrated. From its socialist beginnings it has developed into a capitalist state that has gone far toward eliminating its social safety nets. From a United Nations mandate ruled by a regime hostile to Zionism that barely survived its War of Independence, it has become a major regional military power. From a homeland for refugees it has become an occupier. Israel has come a long way.

Foreign dignitaries visiting Israel are inevitably taken to Yad V’Shem. Only recently has it become clear how badly Holocaust survivors have been neglected by successive Israeli governments. And while many volunteer groups in Israel's vibrant civil society work hard to make life livable for Darfur refugees who have arrived here, official government policy aims simply to exclude them.

As Israel approaches its sixtieth anniversary it shows worrying signs of corruption and incompetence in high places. There are a number of criminal charges pending against Ehud Olmert, the former Likud politician and present head of government. Among Olmert’s key cabinet appointments were a minister of finance who is currently facing charges of embezzlement, a defense minister who had little military experience, and a minister for strategic affairs who had no competence in that area, and who remains the subject of an extensive police investigation. As minister of justice the prime minister appointed a man who appears to have no special qualification for the post other than his shared antipathy with Olmert for the legal system that called for a reckoning from him and his colleagues. The lawyers of the former president of the country, apparently a serial sex offender, have made a plea bargain that serves their client far better than the interests of justice.

As Israel approaches its sixtieth anniversary it is unable to protect its citizens near Gaza from continual bombardment. It is able, however, to refuse passage to medical emergencies at roadblocks in the occupied territories, all too often with fatal results. It is able to dismantle an illegal Palestinian settlement on the day that it was put up, though it leaves hundreds of illegal  outposts of Jewish settlers untouched. Its forces of order efficiently destroy anything built without a permit by Arabs, including a washroom of cave-dwellers near Hebron, but are somehow unable to discover which Jewish settlers have attacked and beaten Arab residents of the territories, or have destroyed their olive trees. The army expresses surprise when it finds out that one of its units has been choking Palestinian kids in custody as a “game.”

As Israel approaches its sixtieth anniversary it is fine-tuning its version of the Wisconsin Program, by which the government pays foreign companies to disentitle welfare recipients and the unemployed of their meager benefits. Social programs and education are being consistently and intentionally under-funded, while more for-profit educational institutions are opened and the very rich receive tax breaks. Due to cut backs in government funding for culture, the artists’ union is threatening to boycott the sixtieth anniversary celebrations. Israel has a major toll road that charges among the highest fees in the world, and it is soon to open its first for-profit prison. Average annual incomes in Israel rise, as does the proportion of the population below the poverty line. Much agricultural labor and care of the elderly is left to poorly paid and often badly treated foreign workers. Workers earning minimum wage are increasingly falling below the poverty line. In the same week it was announced that Israel’s currency was to be made fully convertible and that the number of Israelis living in poverty has again increased. As it approaches its sixtieth anniversary, Israel has one of the biggest gaps between rich and poor in the developed world.

All of the features concerning Israel noted above are taken from mainstream Israeli TV and newspapers. They are common knowledge. And they are consequences of policies and values that had little place among the nation's founders.

Today the dominant values in Israel reflect the interests of minorities that have achieved influence out of proportion to their size. There are religious fundamentalists whose curious devotion to the Greater Land of Israel blinds them to the humanity and suffering of the Arabs in the occupied territories, as well as to the cost and the implications of maintaining control of those territories and populations. The existence of a strong Islamic fundamentalist current that refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Israel and calls for its destruction strengthens the extreme right in Israel. Powerful antipathies, but mutually supporting extremes.

There are also market fundamentalists, not restricted to any party, but centered in Likud, Kadima and the right wing of Labor, whose persistent hold on power and devotion to the standard neo-liberal mix of reduced government spending, deregulation and privatization has gone far toward dismantling institutions of welfare and turning Israel into a polarized society of affluent and impoverished with progressively fewer in between. Privatization and deregulation are pursued energetically while working conditions deteriorate, poverty deepens and the country faces ecological  disaster, particularly in the areas of water resources and sewage.

There are serious problems with running businesses in terms of the bottom line alone, though ultimately business is about the bottom line. But running countries this way means moral bankruptcy. There is no question that Israel has come a long way in its first sixty years. There are many questions about where it is going.