Happy birthday, Israel.

The State of Israel is 60. In 1948, in the wake of World War II, a country was craved out of a British colony and populated with Holocaust survivors. These people, having lost everything, were brave and daring enough to live in a desert surrounded by countries who wish nothing less than to finish what the Nazis began. They did not only live in the desert, they made it bloom. In the process, they experienced the greatest of triumphs and the greatest of losses. Despite these losses, the country and its people flourished demonstrating an eduring spirit similar to that demonstrated by the immigrants who carved the United States out of the North American wildreness. So, here is to many more anniverssaries and to piece in the Middle East.