I recently spent time in Israel as I wanted to rediscover some roots. Have a few distant cousins there and was quite surprised.
One thing that struck me, for a so called Jewish state it is hardly all that Jewish as it is actually a very secular country that happened to be run by a lot of Jewish people. Could a non-Catholic ever run the Vatican or a non-Muslim hold any position of power in Saudi Arabia?
Harmony between races and religion does seem to better than in many Western countries and quite possibly the best in the region, ever checked how minorities are treated in much of the GCC area or how the Kurds are treated in Turkey? Thought so too.
Aspects that impressed me :-
1) The amount of trees everywhere. Supposedly it is the only country in the world that there are more trees today than there were 100 years ago. They do have an impressive tree-planting and reforestation program going on. Some fairly impressive trees too they have there that were surprisingly tall which surprised me a lot considering how hot and dry it is there.
2) Their bio-technology and food industries. They sure do have ways and means to come up with all kinds of hybrid crops and most of them are rather tasty too. Quietly they are exporting a lot of it through Egypt and onwards to many of their more hostile neighbours.
3) Their high-tech industries, this one is sort of a given. In many ways I'm not surprised at how good it is as the general population do tend to place lots of emphasis in high quality education that is largely secular and when it comes to work, then work is work, no BSing about. The part that is most impressive however is unlike American or European or technology from Asia, they tend to develop it day one to be economical, efficient and robust. They are generally happy to sell it on to you or if you want to learn then they will teach you about it.
4) The food. I always wondered how on earth there aren't more fat ones about considering how good the food is there.
5) Their entertainment industry, never realized their music scene was so alive and considering it is supposed to be a place fighting over religion, there seriously were some very good bars, clubs and other types of establishments that could easily put to shame many capital cities in EU.
6) Their patience and tolerance towards other faiths. Try building a church in the middle of a predominantly Muslim area anywhere in the world and most likely it would get bombed or vandalized. Build a mosque anywhere in any neighbourhood in Israel and life goes on as per normal. Surprisingly, it didn't appear to be anything abnormal for a Jewish boss to have a company run by 100% Muslim employees.
7) It did appear to me and it was quite surprising too, however vast majority of Muslims and Arabs living in Israel were more than happy with the way things are.
8) Finally it did appear to me that one reason why I liked my time there was because it reminded me a lot of Singapore where I grew up in. Has many parallels, both are small countries surrounded by big countries that are generally hostile to you. Both know the only way to survive is through good education, clean governance and doing more with less.