The Best Kept Secret....

Israel is thriving....

But these stories miss the bigger point: Israel today has become a vibrant, functioning jewel of a nation tucked into the eastern flank of the Mediterranean. Tel Aviv looks more like San Diego or Barcelona than Baghdad or Kabul. On a recent five-mile run along Tel Aviv's Gordon Beach, I saw Israeli yuppies cycling the boardwalk on $1,500 Italian mountain bikes, teenagers in full-body wetsuits surfing the breakers, a deep-cleavaged Russian model (nobody seemed to know her name) doing a photo shoot in a skimpy bikini whilst middle-aged Israeli men with potbellies and hairy chests shamelessly gawked, rows of high-priced yachts docked at the Tel Aviv marina, an endless stream of private planes on final approach to small Sde Dov Airport, and two Israeli soldiers in drab green uniforms making out in the sand and drinking Heineken. A nation at war? It seemed more like high season at Coney Island.

"Some first-time visitors are certainly surprised when they don't find tanks and camels in the streets," reports Hanna Munitz, general director of the Israeli Opera. Israel has a world class cultural scene. Want to see Franco Zeffirelli and Daniel Barenboim? No problem. The Alvin Ailey Dance Company visits. The opera plays to audiences at 97 percent capacity. "Just once, another opera manager told me she wouldn't bring her company to Israel because we were 'babykillers' or some nonsense," says Munitz, "but, even at lower pay, we attract the best talents from around the globe. They love coming here!"

It's not only culture. Israel enjoys top universities, upscale restaurants, million-dollar homes, hoity-toity architecture, and the like. Take the economy. In the fourth quarter last year, when the global economy went all to hell, Israel's annual, quarter-over-quarter rate of GDP was only off 0.5 percent, the best figure in the industrialized world. (The United States was off 6.3 percent and Japan 12.1 percent.) "Think about the resistance of our economy in recent times," suggests Zvi Eckstein, deputy governor of the Bank of Israel. "Our prime minister [has a stroke]. The war in Gaza. The war in Lebanon. The government gets replaced. But we've maintained a stable macroeconomic structure and a strong high-tech sector."