Britain and France drew lines. A century ago, there were no nations in the Ottoman Empire’s former Middle Eastern territories: not only no Israel, but no Syria, no Lebanon, no Iraq, no Jordan. All were conjured up after the Ottoman collapse by the British and French, who essentially sketched lines randomly in the sand. If you were a Kurd, say, tough luck; your people get separated into various entities with no say in their own fates. Other ethnic and religious groups were similarly bound together, however uncomfortably, at the whim of the colonial powers.

So the British and French drew lines. Cross one line today, and you get a European-level standard of living, broad ethnic diversity, property rights, gay pride parades, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, a free press, democratic elections, Nobel prizes, a fair and functioning judiciary, a thriving private sector. On the other side of the line, you get, well, the opposite. That doesn’t mean just the Palestinian territories – it includes 100% of the former Ottoman lands.

You’d think the governments of those nations would want to emulate Israel. Instead they’d rather destroy it. And just what kind of world would they leave behind? Here’s a hint: the UNHCR says that over 12 million of Syria’s 22 million citizens are currently displaced while nearly 15 million are in need of humanitarian assistance; more than half the Lebanese population live below the poverty line; only 9% of Iraqi children receive any form of early childhood education, and the Iraqi government is considering legislation allowing nine-year old girls to be married off; and so forth. None of that can be blamed on Israel. In the West Bank and Gaza, the PLO/PA and Hamas have devastated an economy that, under Israeli occupation (after years of stagnant Egyptian and Jordanian occupation), had made astounding gains in income, employment, health, education and more, achieving a growth rate faster than Singapore. The failure of those territories was self-imposed. Anyone see a pattern here?

The new nations carved from Ottoman lands shared the same soil, same climate, same struggling impoverished start. And yet only one has managed to rise above the fray. Isn’t there a lesson there somewhere?