StartupBlink, an innovation-economy research platform, ranks Israel No. 3 – behind only the US and UK – in its global list. Israel has held this spot for four years in row. Israel is No. 1 in the world for the number of R&D branches, with 11 global tech brands such as Intel, IBM, and Oracle. The Tel Aviv area – nicknamed “Silicon Wadi” – was No. 9 globally in 2024 and has been in StartupBlink’s top 10 since 2020.
Israelis contributed in unique ways to the Jewish chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Israeli artisans chiseled Jerusalem stone that was then shipped to the United States to construct the chapel’s front wall, which is reminiscent of the Kotel in Jerusalem. In the chapel is a Torah scroll that the IDF gave to the Brigade of Midshipmen.
Egged is Israel’s largest bus company. Israeli poet Hayim Nahman Bialik named the company Egged from the Hebrew for “union” after four cooperatives merged in 1933. Today, one of the largest bus companies in the world, Egged has subsidiaries in the Netherlands, Poland and Bulgaria. In Israel alone, it operates almost 4,000 buses taking nearly one million passengers a distance of 622,000 miles every day.
Israel, a country of fewer than 10 million people, punches above its weight in many fields. Newsweek lists Sheba Medical Center as the 9th best hospital in the world. The Center for World University Rankings lists 4 Israeli universities in the top 1% worldwide: Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute, Tel Aviv University and the Technion. The UN’s WIPO lists Israel as #14 in its Global Innovation Index.
Israel has nine World Heritage Sites: Bahá’i Holy Places (Haifa and the Galilee), Biblical Tels (Megiddo, Hazor, Be’er Sheva), Incense Route (Negev), Masada, Old City of Acre, White City of Tel Aviv, Sites of Human Evolution (Mount Carmel), Caves of Maresha and Beit Guvrin (Judean Lowlands), and the Necropolis of Beit She’arim. Another 16 sites have been suggested for inclusion.
Many Jewish architects connected to the Bauhaus school in Germany fled to Tel Aviv in the 1930s, following the rise of the Nazis. Today, more than 4,000 Tel Aviv buildings make up the “White City”. It is the largest collection of Bauhaus structures of any city in the world.
Measuring 20,770 square kilometers, Israel is roughly half the size of Lake Michigan. The land mass of the world’s sole Jewish state is approximately 0.165% of the total land area of the 22 nations in the Arab League.
No other country connects its Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron) and Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut) the same way that Israel does, as a two-day event. A national televised ceremony marks the official transition from a day of somber remembrance into a day of festive celebration.
Israel is the vegan capital of the Middle East and fourth in the world. Five percent of all Israelis do not consume animal products. In the Israel Defense Forces, approximately 1 in 18 soldiers (5.6%) is vegan. In addition to plant-based meals, the IDF offers synthetic leather boots and synthetic wool berets to its vegan troops.
