1. Israel has the highest number of altruistic kidney donations per capita in the world: 1,775 in the past 15 years, and counting.
  1. The oldest tree in Israel is an 11-meter jujube tree in Ein Hatzeva on the road to Eilat, thought to be between 1,500 and 2,000 years old. For most of its life, the tree was watered by the spring at Ein Hatzeva. Today the spring has dried up, and the Jewish National Fund keeps it irrigated.
  1. Israeli scientists managed to grow fresh dates from sixth century seeds found at Masada and Qumran.
  2. Eating the Israeli peanut snack, Bamba, at an early age has been proven to reduce peanut allergies in children by 75 percent, according to a five-year study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
  1. The Israel Postal Service has a special Letters to God department, for all the letters arriving in Jerusalem from around the world addressed to God. They are opened and placed into the cracks of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. For those who want to save on postage, the Western Wall Heritage foundation offers a digital alternative to this service.
  2. About 1 million notes are left in the Western Wall every year by people of many religions. The earliest known account of this practice came in 1743. Many famous people have left notes in the wall including Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and yes, Donald Trump. Twice a year, ahead of Rosh Hashana and Passover, the notes are cleared from the wall and buried in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
  3. The Mount of Olives is the oldest continuously used cemetery in the world. It’s been in use for over 3,000 years.
  1. The glue on Israel’s postage stamps is kosher.
  2. At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, an old wooden ladder has been propped up against a window since the 18th century. No one can move it because the building is managed by six different churches and none of them agree on who owns the ladder, which has been named, rather appropriately, the “immovable ladder.”
  1. Israel is the only country to have revived a dead language and made it the national language. Hebrew had remained the language of sacred literature, but it was revived in the 19th century as a spoken language.
  2. The hottest temperature ever recorded in Israel was 54.4 degrees Celsius (129.9 Fahrenheit) in June 1942 at Kibbutz Tirat Zvi in the northern Jordan Valley. (The highest temperature ever recorded worldwide is 56.7 °C/134.1 F in Death Valley in July 1913.)
  1. While Jerusalem has snowstorms every few years, and even the Negev Desert gets occasional snow, Tel Aviv has only had one snowstorm in its history. In 1950, 12-18 centimeters of the white stuff thrilled locals, many of whom had never seen snow before.
  1. More than half the landmass of Israel is desert, yet it has an Olympic bobsled and skeleton team.
  2. An Israeli startup, Tevel Aerobotics Technologies, developed agricultural drones that can pick ripe fruit from a tree and gently lower it for collection, helping solve one of the main issues facing farmers today – a shortage of labor.
  3. Israeli agritech company BlueWhite developed a technology that can turn any conventional tractor into a self-driving robot. The robotic system is already helping farmers across the United States deal with a dwindling workforce.
  1. Israel recycles nearly 90% of the wastewater it creates, using innovation to beat its water crisis. This makes it the leading nation in the world for water recycling. By comparison, Spain, the next largest water recycler, recycles only 20% of its water, while in the United States, only 1% of wastewater is recycled.
  1. Sheba Medical Center in Israel has been listed as the world’s eighth best hospital by US magazine “Newsweek” this year. Last year the hospital was ranked ninth, and the year before 10th.
  1. Israel is a global leader in medical clowning. It was the first country in the world to send medical clowns into Covid-19 wards, and regularly sends medical clowns on aid missions around the world.
  1. In 2007, Israeli businesswoman Shari Arison initiated an annual Good Deeds Day on April 6 to encourage people to help each other. That year, 7,000 people took part in Israel. In 2024, 4.5 million people participated in some 115 countries.
  1. Members of a voluntary organization called Trail Angels open their homes to hikers on the 1,025-km (637-mile) Israel Trail, offering free beds, showers and other amenities. This year, the Israel Trail celebrates its 30th anniversary.
  2. Israel is smaller than Hawaii and roughly half the size of Lake Michigan. For Brits, it’s around the size of Wales.
  3. Israel is bordered by snowy peaks at one end and a desert beach on the other.
  4. Israel has 137 beaches – all of them beautiful. Check out our picks for Israel’s top ten beaches here.
  1. Israel has its very own Stonehenge, an ancient stone circle called Galgal Refa’im (wheel of ghosts) with massive rock walls that jut 8 feet into the sky. The stone structure is around 5,000 years old and is made up of some 42,000 tons of basalt stone. It was discovered only in the 1960s and to this day remains one of Israel’s greatest mysteries.
  1. Israeli company SolCold developed a paint coating that uses sunlight to activate a cooling mechanism on cars, buildings, planes and even clothing, providing air conditioning without electricity. The hotter it is, the more the coating cools.
  1. Israel’s volunteer emergency response organization, United Hatzalah, collaborated with Israel Defense Forces signal intelligence unit 8200 to create an AI system that can predict where and when medical emergencies are about to take place in Israel, enabling responders to mobilize in advance and respond faster.
  1. One of Israel’s most popular snacks is only sold between October and February because otherwise, supposedly, it will melt. According to Hebrew-language Wikipedia, there are seven different ways to eat the chocolate cream snack, Krembo, but when we went out onto the streets to check, people had many more suggestions than that. In the microwave, anyone?
  1. When Israel was founded in 1948, there were only 806,000 residents. The population reached two million in 1958. At the end of 2024, the population passed the 10 million mark. The population is 74% Jewish, 21% Muslim, 5% Christian, and the rest foreign citizens.
  2. Israel is a youthful country. In 2024, 28% of Israel’s population was under the age of 14, and only 12% was older than 65.
  1. Not surprisingly, given the number of them, Israelis love kids. According to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published in 2024, Israel’s fertility rate is about 2.9 children per woman, compared to the world average of 1.5.
  2. Helping that along, Israel has advanced major breakthroughs in fertility. The country performs more in-vitro fertilization per capita than any other country, and it’s free for the first two babies in women under the age of 45.
  1. In 2024, the most popular baby names in Israel were Mohammad for boys and Avigail for girls.
  1. Life expectancy in Israel is among the highest in the world. According to the latest data from Statistica, in 2022 life expectancy for men in Israel stood at 80.7 years, and 84.8 years for women.
  2. Israel is home to the largest known dog cemetery of the ancient world. More than 1,400 dog skeletons, most of them puppies, were found at the Ashkelon site. They were buried sometime in the fourth and fifth centuries BCE, and even now, no one knows why.
  3. One of the world’s greatest archeological finds since the Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered in a prison in Israel in 2005. The 1,800 year old inscription “’Jesus is God” was found in a floor mosaic as Megiddo Prison expanded. It is now on show in a museum in Washington, DC. The Christian biblical name for Megiddo is Armageddon.
  1.  According to a new report by Startup Nation Central, AI firms in Israel now account for 30 percent of the country’s 7,000+ startups, but are bringing in 47% of all investment. There are currently some 2,170 AI startups in Israel today.
  1. Israel ranks fourth globally in AI advancements, behind the US, China and the UK.
  1. New AI software from Canotera can predict with 85% accuracy if a lawyer can win or lose a legal case, helping lawyers assess liability and predict how a case will turn out.
  1. In 2025, Israel ranks first globally in terms of its number of technology unicorns per capita. (A unicorn is a privately held startup valued at over $1 billion.) As of 2025, the country had 90 active tech unicorns, and its startups raise billions of dollars in investments annually.
  1. In a recent study, five Israeli universities were ranked among the world’s best institutions for producing graduates who went on to found US-based unicorns. The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology was ranked first, with graduates at least 25 times more likely to become founders of US-based unicorns. Reichman University was ranked second, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem came in fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively.
  1. In 2024, Tel Aviv ranked first in Israel, and ninth globally, as a top city for startups according to StartupBlink‘s Global Startup Ecosystem Index. The tech capital of Israel scored almost 64 points on the index. Jerusalem ranked second in the country, with just 8.5 points on the index.
  1. In March, Google parent company Alphabet purchased Israeli cybersecurity company Wiz for $32 billion, making it the biggest acquisition in Israeli history, the biggest acquisition by Google, and the biggest acquisition ever in cybertech.
  1. A new startup that emerged from stealth in 2024 has developed an AI system that can detect and fight wildfires. Inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, FireDome has a mechanical launcher that deploys capsules containing fire retardant. It goes into operation this year in the US.
  1. Israel has the largest fortified underground hospital in the world: the three-floor, 2,000-bed Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Emergency Hospital at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. It was used extensively through the current war.
  1. Two of Israel’s largest hospitals, and a hospital in Philadelphia, are working with a robot called Gary that does all sorts of tasks on the wards including chatting to patients, taking medical notes and even cleaning and mopping floors.
  1. Caesarea-based company IceCure Medical has developed a minimally invasive treatment to destroy benign and cancerous tumors of the breast, kidney, lung, liver and other organs by freezing them with liquid nitrogen. Of all Israel’s amazing medical advances, this is just one that stands out.
  1. In Israel, people are taught from an early age to turn off the tap while they brush their teeth, to save precious water.
  2. In Israel, a meal without a salad is not considered a meal. Even breakfast.
  3. Tel Aviv has over 4,000 Bauhaus buildings, the largest concentration of Bauhaus buildings anywhere in the world.
  4. During Passover in Israel, supermarkets are not allowed to sell chametz (forbidden foods like bread and cakes), and if you bring the products to the checkout, they cannot be scanned. Large sections of the shops are covered in plastic sheets.
  5. In Hebrew, Merry Christmas is Chag Molad Sameach, which means Happy Festival of the Birth.
  6. In Israel, the most common way to mop the floor is by doing what’s called a sponja: flooding the floor with water and using a long-handled squeegee to push the dirty water outside or down the nearest drain.
  7. Israeli toilets have two handles: A smaller one that releases less water to flush down #1, and a larger one that elicits more water to get rid of #2.
  8. Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, has 120 seats because it’s modeled after the Second Temple-era Knesset HaGedolah (the Great Assembly), a leadership body of 120 sages, prophets and scribes.
  1. When Israel was founded, the Knesset met regularly in a movie theater in Tel Aviv called Kessem (Magic) Cinema. The legislative assembly met there throughout 1949 until moving to Jerusalem.
  1. Israel may have been called Zion, Ever or Judea. The new country finally decided on Israel, the name suggested by the country’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
  1. 85 percent of Israeli households get hot water from rooftop solar heaters, compared to less than 1 percent in the United States.
  1. In Israel it is legal to write the Jewish calendar date on all official documents, including checks, instead of (or in addition to) the Gregorian date.
  1. The main compounds of the cannabis plant were first isolated, analyzed, synthesized and named in Israel.
  2. Israel was the first country to ban underweight models from participating in fashion shows.
  1. Since 2020, Israel has ranked as one of the top 10 happiest countries in the World Happiness Report. Even after the last year and a half of war, Israel came in at 8th place for happiness in the 2025 report, and first place for social connections.
  2. From October 2023 to December 19, 2024, 1,667 demonstrations and protest events have taken place in Israel. The majority of these demonstrations called for the release of the hostages and the resignation of the government. At least 10 of these protests had more than 100,000 participants. In the months since then, the protests have continued to increase in both frequency and size.
  3. Israel is home to the only theater company in the world comprised entirely of deaf and blind actors. The company, Nalaga’at (please touch), based in Jaffa, includes a restaurant where visitors eat in the dark and are served by blind staff.
  1. In 1952, acclaimed scientist Albert Einstein was offered the post of president of Israel. He declined, however, citing ill health and a lack of experience “dealing properly with people and… exercising official functions.”
  1. HemaShock, an Israeli medical company, developed an exsanguination tourniquet that squeezes the blood from the patient’s limbs and sends it to the core organs where it’s needed most in cases of hemorrhagic shock or heart attack.
  1. Israeli company Beyond Oil developed a powder that can remove carcinogenic toxins from fried food.
  1. In 2025, Gal Gadot became the first actress to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “I’m just a girl from Israel,” she said, while sharing an emotional shoutout to her family in Hebrew.
  2. The world’s heaviest strawberry was grown in Israel in 2022 at the Toot BaSadeh farm in Kadima. The berry weighed in at 289 grams (about 10 ounces), or 290 with the stem. Regular strawberries weigh just 15 or 16 grams.
  1. Israeli company Watergen developed an atmospheric water generator that can create clean drinking water from the air. It has been deployed in disaster situations all over the world.
  1. Israeli company Beewise developed the world’s first autonomous beehive. It can house up to 40 bee colonies (around 2 million bees) and take care of their health and upkeep with a simple app.
  1. Israeli students won an international award for producing real honey without bees, using a bacterium programmed to “learn” how to make honey.
  1. The record for the greatest number of passengers ever flown by a commercial airliner happened in May 1991 as part of Operation Solomon, when Israel evacuated 1, 086 Jewish Ethiopians from their home country on an El Al Boeing 747. Two babies were born on the flight, bringing the number to 1,088.
  1. The first ever Israeli flag, flown in Jerusalem on May 14, 1948, was hand-sewn and colored with blue crayons.
Originally posted at israel21c.org