Is the world going into a water crisis? It certainly seems that way.

The US government predicts that by 2025, 60% of the world's land mass and 40 of our 50 US states

will experience water shortages. Some of them extreme. The US intelligence community sees

worldwide water shortages as a major national security risk. Water scarcity helped trigger the

Syrians of the war and has been a key reason why Africans have migrated in large numbers to Europe.

More of this can be expected. But there is cause for optimism, and it comes from a very unlikely

place, a country in the middle of a desert. That country is Israel.

Compiled by necessity and powered by remarkable technological innovations,

Israel has become the world's water superpower. By reusing wastewater, by making desalination

affordable, by rethinking irrigation, and by developing an array of sophisticated water

conservation techniques, Israel not only has a sufficiency of water, but an abundance of it.

What Israel has done other nations can do too, including its mid-east neighbors.

And while it's a lot to hope for, cooperation on water issues could become the basis for

cooperation on other issues as well. For Israel, an obsession with water is not new.

The word water appears 600 times in the Hebrew Bible. For over 2,000 years,

daily prayers for rain in the land of Israel had been a part of traditional Jewish ritual.

For the founders of the modern state of Israel, water was not only a daily concern,

but a paramount question of future survival. Vast quantities of water would be needed for

the millions of immigrants who would make their way to the new country. Without plenty of water,

economic growth would be impossible. But where was the water going to come from?

It was a daunting challenge, but one which Israel overcame.

Today, while other nations, even once with far more natural water resources struggle with water

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