Pff, the problem with your argument is that Israel isn't a success story.

Yeah, it's technologically superiorto most of it's neighbors, but that's not surprising considering really large parts of the population aren't natives but migrated there from other first world countries.
It's a bit like saying the american settlers were technologically superior to the "indians", true but hardly a big surprise.
Dubai also has some really big and modern buildings but the architects weren't natives AFAIK, these countries import technology and knowledge.
Not that that's wrong but the technology is not their direct achievement.

If you look at the ultra orthodox jews you could even say it's religiously on a similar level to that of it's neighbors, maybe not on the whole spectrum but on average, Israel has people who throw stones at christian visitors purely because of religious differences, hardly advanced or enlightened.
And then they still haven't managed to stop being at constant war with their neighbors and their attempts to build settlements on land that isn't theirs are kinda medieval as well.
While Europe has gone from TotalWar to being peaceful, allied, with flourishing trade(if we ignore cucumbers) and cooperation, Israel has managed hardly any progress in roughly the same timeframe.
Different situation of course and you can blame their neighbors all you want but just surviving through violence is not progress. One kind of progress could be convincing it's neighbors of it's own enlightenment and convincing them to join in and work together but Israel consistently fails to achieve that, think of the American occupation of Germany that inspired our country, turned us into capitalist peaceniks etc.
That wasn't achieved by brutally keeping us down, it was achieved by investing into us, by helping us get up again etc., something that Israel does not even do with the neighbors that are at it's feet.

Just because a country has better tanks than it's neighbors you can't say it's a success story.