AT 50, ISRAEL ENDURES AGAINST ALL ODDS.(MAIN)

Byline: MARJORIE MILLER Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM -- At 89, Yosef Burg looks back on Israel's first half-century as an elder, measures the accomplishments of his offspring and issues a sober reality: ``First of all, I would like to say that we exist.''

In fact, this is no understatement from one of Israel's pre-eminent politicians, who has seen the Jewish state from its hardscrabble beginnings through five wars and myriad international crises. Against all odds, Israel exists. Fifty years after its founding, Israel is a full-fledged member of the world community with a $95 billion economy and a nuclear-armed military.

Survivors of the Holocaust in Europe and most of the other Diaspora Jews who wanted to immigrate to Israel have done so, with one-third of the Jewish people in the world now living in their own state. In the words of Israel's Zionist leaders, ``the exiles have ingathered.''

Hebrew, the ancient language of the Jews, has been reborn as the mother tongue of millions who redefined themselves from scholars and merchants in exile into soldiers, political leaders and high-tech engineers.

With these achievements alone, it can be said that Zionism, the Jewish …