To be fair, the United States didn’t exactly start with home grown talent either.

relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/984/

If you read the article it says a SpaceX rocket brought them into space in the first place

Oh I didn't even think we needed to get into that part since it was stated. I'm saying their space program has directly benefited from the ongoing relationship with the US allowing them to develop as far as they have.

OP was pointing out how far they got despite being such a small nation, I'm just saying that's not an accurate statement whatsoever based on what actually happened.

Also a private, albeit subsidized, company.

Subsidy "here is some money to exist"

Contract "here is some money to meet these contractual requirements".

I think you're confusing SpaceX with United Launch Alliance (ULA), who's Annual Capability Payment of $1 billion per year was given to them literally so they can keep the lights on. A lot of congressmen were seeing red when ULA decided to not even bother with a bid for the most recent GPS launches (which SpaceX cleaned house with overall) where SpaceX required zero subsidy and managed to do it cheaper in every way.

SpaceX is not subsidized, unless you were referring to SpaceIL.

Private with the prime minister on the control room? Sounds about as private as Chinese corporations.

They also got a fair number of Russian engineers.

> I'm sure they didn't get any tech or mission critical help from the US

What's your point? NASA got a bunch of help from Nazi scientists.

My point, which I'll just keep remaking here, is that pointing out the "super tiny" population of Israel is disingenuous since the intent is to show Israeli exceptionalism. If I was claiming "NASA is the best, way better than Israel whom NASA helped" then your whataboutism would be a valid critique. But I'm not saying that.

Pointing out the population relative to the US/China is the "Tony Stark built this in a cave from spare parts" argument, but that's not really what happened here. It's more "Tony Stark built this from a schematic given to him by Reed Richards and using parts gifted from Hank Pym" (to stretch my Marvel analogy as far as possible). It's still impressive, but that statement doesn't provide clarification to the accomplishment's significance.

TL;dr- "Israel did a cool thing, and they had lots of international help doing it" is the accurate statement on what happened.

If someone puts a gun to your head and says "Do this thing or you and your family will be executed" it doesn't make you the same as them. Coming from Nazi Germany does not make them necessarily Nazis.

Well, Von Braun was most definitely a nazi and not driven by threats of bodily harm. He was just very into rockets, and worked with whoever let him develop them.

Those scientists only came to USA because the Jews inspired Hitler, so it's still thanks to Israelites..