Don't Blame Israel For Arab Failures

[P F Tinmore]

What will Israel do when the welfare runs out?

 

[JStone]

Israel: Startup Nation

Israel, sometimes referred to as "Startup Nation", is a hub of entrepreneurship...Located at the heart of the Middle East, right between Asia and Africa, it has close trade relations with both Europe and North America, which contribute to its success.

With a population of 7.6 million, yet roughly the world’s 40th largest economy, Israel enjoys a technologically advanced economy, brimming with entrepreneurial activity. Israel benefits from a large and diverse immigrant population with ties all over the world. The citizenry is highly educated and cosmopolitan, and serves as a valuable resource for advancements in high technology. Venture capital and startups are part of the local culture, and more Israeli companies are listed on NASDAQ than from any other country outside of North America, China following closely.

Israel prides itself in the high level of its universities, almost all of which hold entrepreneurship centers.

GEW / Israel: A Startup Nation | Global Entrepreneurship Week

KPMG: Israel Spreading Its Wings, Growing Internationally

Israel has a dynamic, technologically advanced market economy, with a GDP of approximately US$200 billion. Over the past five years, GDP has grown by an average of five percent annually, while inflation has been near zero and the Israeli Shekel has remained stable versus the US Dollar. The Bank of Israel's interest rate is at a record low, at 0.5 percent, and is among the lowest in the world. Raw materials (excluding diamonds and fuels), constitute 40 percent of total imports, while manufacturing (low-to-high technology products and services), constitutes 87 percent of total exports. In addition, there are more Israeli-domiciled companies traded on NASDAQ (currently 63) than in any country outside the US.

The country's entrepreneurial and competitive environment is underpinned by a number of cultural and social factors. Education is one of the key drivers with high numbers of science and engineering students graduating each year - Israel boasts a ratio of 135 scientists per 100,000 workers, the highest in the world

In the 1990s, following the successful establishment of Yozma, one of Israel's first venture capital (VC) programs, nearly 100 VC firms have been established, using foreign and local investment capital, to help catapult the creation and expansion of a large number of high technology companies. Approximately US$9.4 billion of capital was invested from these sources between 1993 and 2000, however it then began to decline by approximately 22 percent annually. In 2003 there were virtually no investments due to the collapse of high-tech stock markets world-wide and heightening tensions in the region.

In all, approximately US$4.2 billion of capital has been invested in Israeli private equity firms

KPMG - April 2011 - frontiers in finance: Spreading its wings

The State of Israel boasts a young, vibrant, developed economy. It is a country which encourages initiative and diversity and rewards innovation and improvisation. Israel has become a leader in advanced technological development, research, and international collaboration. Much of its success is based on its mst precious resource, the mind and spirit of its hardworking and industrious working population.

Israel exemplifies the notion that necessity is the mother of invnetion; with a harsh climate and scarce resources, Israel has invested heavily in developing a highly skilled workforce. That investment has paid off, and over the past decade Israel has attracted significant capital for its leadership in clean energy technologies, the biomedical field, and software development. Today Israel boasts the largest number of NASDAQ-listed companies outside of the US.

Israel's 2010 admisison to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose mission espouses "A Stronger, Cleaner, Fairer World Economy," cements Israel's increasing role on the world stage.

Israel Saves Intel

In 2006, Intel, the producer of the famed Pentium Chip, was taking a beating from Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] after its 2003 launch of Opteron. Intel's stock was plummeting and its processor had hit a performance wall.

The Israeli team got to work, relying on two core Israeli traits to overcome this problem: Creativity to design a solution and determination to convince top management to put its energy behind their Core 2 Duo processor

Intel's bet on the Israelis required a shift in thinking about how processors work and how Intel marketed them. Intel had always promoted the theory that faster clock speed, the rate at which a chip executes instructions, was the key to measuring a computer's performance. Despite being slower than the Pentium chip, the Core 2 Duo processor provided more power efficiency, increased computer performance and the potential to revive Intel's dwindling market share.

The company's strong history with its Israeli team encouraged Intel executives to trust the Israeli team's chutzpah. Adopting the Core 2 Duo processor paid off---In June 2010, Inte's market share was approximately 80% compared to AMD's meager 12%

After more than 35 years since Intel's first investment in Israel, the company boasts multiple Israeli location, including:

Haifa: Established in 1974 as Intel's first design and development center outside the US, Haifa is home to Intel's Israel Development Center. IDC, which specializes in software technologies, created Intel's pioneering processors and now develops Intel's mobile microprocessors.

Jerusalem: Fab 8, Intel's first non-US water fabrication facility, manufactures more than 130 different products which are used in a variety of industries.

Orvat Gat: Opened in 1999, the $1.6 billion Orvat Gat facility represents the largest single private sector investment ever made in Israel.

Kyriat Gat: Building on its success, Intel is expanding its facility here with a planned $2.7 billion investment in Israel.

Over the past four decades, the relationship between Intel and Israel has continued to grow. Following steady success, it seems that all eyes are on Israel when it comes to Intel's future innovation and product development

http://www.worldstridescapstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Destination-Israel.pdf

 

[JStone]

The worst is that those who blame Israel for everything love to ignore that the arabs didn't give Palestinians a country between 1948-1967 when they invaded, and then conquered the WB and Gaza.

Middle East Historian Bernard Lewis ...

Between 1947 and 1949 a large part of the Arab inhabitants of the territories included in the new state of Israel left their homes and took refuge on the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, and in the neighboring countries. The Israelis claim that they left at the instigation of their own leaders, who told them to go so as not to interfere with the movements of troops, and promised them that they would return in the wake of the triumphant Arab armies very shortly. The Arabs maintain that they were driven out by the Israelis. Both arguments are true; both are false. Some were undoubtedly told to go by their own leaders; some, notably in the strategically vital corridor between Jerusalem and the coast, were ordered to leave by the advancing Israeli troops.

The great majority, like countless millions of refugees elsewhere, left their homes amid the confusion and panic of invasion and war—one more unhappy part of the vast movement of populations which occurred in the aftermath of World War II. As the Poles fled from the eastern areas seized by the Russians, as the Germans fled from East German territories annexed by the Poles, as millions of Muslims and Hindus fled from India to Pakistan and from Pakistan to India, so too did great numbers of Arabs flee from Palestine to the neighboring Arab states while large numbers of Jews, most of them previously unaffected by Zionist ideology, fled from the tensions which had arisen in the Arab states to the relative safety of Israel.

At the time it was hoped that this problem would be resolved, like the refugee problems in Eastern Europe and in the Indian subcontinent, and that the Arab refugees would be partly resettled in the Arab countries, partly returned to their homes. This did not happen, and with the exception of Jordan, the Arab governments made a point of not according citizenship to the refugees and of opposing their resettlement.