Posted on 04/17/2014 8:08:39 AM PDT by SJackson
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says that “if we do not resolve the issues between Palestinians and Israelis, if we do not find a way to find peace, there will be an increasing isolation of Israel.”
However, a thorough examination of Israel’s international standing reveals an increasingly splendid integration of the Jewish state — economically, technologically and scientifically — irrespective of the Palestinian issue.
Contrary to the Kerry school of thought, and based on areality check, the Palestinian issue has never been a core cause shaping the Middle East, a crown jewel of Arab policymakers and the crux of Israel’s relations with the Arab countries and the international community. While the diplomatic talk highlights the Palestinian issue, the diplomatic, commercial and industrial walk reveals that policy-makers and the international business community do not embrace Kerry’s “Palestine First” assessment and his “Isolation Warning/Threat.”
Thus, the Turkish Statistics Institute documented anexpansion of the Turkey-Israel trade balance, despite the brutal anti-Israel ideology of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The institute reports a 56 percent export increase, to Israel, during the first five months of 2013, compared with the same period in 2012, while imports from Israel increased by 22% during the same period. The Israel-Turkey trade balance was $3.4 billion in 2008, rising to $4 billion in 2012. Turkey’s requirements in the areas of industry, medicine, health, agriculture, irrigation, education, science, technology and defense — and Israel’s unique innovations in these areas — have prevailed over Erdogan’s anti-Western, anti-Israel, and pro-Hamas Islamist orientation.
The London Financial Times reported that “in six hours of [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's] talks with the Chinese leadership, they spent roughly 10 seconds on the Palestinian issue, while revealing an unquenchable thirst for Israeli technology.”
Highlighting Israel’s intensified and diversified global integration, the China-Israel 2013 trade balance exceeded $10 billion, providing a tailwind to the currently negotiated free-trade agreement, and inspired by Chinese investments in some 50 Israeli high-tech companies. The Japan Times reported a growing Japanese interest in Israeli business opportunities, tripling the number of reviews of Israeli companies.
Moreover, foreign investments in Israel soared in 2013 to a seven-year high of $12 billion, including $4 billion in acquisitions of Israeli companies by global giants such as Google, IBM, Cisco, AOL, Facebook, Apple and EMC. Furthermore, since January, Israeli companies have raised over $500 million on Wall Street, and Deloitte Touche, one of the world’s top CPA firms, crowned Israel as the fourth most attractive site for foreign investors, behind the U.S., China and Brazil.
According to the British Economist Intelligence Unit, “Israel’s cluster of high-tech companies, investors and incubators is enjoying a boom which has not been witnessed since the global tech bubble burst more than a decade ago.” Neither Kazakhstan’s billionaire Kenges Rakishev, nor Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim allowed the “Isolation Warning/Threat” to stop their flow of investments in Israel’s high-tech sector.
In fact, Israel, the “Start-Up Nation,” has become a critical Pipeline Nation which transfers to the American high-tech industry a plethora of cutting edge technologies and applications developed by Israeli brain power, providing some 200 U.S. high-tech giants with an edge over their global competitors and contributing to U.S. employment, research and development and exports. As stated by Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella: “The two Microsoft research and development centers in Israel constitute a strategic factor, enhancing Microsoft’s capabilities in many areas.”
This was echoed by Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt, who invests in Israel also through his private venture capital fund, Innovation Endeavors: “Israel will have an oversized impact on the evolution of the next stage of technology. Israel has become a high-tech hub. Israel is the most important high-tech center in the world after the U.S.”
Unlike Secretary of State John Kerry, businessman Warren Buffett does have confidence in Israel’s long-term viability, realizing that Israel’s economic and technological capabilities are the derivatives of Israel’s brainpower and fiscal responsibility (since 1985), independent of the Palestinian issue.
Hence, on the eve of Israel’s 2006 war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Buffett invested $4 billion in an Israeli company, located next to the Lebanese border, recently expanding that investment by $2 billion. Buffett followed in the footsteps of Intel, which has invested $11 billion in its four research and development centers and two manufacturing plants in Israel; IBM, which just acquired its 13th Israeli company; Motorola, which established in Israel a research center second only to its Houston center; Hewlett-Packard, which owes 55% of its 2012-2013 development to its seven Israeli research and development centers; and the leading Silicon Valley venture capital funds, Sequoia, Benchmark, Greylock and Accel, which operate successful Israel-dedicated funds.
Astute observers of the Middle East — who do not subordinate reality to their wishful thinking — are aware that the Arab tsunami is not an Arab Spring; that the Arab street in general, and Egypt in particular, are not transitioning towards democracy; that Iran is committed to the pursuit of military nuclear capabilities; that Syrian President Bashar Assad has not been forsaken by Russia and Iran; and that Arab leaders are apprehensive of Palestinian subversion and terrorism.
Likewise, astute investors have realized that the ongoing wars and terrorism that have beset Israel since 1948 have been but bumps on the road of Israel’s unprecedented surge and integration into the global economy and technology, bolstered by Israel’s Leviathan-size offshore natural gas explorations.
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Must be. John Kerry and his boss say so. And so they're informed by the hard left worldwide.
An interesting foreign policy, but American allies, not just Israel, need to foster relations elsewhere as the values of places like Israel, UK, Poland, Germany, South Korea, Japan, even Egypt and Saudi Arabia are rejected in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and the far left. The administration knows who their friends are, and they're not America's
Just wishful thinking on the part of Francois. He would have made a good Nazi death camp guard, actually, had he been born a few years earlier.
Ready Sampson?
When I worked for Tadiran, Israel’s GE, they were selling everything from guns to AWACs to other countries world-wide. I was told by employees they even dealt with countries they couldn’t officially travel to. “There’s official policy and then there’s reality.”
I’d say Kerry and Obama’s views on Israel are from faculty lounge discussions with people who don’t have a clue.
Other nations want to buy Israeli products. The key to Israeli survival-prosperity is export to the world of ag products and hi-tech products. So far all is well on this despite vile Euro-leftists trying to instigate boycotts ...f’em!
The stupid Arab muzzies in the region could have been living in the lushest, greenest, most abundant place on earth if they had made peace with the Jews. Had they done so, the Israelis would have showered them with ag tech that would have made the whole area rich & productive.
However, to quote the late John Belushi, “But NOOOOOOOO!!! Not you!!!!!”
Israel has always sent ag technicians to Africa nations as a goodwill gesture. Israel would have been overjoyed to do the same for the Palestinians but in a larger way....To foster peace and prosperity.
Arabs are too inbred and clannish to co-operate with Jews Hatred, eternal revanchism and Jihad is very simple, thus easy for them to understand
`Inbred and clannish’
Go together like sugar & tea, don’t they?
`Inbred and clannish’
It is the way to survive in the harsh desert plus it keeps all wealth (dowries) within the clan via first cousin marriage. Typically where two brothers have their offspring marry
wikipedia:
Marriages between first and second cousins account for over 10% of marriages worldwide.[1] They are particularly common in the Middle East, where in some nations they account for over half of all marriages.[2]
In fact, Israel, the “Start-Up Nation,” has become a critical Pipeline Nation which transfers to the American high-tech industry a plethora of cutting edge technologies and applications developed by Israeli brain power, providing some 200 U.S. high-tech giants with an edge over their global competitors and contributing to U.S. employment, research and development and exports. As stated by Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella: “The two Microsoft research and development centers in Israel constitute a strategic factor, enhancing Microsoft’s capabilities in many areas.”
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