THE ISRAEL TEST

George GilderTHE ISRAEL TEST THE NATION IS A SYMBOL OF THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE BETWEEN ACHIEVEMENT AND ENVY as the US has been for the last couple of centuries:

The central issue in international politics, dividing the world into two fractious armies, is the tiny state of Israel.

The prime issue is not a global war of civilizations between the West and Islam or a split between Arabs and Jews. These conflicts are real and salient, but they obscure the deeper moral and ideological war.

The real issue is between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it.

The test can be summarized by a few questions: What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishments? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement, or do you impugn it and seek to tear it down?

This book is much more truthful than the absurd"Israel is real" in which Cohen (with the approval of his equally silly reviewer) tries to demonstrates his open mindedness thus:

Cohen animates this familiar point by putting American Jews in Arabs’ shoes. Imagine if an Iroquois tribe “suddenly started building settlements in Westchester, driving families out of Scarsdale and Armonk in an effort to reclaim their ancient nation.”

Only a total ignoramus can compare the desolate swamps of lands PURCHASED by young Jewish idealists who came to build and be rebuilt in the land of Israel to Scarsdale. By the way, Arabs are not politically correct enough not to consider a comparison to the Iroquois tribes an insult. I, for one, do not blame them.

Unfortunately, the appalling conditions Jews found in their ancient lands in the late 19th century has yet to be amended in much of the Arab world as a recent Economist special report accurately notes:

WHAT ails the Arabs? The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this week published the fifth in a series of hard-hitting reports on the state of the Arab world. It makes depressing reading. The Arabs are a dynamic and inventive people whose long and proud history includes fabulous contributions to art, culture, science and, of course, religion. The score of modern Arab states, on the other hand, have been impressive mainly for their consistent record of failure.

They have, for a start, failed to make their people free: six Arab countries have an outright ban on political parties and the rest restrict them slyly. They have failed to make their people rich: despite their oil, the UN reports that about two out of five people in the Arab world live on $2 or less a day. They have failed to keep their people safe: the report argues that overpowerful internal security forces often turn the Arab state into a menace to its own people. And they are about to fail their young people. The UNDP reckons the Arab world must create 50m new jobs by 2020 to accommodate a growing, youthful workforce—virtually impossible on present trends.

May I also add that Iroquois wishing to buy property in Scarsdale are free to do so. They would find it much easier than Jews found buying land in Israel. Even today selling land to Jews is considered by Arabs to be a betrayal and, hence, has to be done surreptitiously.