Now for something completely different: good news from the Middle East!
In the midst of continuing rancor with its Palestinian neighbors and nuclear threats from Iran, Israel - which marks the 61st anniversary of its birth today - has managed to carve out a booming technological industry that far surpasses even Israeli expectations .
Six decades ago, the nascent Jewish state's star exports were primarily agricultural - the traditional Holy Land oranges, dates and olives, then flowers and specialty vegetables for a newly prosperous European market. Israeli hi-tech in 1948 was the export of Israeli made false teeth and polished diamonds..
Today close to 70 per cent of Israel's multi billion dollar global export market consists of hi-tech products and services - from computer science to ingenious medical mechanical innovations to ecologically linked processes for everything from desalination to solar power on cloudy days . Potentially, and possibly most important of all, large parts of Israel's technological it are making inroads into the vast Arab market that technically boycotts it.
Consider the following: Israel, the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can boast the following:
The cell phone , developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.
Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel. The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel. The Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely made in Israel.
Converse Technology, whose main operations are in Tel Aviv, is the world's largest producers of voice messaging systems.
Teva, with a network of plants south of Tel Aviv, is the world's largest generic drug maker.
Pergonal, the world's most widely used fertility drug, was discovered at Israel's Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer
Various parts of the digital video and audio security systems developed by Israel-based Nice Systems are being used by everyone from Atlantic City casinos to air traffic controllers at Dulles and O'Hare airports to the NYPD and LAPD.
Israel's Given Imaging has developed a pill containing a tiny video camera that can be swallowed to help physicians detect and locate intestinal tumors.
The perimeter security fence around everything from Buckingham Palace to parts of Chicago's O'Hare Airport was developed and produced by Israel-based Magal Security Systems.
Applied Cognitive Engineering, an Israeli company, has developed a video-coaching tool for basketball teams based on training techniques used by the Israeli Air Force to improve aerial shooting and passing skills.
AOL's Instant Messaging system was developed by four young Israelis whose company Mirabilis was eventually acquired by AOL itself.
Much of the Jewish state's impressive high tech success stems from its traditional need to overcome seemingly insurmountable security problems. Over the years, the Israel Defense Forces have systematically nurtured the innovative talents of its enlistees. One result: Israel boasts the world's largest per capita population of engineers. Indeed, young minds that once worked on defense problems have become the mainstay of the Israeli private sector's legion of bright innovators. For example, soon after being demobilized, three young veterans of the IDF formed a company called Check Point Software, today considered the global leader in the internet firewall industry.
Israel's hi-tech capability has also been solidly enhanced by the immigration to its shores of a wealth of scientific minds among the more than 900,000 Soviet immigrants that the Jewish state has absorbed since the 1990s. (That immigration, like past massive waves to Israel's shore represented in itself a of massive eco-social wonder. Given Israel's then population of 6.7 million, the 1990s Russian immigration to Israel was equivalent to the United States assimilating the entire population of France!)
Israel's hi-tech accomplishments have already attracted major foreign investment. More than 150 Israeli companies are traded on the New York stock exchanges, mostly NASADAQ where Israel is the largest foreign presence next to Canada.Even Warren Buffet planted $4 billion when he bought out the Galilee based , Israeli family owned metal cutting tool company, Iscar Metalworking Corporations, three years ago. The following two years saw multi-million dollar acquisitions of Israeli hi-tech companies by HP, Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo, AOL, and Websene, to name a few.
The global recession has slowed things down somewhat - but not to any disastrous level.
Israeli economy itself appears to continue charging ahead. Despite its war footing, GDP growth per person has remained above 3% in recent years, considerably higher than the average for most wealthy countries. Manufacturing production in Israel increased by 5.3 per cent in 2007 - a rise Israeli economists attribute in part to The International Monetary Fund (IMF) report of February 12, 2008, which called Israel's 2007 economic performance "exceptional" . Israel was even asked to become a member of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), recognition that the once struggling nation as now considered a fully developed country.
Some critics have begun to dump Dead Sea sized loads of salt on the Israeli boom's long term outlook - especially in hi-tech. The prestigious British journal The Economist, for example, believes that sooner or later, Israel's over dependence on high tech successes could prove to be little more than an unsustainable "lucky one off". Citing the country's aggressive unions, widening wealth gaps, a faltering education system, low workforce participation and a public sector often paralyzed by bureaucratic red tape, the British magazine recently claimed that Israel's "engines of growth are punier than they look."
Indeed as the British weekly pointed out in a lengthy report last year, while computer companies like Intel have been placing advanced production facilities such as chip-wafer production plants in Israel, "other countries are nipping at [Israel's] heels".
Some Israeli critics analysts. - pointing out the major innovations of the early 21st century will be in fields that the Israeli defense establishment research units "are not particularly interest in" such as biotech, nanotech, smart materials, and alternative energy
But such critics are ignoring the degree to which Israeli industry and the nation's highly advanced network of hospitals, universities and research institutes have already moved far beyond computer science off-shoots and expanded, for example, into the more nascent fields of international ecological, biological and medical treatment high technologies. Privately run as well as government and university sponsored technological incubators continue to thrive throughout Israel. Israel also remains in the forefront of developing affordable solar power systems. - an increasingly vital field .
Internbational fixation on global warming is also motivating much of Israel's new international technological development. Experts from both Jerusalem's famed Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University are already working with Chinese authorities on a potentially gigantic 20 year scheme to enhance and better distribute China's mammoth water resources . Drip irrigation systems, which were pioneered in the 1960s by the kibbutz based company Netafim, are now being developed into low pressure irrigation systems that could become saviors for farmers in increasingly arid countries in under developed Africa..
In 2007, the United Nations adopted an Israeli initiated draft resolution calling on the world body to facilitate a system for better sharing of agro- technological know-how with the developing world. Israel itself is often at the forefront of such efforts and other techno- sharing efforts. MASHAV, the Israel Foreign Ministry's Center for International Cooperation, currently has scores of techno-assistance projects going on in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.
But it is in medical technology that Israel continues to advance most dramatically. Haifa's Rambam Hospital, the principal medical facility for the Northern Command of the Israeli Defense Forces, collaborates closely with colleagues in the Haifa Technion's Faculties of Medicine (home of Israel's Nobel Laureates in Science), Engineering and Bio-Medical Engineering on everything from human embryonic stem cell research to the development of science-fiction like non-invasive imaging technologies. Scientists at Israel's Weizmann Institute continue the research that enabled it to develop the first cancer without biopsy system more than 10 years ago as well as Copaxone, one of the newest treatments for multiple sclerosis while the Israeli company Laser Industries continues the visionary research that allowed it to pioneer the CO2 laser knife now used almost universally in optical surgery.
Israel's hi-tech advances have already begun to attract interest - and in some cases, contracts and orders from the Arab world, something that has been taboo for decades even in the handful of Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan with which Israel has peaceful relations. Some Israeli hi-tech - eg Israeli developed software systems and chips used or acquired by Microsoft or AOL, for example, can simply not be ignored or refused by anyone. Some Arab states order Israeli hi-tech products through third party intermediaries. But some Arab states - especially more globally minded, economically advanced ones such as Dubai and the other Gulf States, are dealing reportedly directly with Israeli hi-tech outfits - especially those in the medical fields.
Though rarely reported, for example, there is also a discreet flow of Arab patients flying into Israel for treatment at Israeli hospitals and of Arab world medical personnel coming to Israel for training and joint research work. Several Israeli hospitals have even quietly opened their own small specialized treatment centers in Arab capitals, obviously with the knowledge and assistance of Arab governments.. And even during the recent Gaza battles, Palestinian patients made their way to Israeli hospitals- with Israeli help.
I thought of Israel's hi-tech, medical and myriad other accomplishments when I read the other day that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abba still steadfastly refuses to recognize Israel as the democratic Jewish state it was founded as and will continue to be. In fact, 61 years after it was born, most Palestinians and other Arabs still refuse to accept the reality of a Jewish state in the Middle East with which Arabs would live in peace. Maybe they should compare their accomplishments with Israel's - which includes facilitating 7 new universities for Palestinians on the West Bank. There's a lesson to be learned.
