Category Archives: Israel

Update III: Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values (Senegal Does It Right)

America, Celebrity, Christianity, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Media, Morality, Political Economy, The West, UN

The excerpt is from my new, WND.COM column: “Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values”:

“… in all its self-serving displays, humanitarianism is, overwhelmingly, a Western affair; a Judeo-Christian thing. It’s as simple as all that. Liberals like Angelina Jolie will trace Western generosity to the founding of the United Nations, to the League of Nations, or to some other supra-national structure.

I suspect that what is at play in Haiti, and in countless locales around the undeveloped world, began with the revolutionary, universal, elaborate moral and legal injunctions encoded first in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus – and, thereafter, throughout the Hebrew Bible – to protect and do justice by the poor, the weak, the defenseless, the widow and the stranger. The people of Israel were enjoined to practice what Christians later perfected.

That stuff stuck.

A different set of beliefs animates Haitian society, and helps explain its helplessness and hopelessness. ‘Haiti is not a Catholic country, Haiti is a Voodoo country,’ Erol Josue told National Public Radio. Josue is a Voodoo priest in a country whose former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, officially recognized Voodoo as a state religion.” …

The complete column is “Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update I (Jan. 22): Martin’s comment hereunder reminded me what I clean forgot: the Obamas’ very public giving. I’m also grateful to Martin for bringing to our attention the DIRECT injunction in the New Testament against showy charity. Martin quotes the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them.” How has this country forgotten something as foundational as that?

Self-righteousness has replaced righteousness and self-aggrandizement has supplanted simple goodness.

Update II (Jan. 23): CHILD SLAVERY still thrives in Haiti in the form of the “Restavec system.” Children are kept in grinding poverty and worked to the bone. In the West this would be considered perverse in the extreme; in Haiti owning a Restavek is a status symbol. CNN has done stories on Restavec children, but has never connected the dots, as the favorite phrase goes. The angle is, invariably one of, “Look how good I am [Dr. Gupta here]; I’m crying.” Coupled with, “This happens in the US too.

No it doesn’t. When a slave is discovered, usually in the home of immigrants who imported their bad habit, American society shames and punishes the offenders.

Update III (Jan. 24): SENEGAL DOES IT RIGHT. Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade has offered Haitian refugees a “parcels of land – even an entire region. It all depends on how many Haitians come. If it’s just a few individuals, then we will likely offer them housing or small pieces of land. If they come en masse we are ready to give them a region,’ he said.”

Wade “insisted that if a region is handed over it should be in a fertile area – not in the country’s parched deserts.”

Wade’s got the right idea, or at least the righteous one. He is offering Haitians a most generous chance at self-sufficiency; at working the land.

“Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher and codifier of Jewish law, holds that the most praiseworthy and effective means of fulfilling the commandment of Tzedakah [charity] is through offering an impoverished person a business partnership, a business loan or a job. … the Prime Minister and [former Finance Minister] of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently understood this well. Speaking on the benefits of workfare reform in Israel, Netanyahu was once quoted in the press as saying that it is not enough to be a Thatcherite, a Jew should go even further and become a Maimonidite. [Excerpted from the monograph titled Judaism, Markets, and Capitalism: Separating Myth from Reality, by Corinne and Robert Sauer of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, with which I am affiliated.]

[SNIP]

Will Haitians be tempted by a chance at an honest living when hand-outs abound?

Security With Intelligence

Affirmative Action, Government, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Israel, Terrorism

Inadvertently—and in a characteristically witty way—Isaac Yeffet seems to second my diagnosis that, “Homegrown retardation is far more pressing a problem than homegrown terrorism in modern-day America.”

The multi-talented Yeffet is the former security director of Israel’s airliner, El Al, “pioneer in counter-terrorism,” and entrepreneur.

Yeffet attempted to explain the concept of utilizing intelligence, as in brain power, to Huckabee. (Please someone locate and post that YouTube), but Heehaw Huck kept insisting on blaming the system.

Updated: The Golem* Goldstone Goes To Gaza

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Just War, Law, Palestinian Authority, South-Africa, UN

From my new WND column, “The Golem Goldstone Goes To Gaza”:

“When introducing Judge Goldstone, Fareed Zakaria described the judge as having made his name, among other acts of greatness, in pursuing an end to the political violence that came with apartheid in his home country of South Africa.

Ostracized for his convictions, this writer’s father – Rabbi Ben Isaacson – was a leading anti-apartheid activist. Goldstone had no such history of protest, father assures me. The roaming judge attached himself like a limpet mine to the anti-apartheid cause only once it became fashionable, safe and professionally expedient.

Goldstone’s Wiki biography corroborates father’s recollection. The judge joined the cause du jour in ‘the latter years of apartheid in South Africa.’ Goldstone’s “courageous” judicial decisions in the cause of freedom, moreover, comported with what South Africa’s Western system of Dutch-Roman law provided – a system currently being replaced, by the African National Congress, with a blend of tribal and totalitarian laws.

To this expatriate South African, the most anodyne assertion Goldstone made to zombie Zakaria was this one…”

Read the complete column, “The Golem Goldstone Goes To Gaza.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update (Jan. 9): A few readers, some via my WND mail box, have told me I’ve erred as far as the meaning of Golem goes. I’m relatively confident that my commonplace use of the term is accurate (if perhaps not true to the original meaning), so I’ve left it. Usually, I hurry to correct blatant errors.

So why am I comfortable with the column’s usage?

I’m an ex-Israeli. My first language is Hebrew. Although I once spoke and wrote a sharp Hebrew (much like my English), slang has since (as in the US and the UK) changed older, popular usage. As old-timers like myself are in the habit of saying, no one speaks Yerushalmic Hebrew on the news any longer as the wonderful Haim Yavin used to. Yavin was the most elegant anchorman in looks and language.

Back to the topic. “Golem” in popular, modern usage is a derogatory term. Call an Israeli of my age group (still way younger than Yavin, of course) a Golem, and, while you’ve not wounded him mortally, you have, in good humor, berated him.

Israel A Hub For High-Tech Action

Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Israel, Outsourcing, Science, Technology

Contra the USA, Israel’s high-tech sector is thriving and the country is enjoying unprecedented “current accounts surpluses.” Yet quite a few political types, on the left and the right, wish to see parts of this hub of high-tech activity handed over to Katyusha operators.

Courtesy of the Etinger Report, here are some economic indices produced by a population that would fit into a couple of large American cities:

• Siemens acquired Israel’s solar energy Solel for $418MN, following Siemens’ 40% acquisition of Israel’s solar company, Arava Power for $15MN (Globes business daily, Oct. 16, 2009). Sigma Designs acquired Israel’s CopperGate Telecommunications for $200MN (Globes, Oct. 1). Britain’s M86 acquired Israel’s Finjan for $35MN (Globes, Nov. 4).

• Fitch International Credit Rating Agency has joined Moody’s (A1 stable) and Standard & Poor (A stable), maintaining Israel’s long-term foreign exchange and local currency credit rating at A and A+ respectively. Israel is one of the very few countries which have maintained its credit rating during the economic crisis of the last two years. According to Fitch, Israel’s stable banking sector, absence of “bubbles,” hawkish budget-deficit (curbing government spending) policy and stability of the high tech and services sectors have produced unprecedented current accounts surplus and foreign exchange reserves (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 6, Yedioth Achronot, Nov. 8). A 7%-13% rise in hiring has been recorded by Israel’s high tech sector during 2009’s third quarter (Globes, Oct. 26).

• “[Microsoft’s CEO], Steve Ballmer calls Microsoft as much an Israeli company as an American company, because of the importance of its Israeli technologies. Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, eBay – says one of eBay’s executives – the best kept secret is that we all live and die by the work of our Israeli teams…John Chambers, Cisco’s CEO, has bought nine Israeli start-ups… Such economic dynamism has occurred in the face of war, internal strife and rising animosity from other nations. During the six years following the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000, Israel suffered one of its worst periods of terrorist attacks and fought a second Lebanese War, and yet its share of the global venture capital market did not drop – it doubled from 15% to 31%… Israel, a tiny nation of immigrants torn by war, has managed to become the first technology nation…” (James Glassman, Exec. Dir. Of the G.W. Bush Institute, Wall St. Journal, Nov. 23, 2009 book review of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle).

• HP expands it R&D operations in Israel, hiring 100 persons during the next two years, in addition to its current 5,000 employees (Globes Business daily, Nov. 25). Microsoft’s newest anti-virus software, Microsoft Security Essentials, was developed in Microsoft’s R&D center in Israel (Globes, Oct. 1).

• Israel has been chosen to succeed Germany in heading the largest R&D network in the world, the “Eureka Initiative,” a pan-European, inter-governmental initiative that supports European innovation and oversees 1.5BN British Pound investments annually. Israeli companies have participated in 40 – out of 300 – Eureka projects launched in 2008. Eureka operates like the highly successful US-Israel Bi-National Industrial R&D (BIRD) Foundation (Israel 21c, July 27).

• The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has recognized Israel as one of the fifteen international centers (countries) for the search and testing of patents. Thus, global innovators will be able to apply – in Israel – to patent testing and approval, which will be recognized internationally (Ynet, Sept. 30).

• The Dutch Forbion Capital Partners – joined by Alice Ventures, Vitalife, Kreos Capital and IHCV – led an $18.5MN round by Israel’s NiTi Surgical Solutions (Globes, Aug. 12). Apropos IT, Dolphin Equity Partners, Inter-Atlantic Group and Hyperion Partners invested $17MN in a 3rd round by Israel’s SeaPass (Globes, Nov. 5). Yorkville Advisors Global extended a $15MN line of credit to Israel’s Mazor (Globes, Sept. 4). USVP led a $12MN round by Israel’s water-recycling BPT (Globes, Aug. 31). Japanese electrical giants led a $12MN 2nd round of private placement by Israel’s Plurality (Globes, Nov. 19). Dupont Capital, Saints Capital, Carlisle, Adams Street Partners, Deutsche Telecom (T-Venture) and Argonaut participated in a $10MN round of private placement by Israel’s Actelis (Globes Sept. 9). Trilogy Partners led a $9/4MN round by Israel’s Crescendo Networks (Globes, Aug. 14). The US-based Volcano Capital and Wheatley partners led an $8MN round by Israel’s VisionSense (Oct. 19). Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Index Ventures invested $8MN in Israel’s NovoCure (Oct. 1). India’s Kushla Ventures and the Silicon Valley-based Kleiner Perkins led a $7MN round by Israel’s eASIC (Globes, Nov. 5). General Catalyst, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures invested $6MN in Israel’s Boxee (Globes, Aug. 14). Benchmark Capital and Tamares invested $5MN in a 2nd round by Israel’s Panaya (Globes, Aug. 6). 7Health Ventures led a $5MN round by Israel’s Activiews (Globes, Sept. 15). Benchmark Capital leads a $3MN 2nd round by Israel’s Zlango (Globes, Nov. 19).