Israel, Moving To The Head Of The Class

"Israel is a country where hundreds of new corporations start up their business every year in information and communications technology, medical services, and agriculture, and also produce innovative technologies. And for Japan, innovation is the engine of our economy."
"Taking both into account, there is every reason for Japan to co-operate with this great nation."
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Israel Innovation Forum, 2015

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe at the Japan-Israel Business Forum, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Jerusalem, January 18, 2015. Photo: Miriam Alster / Flash90

Not that this is the first time that Japanese have admired and wanted to acquire for themselves some of the spark that Jewish enterprise is capable of generating to advance economies and industries. But at that previous time, Israel did not exist. What did exist was the reputation that Jews were extraordinarily gifted with entrepreneurial qualities, as well as a genetic predisposition to the arts and sciences to a degree not matched by other ethnic groups.

And that is what spurred Japan to invest in a rescue effort of Jews, to bring them under Japanese aegis, away from the European killing machine that Nazi Germany introduced to Europe. Although Japan was recognized by the Third Reich, as part of the Axis powers and granted "Aryan" status, official Japan never did accept the calamitous propaganda about Jewish perfidy and threats to the world. They recognized in the Jewish mind something similar to the Japanese mind, aspiring to succeed.

Now, the two countries have some things in common. Both are small "islands" in the sea of larger countries surrounding them. While Japan historically became a threat and a violent overseer to its neighbours, Israel suffered the reverse; seen as a threat to its larger neighbours, they turned the hostility of violence against Israel. Among its neighbours, Japan is the technologically advanced one, though South Korea has caught up nicely. While among its neighbours, Israel is the success.

Israel has had to, and continues to struggle with that neighbourly hostility, the Muslim collective surrounding it representing an ongoing existential threat to a tiny country of non-Muslims  (excepting its 1.5-million Israeli Palestinians). Added to that, the most influential institution the world has whose purpose has been ostensibly to promote world peace and understanding between nations, has itself become a tool with which to bludgeon Israel and isolate it on the world stage.

Under huge duress from countless sources, not the least of which is the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions universal threat to harm Israel diplomatically and economically through a concerted leftist-led "progressive" campaign to besmirch the country, Israel's energy minister has announced that his nation's gas sales from its enormous offshore gas deposits will soon make the nation financially secure as it sells its resources to an energy-hungry world.

Not only to Egypt, Jordan and Turkey will Israel sell its natural gas resources, but to countries distant from the Middle East; China, Japan and Eastern Europe. "Their attitudes are based on a major reevaluation of what Israel as a nation represents, and what its existence and survival signify for the future prospects of other nations and regions", stated Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli energy minister.

The nation's high-tech industry has been building to the present time where, for a country of fewer than nine million citizens, it has achieved an amazing position in the world of high tech. Israel ranked five in position in the world on the Bloomberg Innovation Index, according to research and development budgets, patents, and the percentage of the labour force with advanced degrees, the number of research professionals per million population.

Ahead of France, Singapore and the U.K., and where the United States ranked sixth.

Major Chinese corporations are anxious to discover which Israeli startups they can invest in to aid them in competing with American counterparts such as Google and Apple. Israeli and Chinese universities work together, partnering on joint projects.

So much for divisive slander, efforts at isolation and manipulating the UN's Human Rights Council to condemn Israel for manufactured human rights abuses, singling it out over all other nations of the world whose record on human rights truly is deplorable, but who nonetheless manage to readily find place for themselves on UN committees judging Israel.

Carlos Slim speaking at the opening of the Aldea Digital Mexico City, Mexico. Photo by ITU Pictures Flickr .. Israel poses a challenge to the United States in the leadership of the global high technology industry, according to Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecommunications magnate. .