Aug. 13, 2006
 
COMMENTARY: A Few Facts About What a French Diplomat Called ‘A Shitty Little Country’
 
By David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Network
And Joseph J. Honick, HNN Contributing Columnist
 
The Middle East has been growing date palms for centuries. The average tree is about 18-20 feet tall and yields about 38 pounds of dates a year.
 
Israeli date trees are now yielding 400 pounds/year and are short enough to be harvested from the ground or a short ladder.
 
Israel, the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can lay claim to the following :
 
The cell phone was 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 .
 
Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.
 
The Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely made in Israel.
 
Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.
 
Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.
 
The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.
 
Israel has the fourth largest air force in the world (after the U.S, Russia and China). In addition to a large variety of other aircraft, Israel's air force has an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16's. This is the largest fleet of F-16 aircraft outside of the U. S.
 
Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.
 
Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.
 
According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry's most impenetrable flight security. US officials now look (finally) to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.
 
Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.
 
Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin - 109 per 10,000 people --as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.
 
In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the U.S. (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).
 
With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world -- apart from the Silicon Valley, U.S.
 
Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the U.S.
 
Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.
 
Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East.
 
The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK.
 
On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech startups.
 
Twenty-four per cent of Israel's workforce holds university degrees, ranking third in the industrialized world -- after the United States and the Netherlands -- and 12 per cent hold advanced degrees.
 
Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.
 
In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews (Operation Solomon) at Risk in Ethiopia, to safety in Israel.
 
When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times.
 
When the U. S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day -- and saved three victims from the rubble.
 
Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship -- and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 - in the world.
 
Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity. (Hundreds of thousands from the former Soviet Union)
 
Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."
 
Israel has the world's second highest per capita of new books.
 
Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert.
 
Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.
 
Medicine... Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.
 
An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in U. S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes.
 
Israel's Given Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, cancer and digestive disorders .
 
Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the camera helps doctors diagnose heart¹s mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.
 
Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U. S., over 70 in Japan, and less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions. Israel places first in this category as well.
 
A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the Clear Light device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct -- all without damaging surrounding skin or tissue.
 
An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant, in southern California's Mojave desert.
 
All the above while engaged in regular wars with an implacable enemy that seeks its destruction, and an economy continuously under strain by having to spend more per capita on its own protection than any other county on earth.
 
. .. . . AND THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR IN ENGLAND SAYS :
 
"ISRAEL IS NOTHING BUT A SHITTY LITTLE COUNTRY"
 
His name: Daniel Bernard, who according to Jamie Glazov in the Jan. 10, 2002 issue of FrontPageMagazine.com, who “uttered an ugly anti-Semitic remark at a party hosted by newspaper publisher Conrad Black. He called Israel a ‘shitty little country’ and then asked, ‘Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?’
 
“Those people.”
 
Glazov: “The key here is that Bernard’s remark is not a reflection of one individual’s racist mindset; it is a manifestation of an entire nation’s social pathology.
 
“Anti-Semitism is a disease from which France has long suffered. The hatred of Jews experienced a drastic rise in that country in the 19th century, particularly during the reign of Napoleon III in the 1850-1870 period, which was known as the "Second French Empire."
 
“France was the first nation to emancipate the Jews. During the Second French Empire, a period in which France underwent rapid modernization, Jews enjoyed civil rights and liberty. They were permitted to enter the state structure and the highest levels of administration and politics. French Jews became one of the most assimilated and the best-integrated communities anywhere in the world.
 
“Modernization became synonymous, in the eyes of the French, with Jewry, since many Jews headed the finance capitalism that modernized France. French Jews were associated with leading banking institutions and they were prominent exponents of economic growth and modernity.
 
“French anti-Semitism, therefore, became an expression of the hatred of modernity. This hatred was primarily expressed by two camps. The first camp was the socialist Left, which confused its hatred of capitalism with hatred of Jews. The second camp was the Catholic Right, which hated Jews because they weren’t Christians. Catholic anti-Semitism was also the voice of an angry religious community that resented its loss of direction of, and status in, French society. Thus, many rightwing Catholic theorists insinuated that Jews could only be French -- and human -- if they converted to Catholicism. “Paradoxically, therefore, the freedom that enabled Jews to achieve success and "equality" in France led to their demonization. Yes, they enjoyed ‘official’ acceptance and they excelled in upward social and economic mobility. It was for this very reason, however, that anti-Semitism skyrocketed in France.
 
“The French Revolution of 1789 had fertilized the soil in which this phenomenon grew. The French Revolutionaries granted Jews full emancipation. Jews were given the rights that were accorded to other Frenchmen, including religious freedom. Yet this apparent kindness to Jews was a camouflage of darker motives. Historian Arthur Hertzberg has demonstrated that the granting of full equality to Jews was rooted in the hope that through emancipation the Jews would disappear as a separate and distinct group.
 
“This explains why Napoleon Bonaparte allowed Jews religious freedom but simultaneously initiated a determined effort, like many French liberals, to culturally assimilate Jews into French life.
 
“Thus, Jews achieved ‘official’ equality in French society, and they were able, by the mid-1840s, to utilize French liberty to gain prominence and entry into French economic and political life. Yet they were vilified for doing so. Those Jews who did not assimilate, meanwhile, and who remained orthodox and poor, were also subjected to prejudice.
 
“The French Jew, therefore, was always in a no-win situation: he was hated if he successfully assimilated, and he was hated if he did not.
 
“It is clear that there was a basic contradiction in French liberty: while it gave equality and rights to Jews, it did so while fuelling anti-Semitism.
 
The rights of the Jew were protected as long as the Jew rejected his Jewry.
 
“It becomes understandable, therefore, why, in Vichy France during World War II, the French did much more than just cooperate with the Nazis. French security forces took it upon themselves to round up and hand over 61,000 Jews to the Nazis -- without even a request from the Nazis to do so. Those Jews ended up in Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka.
 
“In the 1970s, France could not suppress its anti-Semitic appetite. With few Nazis around, the French reached out to Arabs for a rendezvous with anti-Semitism. France distinguished itself by promising the PLO that it would not arrest its terrorists who used French territory as a base for attacks on Israel. All France required was that the PLO did not inflict its violence on French soil.
 
“Charming.
 
“In this historical context, we begin to understand that Daniel Bernard’s recent ugly outburst is not the reflection of a singular distorted mind; it is part of a larger pathological national illness. It is France’s illness -– and pathetic shame.”