Friday Feature /Can Syria Pass 'Israel Test'?
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CAROLINE GLICK, JewishJournal.com (9/30/09): There has been much talk in
recent months about the prospect of Syria bolting the Iranian axis and
becoming magically transformed into an ally of the West.
Although Syria's President-for-life Bashar Assad's daily demonstrations of
fealty to his murderous friends has exposed this talk as nothing more than
fantasy, it continues to dominate the international discourse on Syria.
In the meantime, Syria's ongoing real transformation, from a more or less
functioning state into an impoverished wasteland, has been ignored.
Today, the country faces the greatest economic catastrophe in its history.
The crisis is causing massive malnutrition and displacement for hundreds
of thousands of Syrians. These Syrians - some 250,000 mainly Kurdish
farmers - have been forced off their farms over the past two years because
their lands were reclaimed by the desert.
Today shantytowns have sprung up around major cities such as Damascus.
They are filled with internally displaced refugees. Through a cataclysmic
combination of irrational agricultural policies embraced by the Ba'athist
Assad dynasty for the past 45 years that have eroded the soil, and massive
digging of some 420,000 unauthorized wells that have dried out the
groundwater aquifers (Reuters is reporting that half the wells were dug
illegally), Syria's regime has done everything in its power to dry up the
country. The effects of these demented policies have been exacerbated in
recent years by Turkey's diversion of Syria's main water source, the
Euphrates River, through the construction of dams upstream, and by two
years of unrelenting drought. Today, much of Syria's previously fertile
farmland has become wasteland. Former farmers are now destitute day
laborers with few prospects for economic recovery.
Imagine if in his country's moment of peril, instead of clinging to his
alliance with Iran, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and Hamas, Assad were to turn to
Israel to help him out of this crisis?
Israel is a world leader in water desalination and recycling. The largest
desalination plant in the world is located in Ashkelon. Israeli technology
and engineers could help Syria rebuild its water supply.
Israel could also help Syria use whatever water it still has, or is able
to produce through desalination and recycling more wisely through drip
irrigation - which was invented in Israel. Israel today supplies 50
percent of the international market for drip irrigation. In places like
Syria and southern Iraq that are now being dried out by the Turkish dams,
irrigation is primitive - often involving nothing more than water trucks
pumping water out of the Euphrates and driving it over to fields that are
often less than a kilometer away.
Then there are Syria's dwindling oil reserves. No doubt, Israeli engineers
and seismologists would be able to increase the efficiency and
productivity of existing wells and so increase their output. It is
certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that Israeli scientists and
engineers could even discover new, untapped oil reserves.
But, of course, Syria isn't interested in Israel's help. Syria wants to
have its enemy and eat it too. . . .
. . . . The Palestinians and the Syrians are not alone. From Egypt to
Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and Indonesia, the Arab and Muslim world has
preferred poverty and economic backwardness to the prosperity that would
come from engaging Israel. They prefer their staunch rejection of Israel
and hatred of Jews and the economic stagnation this involves to the
prosperity and political freedom and stability that would come from an
acceptance of Israel.
As American economic and technology guru George Gilder puts it in his new
book "The Israel Test," "The test of a culture is what it accomplishes in
advancing the human cause - what it creates rather than what it claims."
Gilder's book is a unique and necessary contribution to the current
international debate about the Middle East. Rather than concentrate solely
on Arab claims from Israel as most writers do, Gilder turns his attention
to what the nations of the region create. Specifically, he shows that only
Israel creates wealth through creativity and innovation and that today
Israel is contributing more to the human cause through its scientific,
technological and financial advances than any other country in the world
except the United States.
"The Israel Test" describes in riveting detail both the massive
contributions of mainly Diaspora Jews to the U.S. victories in World War
II and the Cold War and to the scientific revolutions of the 20th century
that set the foundations for the computer age, and the massive
contributions of Israeli Jews to the digital revolution that defines and
shapes our economic realities today.
But before Gilder begins to describe these great Jewish contributions to
the global economy and the general well being of people around the world,
he asserts that the future of the world will be determined by its
treatment of Israel. As he puts it, "The central issue in international
politics, dividing the world into two fractious armies, is the tiny state
of Israel."
In his view, "Israel defines a line of demarcation," between those who
pass and those who fail what he refers to as "the Israel Test."
Gilder poses the test to his readers by asking them a few questions: "What
is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or
in other accomplishment? 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?"
By his telling, the future of civilization will be determined by how the
nations of the world - and particularly, how the American people - answer
these questions.
Gilder's book is valuable on its own accord. I personally learned an
enormous amount about Israel's pioneering role in the information economy.
Beyond that, it provides a stunning rebuttal to the central arguments of
the other major book that has been written about Israel and the Arabs in
the US in recent years.
Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer's "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign
Policy" (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2007) has two central arguments.
First, they argue that Israel has little value as an ally to the United
States. Second, they assert that given Israel's worthlessness to the
United States, the only reasonable explanation of why Americans
overwhelmingly support Israel is that they have been manipulated by a
conspiracy of Jewish organizations and Jewish-owned and controlled media
and financial outlets. In their view, the nefarious Jewish-controlled
forces have bamboozled the American people into believing that Israel is
important to them and even a kindred nation to the United States.
Gilder blows both arguments out of the water without even directly
engaging them or noting Israel's singular contributions to U.S.
intelligence and military prowess. Instead, he demonstrates that Israel is
an indispensable motor for the U.S. economy, which in turn is the
principal driver of U.S. power globally. Much of Silicon Valley's economic
prowess is founded on technologies made in Israel. Everything from the
microchip to the cellphone has either been made in Israel or by Israelis
in Silicon Valley.
It is Gilder's own admiration for Israel's exceptional achievements that
puts paid Walt and Mearsheimer's second argument. There is something
distinctively American in his enthusiasm for Israel's innovative genius.
From America's earliest beginnings, the American character has been imbued
with an admiration for achievement. As a nation, Americans have always
passed Gilder's Israel Test.
Taken together with the other reasons for American support for Israel -
particularly religious affinity for the people of the Bible - Gilder's
book shows that the American and Israeli people are indeed natural friends
and allies bound together by their exceptionalism that motivates them to
strive for excellence and progress to the benefit of all mankind.
Americans recently commemorated the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11
attacks. Those attacks were the greatest confrontation to date between
American exceptionalism and Islamist nihilism. Gilder's book serves as a
reminder of what makes the United States and its exceptional ally Israel
worth defending at all costs. "The Israel Test" also teaches us that so
long as we keep faith with ourselves, we will not be alone in our fight
against barbarism and hatred, and inevitably, we will emerge the victors
in this bitter fight.
Read on:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/can_syria_pass_israel_test_20090930/
