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I'm a Muslim Arab American and I am against Israel's more aggressive policies and actions. But I definitely respect Israel as a state, and especially the Israe

• DrHurtyio 10y ago
  If you have a country like the US giving you lots of money every year, then you can do fine. No problem is there are homeless and starving americans. Lets keep on sending that load of money to Israel. No problem is they use the occupied Golan heights to send arms over to Al queda in Syria. Top of the line marvel country. Bravo
  • TheGuyWhoCodes 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure even if you canceled all the US foreign aid it will change nothing for homeless Americans. Giving foreign aid is the US investing they get a lot of it back too, for example most of the aid money to Israel is strictly for buying military equipment from US companies not to mention that it is part of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. If you think Israel sends military equipment to Al qaeda your nuts.
    • dogma1138 10y ago
      >If you think Israel sends military equipment to Al qaeda your nuts. I'm pretty sure that Israel does sends military equipment to AQ from time to time, tho the equipment undergoes rapid unscheduled disassembly upon delivery.
      • simonh 10y ago
        I'm pretty sure it very rapidly and violently disassembles itself precisely according to schedule.
    • nikcub 10y ago
      > If you think Israel sends military equipment to Al qaeda your nuts. It's not a secret that Israel are supporting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in Syria. Not certain about military equipment, but they do meet with them regularly[0] and treat their soldiers in Israeli hospitals[1]. [0] http://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-accepts-billions-from-the-us-but-maintains-ties-with-al-nusra/219124/ http://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-accepts-billions-from-th... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vweHtxqnh-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vweHtxqnh-Y
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • rat87 10y ago
        mintpress is trash news Israel is not supporting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham it treats people on the border including fighters in exchange for leaving the syrian druze alone.
  • dogma1138 10y ago
    US aid to Israel is about 1% of Israel's GDP. Arguably Israel might be better off without the aid, the aid killed a large part of Israel's defense industry and it restricts the technology they can transfer to secondary markets such as China and India. One should also note that most of that money isn't actually given as cash, only a few 100's of million of the 3 bln are direct cash allocations intended to fund defense projects within Israel, the rest has to be spent on buying toys from US defense contractors. So for the most part US aid to Israel is a US job program.
    • zpatel 10y ago
      so does that 1% includes tens of billions in loans , subsidies, military equipment or tech transfers ?
      • dogma1138 10y ago
        Yes on average the aid is valued at around 3bln per year. Israel hasn't used the Loan guarantees since 1988.
    • bhouston 10y ago
      Israel GDP is $290.6B/yr, US Aid is 3.8B/yr. That is 1.3%. Israel government spending is $64B/yr. US Aid of $3.8B/yr is 6%. For comparison, if the US got relative aid like that it would be: $170B/yr. US military expenditures is only 598.5, so this would cover about 1/3rd of it.
    • bjourne 10y ago
      Israel is the 7th largest arms dealer in the world. The US aid has not killed anything of it. On the contrary, it has helped it grow since (until this year) 25% of the aid given was given in cash and could be spent on domestic weapons. Today he Israeli and US weapons industries have many competing products thanks to the aid. It is true that Israel is supposed to not export sensitive technology to China, but that is more a factor of being a US ally than strings attached to the aid. Canada also shares a lot of stuff with the US, but does not align themselves with China despite not getting any military aid. And weapons are fungible. The $3.8 billion in weapons the US provides the state with means that it saves exactly $3.8 billion to spend elsewhere. Giving away free weapons is a very poor job program in comparison to funding jobs that would help the US economy (such as building and repairing infrastructure) rather than hurt it.
  • YZF 10y ago
    FWIW the US only started giving Israel money in the 70's but Israel was doing fine before and innovation in Israel goes further back. As an anecdote to the importance of science and technology the first president of Israel (1948) Chaim Weizmann had a Ph.D in bio-chemistry. As another anecdote, the Technion, the sort of Israeli parallel of MIT was established in 1912, 36 years before Israel became independent. The Israel-Arab conflict became a proxy for the US-Soviet conflict and while the Russians were aiding the Arab countries surrounding Israel the US was aiding Israel. As mentioned a lot of the US aid to Israel is a form of subsidy to the US defense industry and comes with many strings tied. A good example of the trade-offs there is that Israel was effectively forced to cancel it's Lavi fighter aircraft program and buy "expensive" F16s instead. Another good example is President's Obama decision to stop providing Israel with missiles for its Apache helicopters at some point during one of the last conflicts. Saudi Arabia's hypothetical alignment with Israel is a fairly recent phenomena as some sort of my enemy's enemy is my friend. But for the longest time Saudi's money and political influence was invested in working against Israel (and those sums dwarf US aid to Israel).
    • bjourne 10y ago
      > A good example of the trade-offs there is that Israel was effectively forced to cancel it's Lavi fighter aircraft program and buy "expensive" F16s instead. See http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-lavi-a-dream-aborted-in-mid-flight-1.462825 http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-lavi-a-dream-aborted-in-m... "There is a myth that it was American pressure that led to the cancellation of the Lavi program. Nothing is further from the truth. It was a self-inflicted wound, a shot in the foot." The reason the program was cancelled was because it was very expensive and there weren't enough potential international buyers of the plane. The unit costs of F16:s were unsurprisingly much lower because they have been mass-produced for decades.
      • YZF 10y ago
        There are a lot of stories around this and I'm not quite sure who to believe. What is clear is that those F16s could be purchased by US aid while the Lavi could not and that the ability of Israel to export the Lavi and compete with the US would be greatly hampered by direct and indirect US influence. I.e. a project that was potential competition to the US defense industry got cancelled and replaced by US funding to purchase the competing US product. That must have been a factor in the decision making, right? I think at any rate the point I was trying to make stands regardless of whose version of the story you want to believe here.
  • JabavuAdams 10y ago
    Trying to stay on topic ... the US also gives lots of aid to Egypt, but Egypt doesn't seem to have such good tech. Why?
    • nradov 10y ago
      US middle east policy has long called for maintaining a qualitative edge for Israel so that their neighbors (including Egypt) won't be tempted to attack again. Plus Israel has 10x GDP per capita, and a more educated workforce better able to maintain complex tech.
  • anon2264 10y ago
    Don't Helen Thomas your career, dont you know mentioning that is a thought crime? Obama promised another 38 billion over ten years, and the real cost including all military and other aid has been estimated at 15 billion per year. Never mind their wall, occupied territory and treatment of Palestinians in their war for a racially pure nation state. The UN actually ruled Zionism a racist institution but now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European. Jews occupying, displacing and killing Palestinians and Arabs is fine.
  • anon2264 10y ago
    All of the below is factually true and can be verified but was censored from HN. Criticism of Israel != anti-semitism. >Don't Helen Thomas your career, dont you know mentioning that is a thought crime? Obama promised another 38 billion over ten years, and the real cost including all military and other aid has been estimated at 15 billion per year. Never mind their wall, occupied territory and treatment of Palestinians in their war for a racially pure nation state. The UN actually ruled Zionism a racist institution but now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European. Jews occupying, displacing and killing Palestinians and Arabs is fine.
    • rat87 10y ago
      > The UN actually ruled Zionism a racist institution but now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European. Yeah that was some deep bullshit by the UN. They later acknowledged this and took it back
      • anon2264 10y ago
        So is race supremacy racist or not? You dont think it is?
    • Sacho 10y ago
      This seems to be lacking context. I would suspect that's why it got flagged in the first place.
      • anon2264 10y ago
        I just wrote it in response to the person downvoted for a valid criticism. Showing how valid criticism in this context is usually a thought crime.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • sctb 10y ago
      We ban accounts that were created just to violate the guidelines with, so please stop.
• maouida 10y ago
  Muslim and respect Israel. I don't think that can go together! You are impressed by their technology success, I understand it, I do either. But respect!
  • Cyph0n 10y ago
    I respect what they have been able to achieve given their situation (geographic location, limited resources, small population). As I said in the beginning, I am completely against the illegal settlements, the blockade of Gaza, and other similar issues. I regard my fellow Palestinians as brothers and sisters. That doesn't mean that I cannot respect what Israel has been able to build.
    • maouida 10y ago
      I misunderstood. my apologies.
      • Cyph0n 10y ago
        It's fine bro, I can see how my words could be misinterpreted.
  • zpatel 10y ago
    I as a muslim too respect jews and israelis as a hardworking , intelligent community but that does not mean we need to agree with everything they do as righteous .
    • wallace_f 10y ago
      I feel the same way. Unfortunately every criticism of Israel is equated with anti-semitism which is ridiculous.
      • akoster 10y ago
        I don't think there is a government that has ever existed that has not made a mistake. As an American, I can proudly criticize specific actions of my government I may disagree with, but I still feel, despite its flaws, generally does relative good for a majority of its people and the world. I feel similar about the Israeli government. Yes, they too, like the American government, and <insert other government here>, have made decisions not so well-received in the past, and likely in the future. But overall, I feel the Israeli government, like the American government, does much more good for its people and in the world than otherwise. Despite how you feel about the Israeli government, I cannot think of another government that takes in wounded people, who may be willing to risk their lives to destroy your very government, and provides medical aid without question.
• kobayashi 10y ago
  Interestingly, Israelis were actually fundamental in the founding of Singapore's military. At the request of the Singaporean government, Israel sent many advisors. It was pretty much an organization copy of Israel's, IIRC. For those who haven't read Startup Nation, the authors don't argue that the bonds formed in the military are sufficient for Israel startup culture. Rather, the military's unique culture and relatively flat hierarchy in which subordinates can and do challenge superiors (at a frequency unique among militaries) are other important factors in creating the startup nation. But of course, there's yet more discussed, which do indeed fill up the book's pages.
• narag 10y ago
  I'm hoping that my home country Tunisia can replicate (at least somewhat) the Israeli success story. I don't believe I'm the only one in Europe that has a special sympathy for your country. But trying to replicate Israel spirit? I don't think so. It's like when people over here talk about making an "european SV", not very realistic. I neither see my country doing anything similar if you find consollation in that :-) There are two reasons. One that someone pointed in a downvoted comment nearby: funds from governments (Israel and USA). The other one is a ruthless killer instinct. Both are shared by SV. If you've been around here for long enough, you might remember a couple of references that show clearly both factors. For government backing there was an article about SV origins in WW2. The other one is a YC standard interview question about how founders "hacked the system" for their own profit. Yesterday I got in a somewhat esoteric argument about how righteous people get very strict about abstract ideas like environment protection. This is the default actitude for many smart people. So the questions that matter are: are your government willing to put a lot of money to grow a sharp industry, and is "selfishness" taboo in your society? Otherwise, we're doomed :)
  • Cyph0n 10y ago
    I definitely agree with you that attempting to blindly replicate another country's success is a recipe for failure. Success stories like Israel and SV, or even Taiwan in the semiconductor sector, were formed due to very specific circumstances and needs, and probably arose without anyone really intending them to. I guess what I was trying to say is that I'm hoping Tunisia learns what it can from Israel and other successes. I think we have the environment and the human capital to at the very least attract foreign companies to setup offices in Tunisia. Ideally, we would start our own local companies to compete on the global stage. And as you've kindly mentioned, this requires serious interest by the government, and from what I've seen, this is starting to become the case.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • anon2264 10y ago
    SV?
• aedron 10y ago
  I am decidedly unimpressed by what the Israeli IT sector has been able to achieve, despite the strong branding effort as a 'Startup Nation'. There can be no question that Israel is firehosed with money, both from states and private sources and everything in between. I personally know of at least a few of the biggest corporations in this medium-size European country that has a stated policy of buying practically any Israeli technology that is punted. Lots of other large multinationals pour money into Israel as a point of policy, see Coca-Cola, Google, Procter&Gamble and many others. They have very little to show for it in my opinion, in fact the only successful IT companies I know of out of Israel are ICQ (!) and Fiverr. They have a bunch of B2B businesses, but a lot of their revenue can be chalked up to official or unofficial support programs as mentioned, which is probably why they, and their products, are mostly completely unknown outside their small niches. I also heard accounts from from several IT workers in Israel that the work culture is quite inefficient if not downright lazy.
• pjc50 10y ago
  Another factor in Israeli success must have been immigration. It's the last of the settler "frontier" states, and it has an open door immigration policy for people of Jewish ancestry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah
  • akoster 10y ago
    I definitely believe this makes an impact. From a biased American perspective, if I was a non-Israeli Jew living in a country that was outside of the US, Canada or Western Europe, and I am young and seeking more opportunity, moving to Israel would look like a very attractive option. Israel is very happy to woo young, and educated minds to their country which brings in fresh perspectives, which I would assume is great for startups, especially he many that target global markets.