If you care about legitimacy in reporting? This is really worth reading.
Because of all the sensationalistic news coming from the Middle East, really important, pertinent and honest issues are virtually NEVER discussed.
As a matter of FACT, the only thing we seem to hear from the news media vis a vis Israel, is about “Illegal Settlements” and “Illegal Occupation”.
To an outsider who might never have heard of Israel and the Middle East; who for the first time is reading or watching the news as it is mostly told by the media about events and the players responsible for the events in the Middle East, he/she would think the Israelis are brutes.
The media also goes out of its way to nearly ALWAYS show equivalence between the Middle Eastern Arabs and the Israelis.
Therefore; anyone who doesn’t take the time to investigate, ask questions or refer to more than just one or two media for their information, will most likely come away with the belief that Israelis and Arabs are just two sides of the same sick coin.
I received the following list of Israeli accomplishments via e-mail put out by the “Center for Justice and Accountability” (CJA). It really is worth the read.
Israel, the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world’s population, can make claim to the following:
1) Israel is a nation based exclusively on the Secular Rule of Law, in a region where the rule of law is less than a suggestion, and more to the point exercised at the business end of a gun barrel held by the Thugocracy.
This is my point. The next 43 points are from the CJA.
2) Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.
3) 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.
4) In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of start-up companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of start-up companies than any other country in the world, except the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).
5) Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US.
6) Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.
7) 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.
8) With an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16s, Israel has the largest fleet of the aircraft outside of the US.
9) Israel’s $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.
10) On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech start-ups.
11) Israel has the largest raptor migration in the world, with hundreds of thousands of African birds of prey crossing as they fan out into Asia.
12) Twenty-four percent of Israel’s workforce holds university degrees – ranking third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland – and 12 percent hold advanced degrees.
13) Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.
14) In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia to safety in Israel.
15) When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world’s second elected female leader in modern times.
16) 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.
17) Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship – and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 – in the world.
18) Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.
19) Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as “conflict free.”
20) According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry’s most impenetrable flight security. U.S. officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.
21) Israel’s Maccabe basketball team won the European championships in 2001.
22) Israeli tennis player Anna Smashnova is the 15th ranked female player in the world.
23) Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers was produced by Haim Saban, an Israeli whose family fled persecution in Egypt.
24) In 1991, during the Gulf War, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra played a concert wearing gas masks as scud missiles fired by Saddam Hussein fell on Tel Aviv.
25) Israel has the world’s second highest per capita of new books.
26) Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees.
27) Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.
28) Israel has two official languages: Hebrew and Arabic.
29) Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.
30) An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment.
31) Every year in U.S. hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes. Israel’s Givun Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.
32) 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 congestive heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the heart’s mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.
33) With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and start-ups, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world (apart from Silicon Valley).
34) In response to serious water shortages, Israeli engineers and agriculturalists developed a revolutionary drip irrigation system to minimize the amount of water used to grow crops.
35) Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.
36) 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.
37) The cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.
38) Most of the Windows NT operating system was developed by Microsoft-Israel.
39) The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.
40) Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.
41) Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.
42) The technology for AOL Instant Messenger was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.
43) A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the ClearLight device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct – all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue.
44) 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.
Not included in this CJA list are the following:
44) Israel is one of the few nations to have had an Astronaut blasted into space.
45) Israel has its own space exploration program and launches its own space-bound rockets and satellites.
46) Israel has one of the safest banking systems in the world.
47) Israel pays amongst the world’s highest interest returns for National Bonds and has NEVER defaulted.
48) Israel is the ONLY viable ally to the WEST in the ENTIRE Middle East.
49) Israeli Intelligence (Mossad) is the West’s ONLY reliable information resource.
50) Israel, and related individuals connected to Israel have more Nobel prizes per capita than any other nation on this planet.
51) Israel has reclaimed MORE unusable land, and turned it into productive farms than all of the rest of the Middle East COMBINED.
52) Israel has planted more than 220 MILLION trees on over 270,000 acres of useless land since 1901, and has converted about 200,000 acres of desolate land into productive real-estate.
After reading all of this, you also have to bear in mind that Israel is a country of just 6.7 million people, of which 5.4 million are Jewish, more than 1 million are Israeli Arabs, with the balance divided equally between Christians and Druze.
It is ABSOLUTELY essential to understand that EVERY Israeli, regardless of religion, culture, sex, national origin and language enjoy the same rights and freedoms accorded to Jewish Israelis.
And for the size of Israel; the time it takes to drive from the two furthest points in Israel is about the same time it takes to drive from Montreal to Toronto, and less time than it takes from San Francisco to LA.
At it’s narrowest point, Israel is no more than 10 miles across.
Now, ask yourself: With all their oil wealth and huge populations, what has the Middle Eastern Arabs done for the world or for their own people?
And you tell me where you can find any equivalence between Israel and The Arab Middle East.
One Comment
Howard, running, and even winning, as an independent will still leave you powerless and frustrated. Join the PC party and move it to the right (get it renamed, too!) Then get nominated to run next time. Or, if the PC’s lose again, Tim will be forced to resign and you could run for the leadership… you could just take that! Cheers, Roger.
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