Danny Danon, Israel – The Will To Prevail, 2012.
“Israel is the one hundredth smallest country in the world, home to less than 1/1000th of the world’s population with just 7.1 million people. Its $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined. Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. Israel has the highest number of university degrees per capita among working people, ranking third in the industrialized world after the United States and Holland. It also has the highest number of museums, orchestras, and zoos per capita. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin – 109 per 10,000 people—and also has one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.
As chronicled in Saul Singer and Dan Senor’s New York Times bestseller, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, Israel is the birthplace of numerous technological advancements, including the cell phone, which was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola. 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. The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis. 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.
In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has more startup companies than any other country in the world, except the United States. With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups, Israel has the highest concentration of high-tech companies in the world—apart from Silicon Valley. Israel is ranked number two in the world for venture capital funds, right behind the United States. Outside the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ-listed companies.
Why are these achievements—which only scratch the surface of the marvelous ingenuity of Israelis—so important to review? Because all of this creative innovative energy is expended to the world’s benefit against a backdrop of unrelenting wars with a relentless enemy that seeks Israel’s destruction. Our economy is continuously under strain because of our defense expenditures. Still, the Israeli people do not let these difficulties undermine their entrepreneurial and intellectual pursuits and talents. What springs from our minds and hands is more valuable, ultimately, than all the oil in the world. What more could come from my tiny country if we didn’t have to continuously defend ourselves from terrorists and enemies? Our motives are to live in peace—our developments in science, the arts, and technology prove it. I hope I’ve made the case that we must defend ourselves without question, and by acting in our best interests we are, in fact, acting in the interests of the civilized, modern, liberal world. We have the will and with that will we will prevail.
The LORD will give strength unto His people; the LORD will bless his people with peace —Psalms 29:11″