“The Economist”: Israel in top 5 emerging markets

Israel has risen 12 places to become the world 36th largest economy.
by Zeev Klein

In its latest emerging markets survey, “The Economist” notes that Israel has been one of the five fastest growing emerging markets in the past 20 years. Israel has risen 12 spaces from the world’s 48th biggest economy in 1980-84 to 36th biggest economy in 2001-05. “The Economist” ranked economies by size on the basis of their five-year average GDP in current dollars, and compared the rankings of 1980-84 with 2001-05.

“The Economist’s” report is a shot in the arm for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Minister of Finance Abraham Hirchson, and Governor of the Bank of Israel Prof. Stanley Fischer, given that, since 1980, the country has undergone two intifadas, the effects of two wars in Iraq and two wars in Lebanon - the only one of the 28 emerging economies to have such an experience.

The four fastest climbing countries are in Asia: Singapore rose 20 places from the world’s 59th largest economy in 1980-84 to 39th in 2001-05; Taiwan rose 14 places from 32nd place to 18; South Korea rose 12 places from 23rd place to 11th; and Hong Kong also rose 12 places from 42nd place to 30th. Israel climb matched those of South Korea and Hong Kong.

“The Economist” notes that China has risen only four notches to become the world’s sixth largest economy - but even in the early 1980s it was already the world's tenth-biggest economy in current dollars. India, perhaps surprisingly, has barely budged as the world’s 12th largest economy. Several oil producers have fallen down the rankings, despite the increase in oil prices towards the end of the period covered: Venezuela has fallen 12 place from 25th place in 1980-84 to 37th place in 2001-05; Iran has fallen 16 place from 17th place to 33rd; Nigeria has fallen 16 places from 33rd place to 49th, and Saudi Arabia has fallen to 15th place from 22nd.

Why is the guy who is gunning for a new Holocaust belittling the last one?

By Caroline B. Glick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

There is something terribly confusing about Iran's penchant for denying the Holocaust. Given Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's stated desire to see Israel wiped off the map, it would seem more reasonable for Iran to be celebrating the Holocaust than denying it.

But Ahmadinejad is slicker than that. He embraces not the Holocaust but the nation that pulled it off. In his August missive to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he referred to the German nation as "a great contributor to progress in science, philosophy, literature, the arts and politics who have had a "positive influence in international relations and the promotion of peace." These lines of course are open to interpretation. He could be referring to Goethe and Schiller and he could be referring to Heidegger and Goebbels.
So why is the guy who is gunning for a new Holocaust belittling the last one? First of all, by doing so he empowers those Germans and friends of Germany who carried it out. By denying the Holocaust Ahmadinejad turns the Nazis into victims and so provides a space for them to express themselves after a sixty year silence. Indeed, in Germany neo-Nazism is a burgeoning political and social force that proudly parades its links to Iran.

The German fascist party NPD's followers demonstrated in support of Iran at the World Cup in Germany last spring. This week, Der Spiegel reported that attacks against Jewish children have increased markedly in recent years. Jewish children and their non-Jewish friends have been humiliated in anti-Semitic rituals unheard of since the Nazi era. "Jew" has become one of the most prevalent derogatory terms in use in Germany today.

Iran's adoption of Holocaust denial as an official, defiant policy gives legitimacy to this striking phenomenon. This is especially the case since Iran is blaming the Jews for silencing these poor fascists. In his same letter to Merkel Ahmadinejad wrote, "The perpetual claimants against the great people of Germany are the bullying Zionists that funded the Al Quds Occupying Regime with the force of bayonets in the Middle East."Ahmadinejad of course does not limit his efforts to the Nazis. He is also setting the cognitive conditions for the annihilation of Israel for the international Left by presenting Israel's existence as a direct result of the Holocaust. As Iran's Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said this week, "If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt."

In short, Iran views Holocaust denial as a strategic propaganda tool. By downgrading the Holocaust, Iran mobilizes supporters and paralyzes potential opponents. Its coupling of the last Holocaust with the one it signals daily it intends to carry out, wins it support among the Nazis and the Sunnis alike. Its presentation of the Holocaust as a myth used to exploit Muslims wins its support in the international Left which increasingly views Israel as an illegitimate state. So by denying the Holocaust Iran raises its leadership profile both regionally and globally. Indeed, even if the Left doesn't buy into Holocaust denial, it can still agree with Iran's conclusion that Israel has no right to exist. As Mottaki explained, "If during this [Holocaust denial conference] it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?"

So from Mottaki's perspective, Israel is illegitimate whether the Holocaust happened or not. In making this point, Mottaki closed the gap between Iran and a loud chorus of voices in both Europe and the US who claim that Israel was established only because of European guilt over the Holocaust and consequently the Jewish state has no inherent legitimacy. This is a view that even Jewish leftists like Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen and New York University Professor Tony Judt have expressed.
Inevitably, those who hold this view come to believe that Israel has no right to defend itself. After all, if Israel is but an illegal European colony on stolen Arab lands, then any act of self-defense that Israel takes is by definition an act of aggression. So from this perspective, all Israel can do is give away land an accept that it must pay for all the pathologies of the Arab world.

The view that every problem in the region is somehow or another bound up in Israel's stubborn refusal to disappear is clearly reflected also in the policy prescriptions of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, in former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Semitic attacks against Israel and in the position paper authored by professors Steve Walt and John Mearshimer about the so-called "Israel Lobby," (which is due to be published as a full-length book ahead of the 2008 presidential elections).
And so, by framing its Holocaust denial around an interpretation of the Arab world's war against Israel propounded by radical leftists and foreign policy "realists" of the soft-Right, the Iranians enable them to find a comfort level with what Iran is doing today. This comfort was displayed by the new US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his Senate confirmation hearing where he justified Iran's nuclear weapons program by claiming that it was a deterrent measure in response to the fact that Pakistan, Russia, the US, and Israel all have nuclear weapons. Gates of course served on the Baker-Hamilton commission and no doubt supports its recommendation that Israel be forced to give the Golan Heights to Syria and Judea and Samaria to Hamas.

Not only does Iran's Holocaust denial attract potential supporters, it also confuses and so neutralizes potential opponents who neither like nor dislike Jews and are too confused to understand the threat Iran poses to the US.
Although it has not for a moment desisted from its calls of "Death to America," its vision of a world without America or its threats to attack Europe, Iran has made Israel the focus of its propaganda. In so doing it has provided cover for "realists" like Mearshimer, Walt and James Baker who claim that the war is really just between Israel and the Muslims and that the only reason that the US finds itself caught in the middle is because of its support for Israel. That support, in turn, is the result of Jewish subversion of Washington through the so-called all powerful "Israel lobby," which Carter claims as he sells his latest screed no politician will risk bucking up against.

This view, now emerging into the mainstream political debate in the US has already won the debate in most of Europe. There the view is that European Muslims are only attacking their non-Muslim countrymen because states like the US and Micronesia have yet to abandon Israel.
For Merkel, the centerpiece of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's trip to Germany Tuesday was her furious denunciation of the Iranian conference. "I would like to make it clear that we reject with all our strength the conference taking place in Iran….Germany will never accept this and will act against [Holocaust denial] with all the means that we have." The Germans even organized a conference of their own in Berlin this week where everyone indignantly expressed their indignation at Iran. Merkel's breathless furor is an example of the final problem that Ahmadinejad has created for his opponents by adopting Holocaust denial as a central plank of Iran's foreign policy. Bluntly stated, he gives people a way to be perceived as being against Iran without actually doing anything to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

Merkel and her fellow Germans have spent an inordinate amount of time over the past three years condemning the Nazi Holocaust. This week they even organized a special Holocaust condemning conference in response to the Iranian Holocaust denying conference.
Yet over the same time period, they have conducted negotiations with Teheran as part of the EU-3 that have enabled Iran to continue its nuclear progress; obstructed US efforts to levy sanctions on Iran; and maintained active trade relations with Iran. Merkel's government has continued the practice of providing loan guarantees to German firms doing business with Iran. In 2005, German-Iranian trade stood at about $5 billion. Now, after three years of disastrous negotiations with the mullahs, Germany has finally come around to supporting the European draft sanctions resolution against Iran being debated in the UN Security Council. The problem is that the proposed sanctions are so weak that they will have no impact on Iran's ability to move on with its nuclear bomb program.

The obvious fact that the sanctions will have no impact on Iran has not made a dent in Merkel's refusal to support military action against Iran under any circumstances - a refusal she reiterated while standing next to Israel's Prime Minister on Tuesday.
Olmert was apparently too busy admitting that Israel has nuclear weapons only to take back his admission hours later, absurdly praising Russian President Vladimir for his opposition to the "nuclearlization of Iran" which Putin is actively promoting, and promising to give Judea and Samaria to Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas to take issue with Merkel's statement. And that is a pity, because by taking issue with it, he would have gone far towards destroying the effectiveness of Iran's Holocaust denial strategy. Were Israel to base its diplomatic, military, informational, and economic policies on a single-minded commitment to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities, it would succeed. Unfortunately, under the Olmert government Israel is doing nothing of the kind on any level.

On the public diplomacy level, were Israel to take concerted action against Iran's Holocaust denial program, it could destroy the program and so enact a positive change in the public discourse on Iran. Merkel's stated refusal to support military action against Iran's nuclear facilities was an ideal opportunity to launch such action. If Olmert had reacted in disgust to Merkel's statement and announced that it was unacceptable, he would have stood the Iranians' propaganda on its head.
Imagine what the impact would have been if Olmert had rejoined, "Excuse me, but it is quite possible that at the end of the day a military strike against Iran will be the only way to prevent Iran from acquiring atomic bombs and so committing another Holocaust. Given this, your blanket opposition to the notion of military strikes constitutes Germany's effective acceptance of another Holocaust. Shame on you Angie. Shame on Germany."
Such a statement would have changed the entire dynamic of the international discourse on Iran.

If we are willing to do what is necessary, Israel can prevent the next Holocaust. It is unforgivable that Olmert and his ministers are not doing what needs to be done.

Jimmy Carter: “I oppose a Palestinian State”

Jimmy Carter: “I oppose a Palestinian State”
By Jeff Ballabon

This was Carter, THEN:

"… I am opposed to an independent Palestinian state, because in my
own judgement and in the judgement of many leaders in the Middle
East, including Arab leaders, this would be a destabilizing factor in
the Middle East and would certainly not serve the United States
interests. (Jimmy Carter at the United Jewish Appeal National Young
Leadership Conference, February 25, 1980)."

"…we oppose the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The
United States, as all of you know, has a warm and unique relationship
of friendship with Israel that is morally right. It is compatible
with our deepest religious convictions, and it is right in terms of
America’s own strategic interests. We are committed to Israel’s
security, prosperity, and future as a land that has so much to offer
to the world. A strong Israel and a strong Egypt serve our own
security interests.We are committed to Israel’s right to live in
peace with all its neighbors, within secure and recognized borders,
free from terrorism. We are committed to a Jerusalem that will
forever remain undivided with free access to all faiths to the holy
places. Nothing will deflect us from these fundamental principles and
committments. (Source: First anniversary of the Egyptian-Israeli
Peace Treaty / White House joint conference, March 23, 1980)."

What has changed in the last 25 years? Not Israel’s 1948
independence. Not the 1967 war. Not the cynical, ignominous treatment
of Arab refugees by the Arab world.

So why, 25 years later, is Israel’s right to exist a matter of
debate, while Palestine’s right to exist is presumed by everyone from
the United Nations to Jimmy Carter to George Bush to Ehud Olmert?

Why, when the Palestinian leaderships - PA and Hamas - the first
imposed and the second popularly elected, demonstrate that their
chief characteristics are, respectively, corrupt thuggery and bloody
holy war, why then is endless-concession-making, negotiating,
retreating, disengaging, humanitarian-aid-giving, appeasing Israel
viewed as the “destabilizing factor?”

Did a massive land-grab by Israel precede Carter’s new book? On the
contrary: a massive land-surrender preceded the book. And, in fact,
when it retreats, morally, intellectually, politically, physically,
Israel does become the destabilizing factor - or at least surrenders
its role as the stabilizer of the world’s most volatile region.

What has changed is Israel’s own resolve. Why should anyone else
fight to support a nation whose political elite takes every
opportunity and advantage we give it and squanders it? Why should
anyone else fight for a nation which sacrifices its soldiers rather
than vanquishes its enemy? Why should anyone else fight for a nation
which has ceased believing in itself? Which cravenly begs forgiveness
on the rare occasions it actually defends its citizens? Why should
anyone fight for a Jewish homeland which seems bent on denying its
Jewishness? Why should anyone care about a state which retreats from
its victories? Which sheds its democratic veneer to brutalize and
displace its most patriotic and committed citizens, its idealists,
its pioneers? Why should anyone care for an Israel that is willing,
even eager, in its quest for a “secular revolution” to declare that
the Jewish heritage is an albatross, that Judea and Samaria are a
burden, and that Jerusalem is negotiable? That the State of Israel
is, in fact, seeking to disengage from the Holy Land?

The turning point, perhaps the catalyst, was Oslo; the Bill Clinton/
Ehud Barak plan to (in Clinton negotiator Dennis Ross’ terminology)
dispense with the “mythologies” in order to negotiate. How very
modern and enlightened and liberal and civilized. And how very
destructive and foolish and deadly. The ideas, the principles, the
vision, the morals, the truths which they disdain as mythologies were
and are the very heart of Israel’s national aspiration. It was the
vision that kept Jews alive through millenia of diaspora and
dispersion, crusade, expulsion, forced conversion, blood libel and
pogrom, and, finally, Holocaust And the heart may be romanticized as
the seat of emotion, but only the hopelessly deluded excises it and
thinks the body will survive. Only the deluded excises the heart. Or
the suicidal.

What has changed, in consequence, is the resolve of Israel’s enemies
as well. And, because they are not burdened by the selfish inanity of
modern liberalism, they have not lost their willingness to suffer and
to sacrifice. The suicides they are committing are anything but
deluded; their terror is a winning strategy. Rather than eliciting
disgust and fury, rather than being condemned as unutterably
barbaric, the use of civilians as targets, children as bombs and
grandmothers as bunkers has even brought them the sympathies of the
deluded West. Not only in the corridors of the UN or the salons of
Europe - but even in those enlightened liberal precincts in Israel
where the stubborn, unruly Jewish “mythologies” have long since been
relegated, surrendered, sublimated to an oh-so-superior modern
Israeli multicultural consciousness.

[UPDATE: New ending added on December 4]

In the end, what is most frustrating is also that which is the
greatest cause for hope. Israel, but for its recent governments’
moral blindness and appetite for appeasement, really is in a position
of strength. Its military still is excellent, its weapons still
superior, its citizens still doughty.

It lacks just one element to recapture the momentum in its struggle
against its enemies and that is resolve. And, as we witnessed this
summer, even that resolve is just a moment away, waiting for the
right leadership with a bold message.

This summer, Olmert hampered and ultimately reined in the IDF. But
before he did so, when Israel first seemed poised to respond with
force, Israeli morale skyrocketed.

Was it a successful “peace” negotiation? Diplomatic recognition by a
heretofor implacable enemy? A truce with Hamas? Quite the contrary:
it was an uninstigated assault by Hizballah. Israeli soldiers were
kidnapped. Rockets came raining down on major population centers. 1
million Israelis had to live in bomb shelters. A war was being waged
in the North and the South and terror activity was up in the West.

But morale was higher than at any time since before Oslo. The
knowledge that it was embarking on a mission, no matter how perilous,
to defend the homeland, unified and electrified the nation.
“Finally!” declared pundits on the Israeli Right and Left. Record
numbers of citizen-reservists showed up to fight, far more than the
IDF had even called. It was a return to moral clarity.

But it was short-lived. Within days, hope was turned to despair as
Israel’s apologetic, retreat-oriented, pretentiously post-
ideological, post-moral government, defeated the Israeli people and
the IDF. And today, Israeli morale is at an all time low.

Even before Iran’s nuclear threat, the question more and more of
Israel’s friends have been asking is “Will Israel still exist in ten
years?”

If Israel’s leaders continue to travel the path of Oslo, of phony
peace processes, of concession and retreat and halfhearted military
objectives, surely not. For Israel will never appease its enemies. It
will vanquish them or it will die.

“If you will it,” said Herzl, “it is no dream.”

“If you will it…” today, as then, it remains the only question.