The Rise of Israel as a Nation?

Why can a country born only 58 years quickly transform from an agricultural country to a modern country?

Why can a country with a population of less than 7 million realize the economic miracle of per capita GDP of $65,438 +0.8 million under the shadow of artillery fire and war?

Why can a country whose land area is less than one thirtieth of that of China complete the successful transformation from "building a country through agriculture" to "building a country through science and technology"?

Why can a small country with almost nothing but sand be far ahead in the ranking of countries in the World Economic Forum?

From1October 25th, 2006/kloc-0 10, we explored the secret of Israel's rise with a long list of questions.

The last interviewee was Amos Nadai, Deputy Director of the Asia-Pacific Department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. He said that the secret of Israel's rise lies in nothing. They have nothing but sand and harsh geopolitical environment.

From religious temples to technological temples.

Israel's amazing achievements in the field of high technology are the first shock that the Israelis gave us.

On the first day of our arrival in Israel, we watched a short film at the Investment Promotion Center of the Israeli Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Labor. From Bill Gates' praise of Israel's high-tech talents to the settlement of world-class enterprises such as IBM in Haifa High-tech Park, in just over ten minutes, the short film shows us the world's favor for Israel's high technology and the contribution of Israeli scientific and technological inventions to the world.

Ms. Rachel Roy, the director of the center, told us that the Israelis invented many subversive technologies: VoIP technology brought great challenges to telecom operators; ICQ This has changed the way people communicate; Pentium and Centrino chips to improve wireless computing power; The voice mail of Comverse enriches the network application. ...

Seeing that Motorola invented the world's first mobile phone in Israel's R&D center, veterans invented a firewall to maintain network security, and high-tech companies such as Microsoft and IBM rushed to camp in Israel. According to the data of the Bank of Israel, in the first seven months of 2006, foreign investment attracted by Israel reached $654.38+054 billion, a record high.

High-tech companies in Israel have become the main targets of foreign investors. Warren Buffett bought 80% shares of Israel's Iscar company for $4 billion, and ScanDisk took over the first company to invent mobile hard disk technology, MSystems. Fitch, the world authority, upgraded Israel's national rating from "A" to the highest "A+".

Back in the early days of the founding of Israel, Boaz Hirsch, director of the Foreign Trade Bureau of the Israeli Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Labor, said that at that time, they were an agricultural country. The most typical sign is that they have exported a lot of oranges to the world. Since the origin of citrus is in Jaffa, the brand name of citrus is Jaffa, the city name of Jaffa.

In less than half a century, Israel has made achievements in the field of high technology, especially in the field of information and communication, and has created a brand-new "science and technology temple" in addition to the ancient "religious temple" in Jerusalem. They began to sell Jaffa, a symbol of high technology, to the world.

Java is a new computer language, and Israelis pronounce it the same as Jaffa. Boaz Hirsch said: "When high-tech promoted Israel to the ranks of modern countries, our people proudly said that we have embarked on a new road from Jaffa to Java."

Why did Israel become the "second Silicon Valley"? Why has it become the most concentrated place for emerging technology companies outside Silicon Valley? Why can it be far ahead in the rankings of countries in the World Economic Forum? Why did you complete the transformation from Jaffa to Java so quickly?

The answer of the leaders of high-tech companies in Europe and America is that Israel has the smartest mind in the world. It is said that Buffett said when he bought Iscar that Iscar is a unique combination of brain, talent and imagination, and their acquisition is essentially a gamble on their brains.

Many Israeli officials interviewed believe that such an answer is only superficial, and the deeper reason is that Israel has nothing. They say that Israel has no resources, and only by investing in high-tech brains can it fight its way out in international competition.

Our secret is that we have nothing.

"The secret of our success is that we have nothing. We have few natural resources. If we want to survive on the earth, we must find a path that suits us. " 165438+1On October 30th, Amos Nadai, Deputy Director of the Asia-Pacific Department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, expressed his "personal views" on the secret of Israel's rise.

Obviously, this view is not just his "personal view". In the interview, from diplomats to officials of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Commerce to successful entrepreneurs, the respondents agreed in unison, and the answers were surprisingly consistent.

Amos Nadai said, "Do you think our country is too small? It takes several hours to fly from Shanghai to Beijing, and you will see Israel in the helicopter, which will soon be over. "

The land area of Israel is really too small. Israel's area within the border line and ceasefire line, including the area controlled by the Palestinian self-government is only 27,800 square kilometers. It takes more than an hour to drive from the Mediterranean coast in the west to the Dead Sea coast in the east, and even it takes only six hours to drive from the northernmost Mai Tu to the southernmost Eilat.

Only the land area is small, but the quality of land and resources is not high. They don't have the oil that their Arab neighbors are proud of, but they own more than half of the desert and semi-desert areas. Running on the ground, from oasis to desert often takes only a few minutes. Rain is a luxury for the people in this country. Israel's fresh water resources have been used to the maximum extent, but they are still studying how to improve the utilization rate of reclaimed water.

The barren natural resources made the Israelis realize the significance of "building a country through science and technology" at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China. The first Prime Minister of Israel, Ben-Gurion, warned the people that the pursuit of scientific research and its achievements should not only be an abstract pursuit of knowledge, but a key factor related to the survival of the nation.

The reason why scientific research has been promoted to the height of national survival lies not only in the barren natural environment, but also in the harsh geopolitical environment. The term "good-neighborliness", which is often used in diplomacy, can never be used to describe their relations with neighboring Arab countries.

1948, less than 24 hours after Israel declared its founding, the regular armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq tore up the joy of rejuvenating the country with artillery fire. At that time, nearly one percent of Israeli citizens died in this war. Until the Yom Kippur War of 1973, they fought four large-scale wars with their neighbors.

Poor peripheral relations and frequent wars have prompted Israelis to develop cutting-edge military technology. Israeli officials said that the huge amount of money spent on the research of military communication system in the1960s was hatched into civilian technology in the1980s, and the firewall software invented by CheckPoint Company was a typical example of the transformation from military technology to civilian technology, which also changed people's understanding of the concept of "army".

The narrow domestic market and poor peripheral relations force Israelis to focus on high technology and look to the world. Zohar Zisapel, chairman of RAD Group, said that Israel must take the high-tech road, concentrate its advantages, make breakthroughs in limited high-tech fields, and scientific and technological life must become the center of Israeli national life.

Zohar Zisapel, who has the reputation of "Israeli Bill Gates", said that as early as 20 years ago, he was shifting his business strategy from Hongkong to Chinese mainland. 10 years ago, he founded the window company RAD China in Chinese mainland. In Orbotech's laboratory, Israeli scientists showed the technical principle of plasma color TV to the China market. A few days ago, they held the same demonstration to Liu Qi, secretary of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee.

Amichai Steinberg, the company's vice president, said that they sold the technology to South Korea, which used the bought technology to make color TV sets in China to occupy the market in China.

Israelis who have nothing know that the resources they can develop are only people's minds. Before they successfully restored the country, the Hebrew University, which gave birth to Nobel Prize winners, was built. Their investment in education is amazing. Israelis are as enthusiastic about investing in children's education as China is today.

An Israeli female official said that when they introduce their underage children to others, they often say "this is my child physicist XXX" to show their parents' expectations for their children's future. It is reported that since 2000, nearly half of Israelis have received 13 years of school education. Israel has 100 people with 140 scientists and engineers with higher education, twice as many as the United States and Japan, and there is no other country in the world.

Institutional arrangements to encourage innovation

The amazing achievements of Israel's high technology and the mysterious rise of Israel are endless topics for new institutional economists. The Economic Analysis of Property Rights written by barzel, a professor of economics at Washington University, is a famous work often mentioned by Wang Dingding, a professor in Peking University. All the cases in the book are from Israel.

A "Beijinger" who immigrated to Israel after obtaining a doctorate in Britain told us that Israel's arrangement at the level of political and economic system is a key factor in Israel's rise.

Israel's economic policy orientation is privatization, marketization and rule of law.

Israel's scientific and technological innovation benefits from the government's market-oriented legal environment. Boaz Hirsch, director of the Foreign Trade Bureau of the Israeli Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Labor, said that since the birth of the Law on Encouraging Capital Investment in the late 1960s, special laws such as the Law on Encouraging Industrial Technology Research have been promulgated one after another to encourage private and foreign investment in high technology. World-class high-tech companies such as Microsoft poured in.

Israel's technological innovation has also benefited from the smashing of government monopoly shackles and the acceleration of the historical process of privatization. Israel Airlines, which sent us from China to Israel, changed from state-owned to private two years ago.

Since1990s, the privatization of Israeli state-owned companies has been surging. Last year, during the six-year privatization, Israeli communication giant Bezeq finally took off the state-owned cloak and split into a completely competitive mobile operator or service provider. The responsibility of the government boils down to six words: narrowing the digital divide.

Israel's scientific and technological innovation also benefits from the venture capital system. In Haifa High-tech Park, a technology company with only three people tries to provide technical support for Chinese people to use European and American game software cheaply without damaging intellectual property rights. The general manager of the company got the first free venture capital from the government. He said he had to use it carefully because the government only gave him one chance.

Assaf Harel, chairman of the Israeli Venture Capital Association, said that in the early 1990s, there was no venture capital industry, and the government set up a special venture fund to break the initial funding bottleneck of entrepreneurs. If successful, the proceeds will be owned by the individual; If it fails, the government will bear the loss. After 15, the United States has the second largest venture capital industry in the world.

Stanley fischer, governor of the Israeli Central Bank, said that it is very important to innovate the system to encourage economic growth. Decades ago, many people asked him why the Israelis were so smart and didn't work hard. The former vice chairman of Citibank said that the institutional arrangements at that time could not encourage people to innovate independently.

Israelis value not only their economic system, but also their political system and legal system. Before the Israeli High Court, an official of the Israeli Ministry of Commerce and Trade said that good laws and good politics have created a good institutional environment for Israel's economic development.

Israel's political system and legal system are different from those of the United States, but the framework of separation of powers, the principle of supremacy over the Constitution and the spirit of freedom and democracy are consistent. Our Israeli friend talked with us about two things. One was the old story that the police treated his family and the Prime Minister's family equally when solving the winter snow problem. The other happened during our stay in Israel, when the Israeli prosecutor conducted an independent investigation into President katsav's alleged sexual harassment.

A good political system also means Israel's competitiveness. During the1990s, due to the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, Israel experienced an immigration tide, with a population of about1000000, equivalent to the number of French immigrants to the United States at that time. Most immigrants from the former Soviet Union are engineers, scientists and technicians. According to the estimation of senior officials of the Israeli Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Labor, the value they bring to the Israeli economy is about 654.38+0.5 billion.

This amount is equivalent to the Russian government's investment in higher education, which means that the Soviet Union has trained a research and development team for Israel for free. There are also many economics professors among Soviet immigrants. At that time, if you just open a newspaper, you will find many reports about the contribution of Soviet professors to Israel.

Israel is also a country that encourages innovation. Although Judaism believes in monotheism, it encourages ideological pluralism and advocates ideological independence and freedom of speech. 1995, the young man who assassinated former Israeli Prime Minister Rabin began a long prison life in Israel without the death penalty. His "never regret" remarks can also be read freely in the newspaper. At the Middle East Research Center of Tel Aviv University, Dr. Paul Rivlin, who was interviewed by us, pointed to the official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who accompanied us and said, "My views do not represent the government. I think both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have responsibilities. "

soft power

Why did Israel, once derided by Mark Twain as an incurable malaria, become a "garden" in the Middle East, a powerful country in science and technology and a powerful country in the developed countries of the world? To explore the mystery of Israel's rise, people often mention her "soft power" accumulated over the years.

Soft power is a new concept first put forward by joseph nye, a professor at Harvard University, in the early 1990s. It includes cultural attraction, ideological attraction, the ability to form alliances in international relations, and the ability to use existing international organizations. If "hard power" at the military level is the key to Israel's repeated victories in the war against the enemy, then "soft power" at the cultural and ideological level is the key to Israel's rise.

More than three quarters of Israel's population is Jewish. Jewish culture's loyalty to "one god, one book and one belief" since 2000 finally gave birth to "one world, one family". 1948, after the founding of Israel, Jews from all over the world went home in succession. Stanley fischer, governor of the Israeli central bank, was an American Jew before May 1 2005.

Today, 58 years later, the population of Israel has changed from 600,000 at the time of the founding of the People's Republic to 7 million. Zhang Baoxian, who received his Ph.D. from Hebrew University, told us that as long as you believe in Judaism, you can convert to Israeli citizens no matter where you come from. In other words, today's Jews are no longer a definite race, but a cultural identity.

The police we see on the streets of Jerusalem are like a "multinational force". Police officers of different colors and races have parents from North Africa, the former Soviet Union or the United States.

The cultural concept of "one world, one family" affects Jews all over the world. An official of the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that donations from Jews around the world were an important factor for Israel to get rid of the burden of war in the 1950 s.

Leah Suo Beier, who led us to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone, was an American-born Jew. A few years ago, she gave up the comfortable life in new york and came to Israel alone. She set up Project Israel, a non-governmental organization to help international journalists understand the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and led journalists from all over the world into the danger zone where Palestinian rockets like to attack. The NGO paid $3,000 to observe the situation in Palestine and Israel by helicopter.

The cultural concept of "one world, one family" encourages Jews outside Israel to return to their homeland, and encourages Jews in Israel to defend their homeland and love their motherland. Near Gaza, where Palestinian-Israeli conflicts frequently occur, there is a regional committee called Sha'ar Hanegev. Eliahu Segal is the CEO of the committee. He said that a few days ago, gunfire had just burned down his yard, but three generations of his family would not retreat or move because of fear. People were not as nervous as we thought when they were destroyed into broken walls by rockets.

An official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that a tacit understanding has been formed between the people and the government to deal with terrorist activities. Only two hours after the deadly explosion in Jerusalem, order was restored. The security inspection of supermarkets, hotels and office buildings has become the normal state of people's daily life, and people's expressions are peace except cooperation.

Israel's love for the motherland, in the view of Ilan Maurer, the former consul general of Israel in Shanghai, is also the driving force for Israel's economic take-off. As a diplomat, wherever he goes, he will never forget to tell his daughter that their home is in Israel and they want to work for it. When we interviewed Stanley Fischer, we didn't ask him about Israeli economic achievements. Before leaving, the new Israeli citizen earnestly hoped that we would tell the people of China about Israel's economic achievements.

The rise of Israel and even the revival of the country are inseparable from Americans. It is said that this is partly due to the close cultural and ideological relationship between the two countries.

Culture is the greatest contribution of Jews to the world. As a book that records the Jewish ideological system, no book can compare with the contribution of the Bible to the world. Among them, the idea of "one god" has gradually transformed into respect for people and life in the long history of thousands of years, which has influenced the founding fathers of the United States. What we see in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is that "all men are created equal" and other "self-evident truths" come from the Jewish Bible and "monotheistic thought".

Israel's soft power is an intangible resource for Israel to attract the United States as its "ally". Without the help of the United States, Israel's road to restoration might not be so smooth.

From 65438 to 0947, the British government entrusted with the administration of Palestinian areas submitted the conflict between Jews and Arabs to the United Nations. With the support of the United States, Jews launched a clever diplomatic offensive, which won the sympathy of the people of the world for those Jews who were massacred by the Nazis because they had no home. Finally, at the special session of the United Nations, they won the legitimate right of the Jewish people to establish their own country by a two-thirds majority.

Twenty years later, the Supreme Court of the United States made a ruling that shocked the world: American Jews have Israeli nationality and can join the Israel Defense Forces to participate in the war. An expert on the Middle East said that none of this would have happened without the affinity between ideology and political values.