A  Sure  Thing : Israel Has  A  Future*


...According  to Bible  Prophecy  the fate  of  EVERY  LIVING
BEING  on  this  planet  literally  hinges  on  the  destiny  of
the   tiny  nation  of  Israel...

...While it is true that several Arab nations enjoy the  wealth that
their BLACK GOLD ( oil )  is  giving them  they are  for  the most
part  ignoring a nations true wealth: The Brainpower of  their  own
people...In  contrast  Israel  doesn't  enjoy  oil  wealth  but  it
does  encourages   its  citizens  to  be  all  that  they  can   be
and  history  will record   that  the  greatest  untapped  natural
resource  in  this  planet  is  the  ingenuity  of human  beings...
 

What could a horse with a 38-1 shot of winning, and a small country with only 7 million people surrounded by enemies, have in common? The answer: They are both longshots and underdogs that have prevailed and flourished despite predictions to the contrary.
 
For those not familiar, the horse Da’ Tara, won Saturday’s running of
the Belmont Stakes, spoiling Big Brown’s attempt at winning horse
racings triple crown. Big Brown was considered a lock to be the first
horse to capture the elusive triple crown in 30 years. Instead, he
was  upstaged by a horse that no one had paid any attention to.

Likewise, the tiny country of Israel, has flourished despite predictions of destruction.
 
...In a great article in The New York Times, Thomas Friedman asks
the following question: “Question: What do America’s premier
investor, Warren Buffett, and Iran’s toxic president,  Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, have in common? Answer: They’ve both made a bet
about Israel’s  future.”

He writes about how Iranian madman Ahmadinejad predicts that
Israel will be wiped off the  map. Conversely, he shows how Buffet
as taken a long term approach to his investment in
tool maker Iscar, which to remind you is his largest international investment ever.
 
Friedman  writes, “I asked Iscar’s chairman,  Eitan Wertheimer,
what was Buffett’s reaction when he found  out that he had just
paid $4 billion for an Israeli company and  a few days later
Hezbollah  rockets were landing outside its  parking lot.

Buffett just brushed it off with a wave, recalled Wertheimer: “He
said, ‘I’m not interested in  the next quarter. I’m interested in
the next 20 years.’ ”   So apparently Buffet is of the opinion that
Israel will still exist in a few decades, and he is  willing to put
his money where his mouth is.

Friedman goes on to talk about many of the statistics that IOI mentions regularly. The large amount of VC money that comes into Israel, the fact that the world’s largest companies have already or are planning to have R&D centers in Israel. All of the investion that has taken place in Israel as opposed to Iran which despite making boatloads of money from high oil prices has double digit unemployment and has invented nothing of global importance in the last 30 years.

He ends the article with his handicap of the competition: “Iran’s economic and military clout today is largely dependent on extracting oil from the ground. Israel’s economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting intelligence from its people. Israel’s economic power is endlessly renewable. Iran’s is a dwindling resource based on fossil fuels made from dead dinosaurs.

So who will be here in 20 years? I’m with Buffett: I’ll bet on the people who bet on their people — not the people who bet on dead dinosaurs.”

I’ll place $5 on Israel to win please.