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Dec. 16, 2005
Spread the good word
Book highlights Israel's contributions to the world.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Decades before Israel became a state in 1948, the country had a
world-class university, several highly regarded medical, scientific
and agricultural research institutes and an internationally acclaimed
philharmonic orchestra. And Israel remains at the forefront of the
world's high-tech and cultural scenes, with Nobel laureates in science
and in literature. How has such a small – and relatively young
– country managed such extraordinary success?
Insight into Israel's amazing achievements and their widespread
impact can be found in the coffee table book Israel in the World:
Changing Lives Through Innovation (Orion Publishing Group, 2005)
by Douglas Davis and Helen Davis. A nonpolitical publication full
of beautiful color photos, Israel in the World looks at the ideas
and innovations – in medicine, science and technology, agriculture
and society (culture, education, foreign aid, etc.) – that
have come out of Israel and become an integral part of the global
marketplace. It also includes a section on how Israel shares its
high-tech expertise with other countries, especially develop- ing
nations, so that these countries can more quickly overcome the hurdles
that Israel had to surpass: limited land, water and capital.
In the book's forward, media mogul Rupert Murdoch – whose company,
the News Corporation, is one of the largest media groups in the
world – attributes Israel's accomplishments to education: "The
nation's largely immigrant population has education foremost among
its aspirations and assets," he writes. Murdoch highlights
such companies as Amdocs, with its telecommunications billing software,
and Given Imaging, with its miniature medical cameras, and predicts
that Israel will "remain at the forefront of technological
development into the future."
There is a saying that "necessity is the mother of invention,"
and this certainly seems to be the case with Israel's prominence
in high-tech. In near-constant military struggle with its neighbors,
much of Israel's prowess is in security and medical technologies,
including disaster response and trauma treatments. With few natural
resources, Israel has excelled in agricultural innovation, such
as irrigation methods. But the country has far exceeded needs-driven
inventiveness to become a world leader in such areas as bio-electronics,
data storage and preschool education.
According to Israel in the World, Israelis registered approximately
1,046 patents in the United States in 2002 alone, the third-highest
per capita in the world, surpassed only by the States itself and
Japan. Proportionately, Israel has more university graduates than
any other country in the world and "its scientists, engineers
and agriculturists publish more professional papers per capita than
their counterparts in any other country. The consequence is that
Israel has the largest concentration of high-tech companies outside
Silicon Valley."
At the turn of the 21st century, says Israel in the World,
Israel's high-tech exports were worth some $26 billion US and it
was highly regarded as a major international trading nation. It
cites an Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
estimate that, in 2004, venture capital investment in Israel, as
a per cent of the country's gross domestic product, was higher than
in any OECD member state. For Israel, this translates into a relatively
high standard of living: "A recent United Nations report ranked
it 23rd worldwide in terms of its standard of living, based on per
capita income, life expectancy and educational standards."
For the world, Israel's success means the existence of more life-enhancing
and life-saving technologies, as well as a richer and more diverse
society.
Israel in the World can be purchased from Orion (www.orionbooks.co.uk)
or from amazon.ca,
which is offering the hardcover, which lists for $42.95, for only
$28.35. The drawback is that this gift - for yourself or someone
else – will arrive after Chanukah, as Amazon gives the delivery
time as one to three months.
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