I don't believe I'm the only one in Europe that has a special sympathy for your country. But trying to replicate Israel spirit? I don't think so. It's like when people over here talk about making an "european SV", not very realistic. I neither see my country doing anything similar if you find consollation in that :-)
There are two reasons. One that someone pointed in a downvoted comment nearby: funds from governments (Israel and USA). The other one is a ruthless killer instinct. Both are shared by SV. If you've been around here for long enough, you might remember a couple of references that show clearly both factors. For government backing there was an article about SV origins in WW2. The other one is a YC standard interview question about how founders "hacked the system" for their own profit.
Yesterday I got in a somewhat esoteric argument about how righteous people get very strict about abstract ideas like environment protection. This is the default actitude for many smart people. So the questions that matter are: are your government willing to put a lot of money to grow a sharp industry, and is "selfishness" taboo in your society? Otherwise, we're doomed :)
I guess what I was trying to say is that I'm hoping Tunisia learns what it can from Israel and other successes. I think we have the environment and the human capital to at the very least attract foreign companies to setup offices in Tunisia. Ideally, we would start our own local companies to compete on the global stage. And as you've kindly mentioned, this requires serious interest by the government, and from what I've seen, this is starting to become the case.
Edit: well, after writing this, I hope you don't mind if I point that Tunisia is not middle east and that you probably wanted to write "haven't" ;)
Except Tunisia isn't in the Middle East, it's in North Africa; which is as eastern geographically as Western Europe and as similar to the Middle East in terms of culture and way of life because of shared religion as the U.S. is similar to Peru.
Really different cultures and world views.
For those who haven't read Startup Nation, the authors don't argue that the bonds formed in the military are sufficient for Israel startup culture. Rather, the military's unique culture and relatively flat hierarchy in which subordinates can and do challenge superiors (at a frequency unique among militaries) are other important factors in creating the startup nation. But of course, there's yet more discussed, which do indeed fill up the book's pages.
There can be no question that Israel is firehosed with money, both from states and private sources and everything in between. I personally know of at least a few of the biggest corporations in this medium-size European country that has a stated policy of buying practically any Israeli technology that is punted. Lots of other large multinationals pour money into Israel as a point of policy, see Coca-Cola, Google, Procter&Gamble and many others.
They have very little to show for it in my opinion, in fact the only successful IT companies I know of out of Israel are ICQ (!) and Fiverr. They have a bunch of B2B businesses, but a lot of their revenue can be chalked up to official or unofficial support programs as mentioned, which is probably why they, and their products, are mostly completely unknown outside their small niches.
I also heard accounts from from several IT workers in Israel that the work culture is quite inefficient if not downright lazy.
The Israel-Arab conflict became a proxy for the US-Soviet conflict and while the Russians were aiding the Arab countries surrounding Israel the US was aiding Israel. As mentioned a lot of the US aid to Israel is a form of subsidy to the US defense industry and comes with many strings tied. A good example of the trade-offs there is that Israel was effectively forced to cancel it's Lavi fighter aircraft program and buy "expensive" F16s instead. Another good example is President's Obama decision to stop providing Israel with missiles for its Apache helicopters at some point during one of the last conflicts.
Saudi Arabia's hypothetical alignment with Israel is a fairly recent phenomena as some sort of my enemy's enemy is my friend. But for the longest time Saudi's money and political influence was invested in working against Israel (and those sums dwarf US aid to Israel).
See http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-lavi-a-dream-aborted-in-m...
"There is a myth that it was American pressure that led to the cancellation of the Lavi program. Nothing is further from the truth. It was a self-inflicted wound, a shot in the foot."
The reason the program was cancelled was because it was very expensive and there weren't enough potential international buyers of the plane. The unit costs of F16:s were unsurprisingly much lower because they have been mass-produced for decades.
WikiPedia says this: "On 30 August 1987, Israel's cabinet conducted a decisive vote on whether to continue the development of the Lavi; this development was influenced by considerable lobbying by the U.S., who made several compensatory proposals in exchange for the cancellation" and provides 3 references as support which I didn't pursue in detail though the ynet article is fairly recent and has some interesting tidbids: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4695739,00.html
How can there be doubt that the US aid and influence was a factor? Would the same decision have been made otherwise? Who knows.
The article you link is interesting, and it mentions a special tax that would be levied on the populace to continue funding the project. Which gives you a hint about how expensive it was! It also mentions that the US didn't like the project. But if US pressure was factor, then why was the project started in the first place? Recall that in 1987 the project was over 10 years old.
Fact is that Israel does a lot of things that the US does not like, like building settlements, but it has never used the military aid as a means to put pressure on Israel. So sure, the US could theoretically exert influence by threatening to stop the aid, but it hasn't done so and probably won't. It would be too much like slaughtering a holy cow for them.
The Lavi story isn't unique. Half a dozen countries have tried to build fighter planes but then cancelled the programs because they were too expensive. I believe the only countries currently producing modern fighter jets are USA, Russia, France, EU, China and Sweden. And I can tell you that the Swedish fighter jet program has been incredibly close to being cancelled numerous times over the last decades.
Israel had previously designed and manufactured the Kfir ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Kfir ) though that design was based on the French Mirage. The Kfir wasn't really that successful though...
One should also note that most of that money isn't actually given as cash, only a few 100's of million of the 3 bln are direct cash allocations intended to fund defense projects within Israel, the rest has to be spent on buying toys from US defense contractors.
So for the most part US aid to Israel is a US job program.
It is true that Israel is supposed to not export sensitive technology to China, but that is more a factor of being a US ally than strings attached to the aid. Canada also shares a lot of stuff with the US, but does not align themselves with China despite not getting any military aid.
And weapons are fungible. The $3.8 billion in weapons the US provides the state with means that it saves exactly $3.8 billion to spend elsewhere. Giving away free weapons is a very poor job program in comparison to funding jobs that would help the US economy (such as building and repairing infrastructure) rather than hurt it.
I was was stupefied that Belgium made a foreign aid donation to Saudi Arabia. I found the reason : it was contingent on the Saudis spending about 30x the amount of the donation on weapons made by a plant south of Brussels, with (I'm sure coincidentally) several (then) cabinet members on the board. They bought "weapons for crowd control" with it, because apparently that's what fully automatic machine guns are used for.
I think the issue is that weapons production is an industry that is entirely controlled by government action, both in the positive and negative direction.
Governments forbid certain parts of the market on one hand, and they cheat and lie and deceive everyone so their own weapons manufacturers would see more customers on the other hand. US, Israel, France, even tiny little Belgium all engage in this.
If Israel could get drones from the US it would've eventually killed the Isreaeli drone industry.
Overall what Israel gets on aid they don't make and can't sell.
US aid also comes with a leash Israeli arm sales have congressional oversight ever since the Phalcon deal with China.
Without US aid the Lavi would not have been canned and Israeli Mirage clones like the Nesher and the Kfir are considered one of the best airframes of the time even today.
Israel government spending is $64B/yr. US Aid of $3.8B/yr is 6%.
For comparison, if the US got relative aid like that it would be: $170B/yr. US military expenditures is only 598.5, so this would cover about 1/3rd of it.
Israel hasn't used the Loan guarantees since 1988.
I'm pretty sure that Israel does sends military equipment to AQ from time to time, tho the equipment undergoes rapid unscheduled disassembly upon delivery.
It's not a secret that Israel are supporting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in Syria.
Not certain about military equipment, but they do meet with them regularly[0] and treat their soldiers in Israeli hospitals[1].
[0] http://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-accepts-billions-from-th...
Israel is not supporting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham it treats people on the border including fighters in exchange for leaving the syrian druze alone.
>Don't Helen Thomas your career, dont you know mentioning that is a thought crime? Obama promised another 38 billion over ten years, and the real cost including all military and other aid has been estimated at 15 billion per year. Never mind their wall, occupied territory and treatment of Palestinians in their war for a racially pure nation state. The UN actually ruled Zionism a racist institution but now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European. Jews occupying, displacing and killing Palestinians and Arabs is fine.
Creating accounts that only post politically is not good community behavior, nor is reposting comments that have been flagged, nor is making deliberately inflammatory (troll) statements as you have. These behaviors are against the goals of this site and they just don't belong.
Yeah that was some deep bullshit by the UN.
They later acknowledged this and took it back
As I said in the beginning, I am completely against the illegal settlements, the blockade of Gaza, and other similar issues. I regard my fellow Palestinians as brothers and sisters. That doesn't mean that I cannot respect what Israel has been able to build.
But I definitely respect Israel as a state, and especially the Israeli tech sector. Israel has consistently produced world-class companies in almost every field you can think of. It's quite impressive once you consider all of the factors.
The author of "Startup Nation" argued that one key reason behind this success is how the military ties back into civilian companies, especially with the mandatory service. I'm not sure how important that is, given how many other countries have a similar model yet they've achieved nothing close to what Israel has. There are a few that have, such as Singapore and South Korea.
I'm hoping that my home country Tunisia can replicate (at least somewhat) the Israeli success story. We have a lot of talented people both inside the country and overseas. The biggest thing we're lacking right now is a functioning economy (yep, tough times)... but I hope we can get there in the near future!