BOOK REVIEW: Start-Up Nation - The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. By Dan Senor and Saul Singer

[Tace]

July 23, 2010 (Palestine Chronicle) -- Start-Up Nation - The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. Dan Senor and Saul Singer. Council of Foreign Relations Book, McClelland & Stewart. 2009.

There are no Palestinians…

Israel is an amazing place as one puts together the implications from Start-Up Nation. It is a fount of free enterprise can-do entrepreneurial spirit. There are no resistances, although something called an Intifada concerned the authors somewhat, without being specified as to what it is/was. There are no freedom fighters nor insurgents, no guerrillas nor rebellions. For that matter there are no Palestinians as the word has been expunged from the authors’ vocabulary completely (unless it was in a boring anecdotal section that I skim read and missed -- not likely). Israel, except for a few wandering Arabs, was “largely a barren wasteland.”

The only people -- other than Jews, Zionists, and various other national entrepreneurs -- in this book are the terrorists, obviously dealt with very effectively by somebody within the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). The authors use the media presumption that anyone against the state of Israel must be a terrorist and they are there for seemingly no reason at all, other than that "they are against us and hate us for what we are,"an attitude one could expect from writers with Council on Foreign Relations background. Without these contextual placements, this work fails completely. Even accepting these contextual failures, the "miracle" that is Israel is not very miraculous at all, but is based on what are normal means of establishing national wealth.

Questions

I knew before I read the book that I expected certain elements to be addressed in order for it to be a complete contextual presentation on this supposed miracle. The questions I asked, and that I wrote on the front fly-leaf of the book before reading even the cover flap were:

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[Demeter]

1. If I had That Much US Aid Money, I Could Do Miracles, Too

and I'd do them around here in Michigan, and other low spots in this once-great nation.

[KoKo]

2. Interesting. Glad to see more books and Reviews of such books by Democrats...

Thanks, Tace!