Friday, November 6, 2009

Google will never divest...

Jeff Goldberg has been on a roll this week, following up the interview I mentioned last posting with this one in which he talks with authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer and their new book Start Up Nation which documents the phenomenal economic success of the entrepreneurial Israeli economy.

While I could quibble about some political assumptions made by the interviewer, the key points he makes is that major corporations and major investors would pull out of India or Ireland long before they would ever consider pulling out of Israel. This is because while the former “I” countries provide manpower and brainpower, the latter combines these with proven entrepreneurial creativity which has provided companies like Google and Intel with the most important innovations critical for their success.

I’ve been thinking recently about why we allow the divestment crew to claim as a “success” some retirement fund selling off a quarter-million dollars worth of crashing Israeli real-estate stock (putting aside that the sale had nothing to do with BDS), yet fail to count those same investors socking hundreds of millions of dollars into the Israeli economy as a measure of our success. After all, if the BDSers want to set the rules whereby any negative economic measure, not matter how small, taken by a North American or European firm represents a loss of support for Israel among the nations and a vindication of their political message, why can’t we apply those same rules with regard to the billions these same firms confidently invest in the Jewish state?

In many ways, the divest-niks look to Europe as their model, hoping their calls for boycott, divestment and sanction will eventually get the same hearing in the US as they allegedly get on the continent. With that in mind, it was interesting to discover reading Goldberg’s piece that European venture capitalists invest more into Israel than they do into any individual European country.

Stuff that into your pipe and smoke it, Naomi Klein!
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1 comments:

  1. I don't remember where I read it, but I've heard the point made that BDS "activists" target Israel because it is so easy, and at that, they target the easiest targets in Israel.

    For example, there's no BDS campaign against China because so much of what we consume in the West comes from China. It would be nearly impossible to carry on our lives if we cut out all Chinese products. Indeed, I am sitting in a library now and notice the mouse for my laptop my notebook and my pen are all Chinese. I'm sure some of what I'm wearing is Chinese as well. Those are just the items within reach.

    Also, the products many BDS activists will go after are those that are eay to live without, or to find replacements for. Take for example a recent effort by the BDS in Montreal to boycott Israeli cosmetics. They can get their cosmetics from anywhere, France, China, the US and even Canada. Losing Israeli cosmetics is no sweat off their back. The same goes for boycotting Israeli movies or universities. There are other movies one could see and for most people, a boycott of Israeli academia is not gonig to have a real impact on their lives. At least it won't seem to. Are these same activists, however, willing to boycott Google, Intel, Motorola, Microsoft or any other such company? Would they insist that US soldiers not use techology to defend themselves and their countries developed in conjunction with Israel? Would they demand that drugs and medical technologies and techniques developed in Israel not be used anywhere else? I doubt it, and I have yet to see an example of anything like that. The reason is because it's too hard to boycott these other products and ultimatley, it would negativley impact their lives. That is something they don't want to actually do.
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