We should be very proud of being Jewish : despite of wars, all sorts of tensions and looming dangers, such incredible achievments. My congratulations !

Whenever you open an Israeli paper, there is som much negative about what's going on in Israel. Seems like people are starving, and that the country is just about to fall of the cliff. But when I visit Israel I always find it to be a bustling country filled with with energy, building, shopping malls everywhere and seeming like a bustling modern country. Of course Israel has problems, but that's not the whole story.

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserves a lot of credit for almost single handedly turning Israel from a socialist to a market economy.

Israel should be proud of this achievement. What if this could be extended into a Peace settlement connected to economic development and assistance ?

with or without the West. France hasn't come up with anything worthwhile in 100's of years.

Mazal tov , now where is the list?

http://www.weforum.org/pdf/Global_Competitiveness_Reports/Reports/gcr_2006/top50.pdf

So Isreal is the 15th most competitve country in te world! Well, I bet that is painfully surprising to many if not all of her detractors. Yes, the same ones who have nothing to offer their people but violent anti Isreali invective, pontificating all sorts of brutalitiy against Jews. I am sure that this very glaring fact is lost on all these people as they invariably stagger to the next useless violent confrotation with this ever prosperous but still vulnerable state. I dare say that, Isreal might very well have been even more successful, had she been allowed to exped even more of her human capital on develpment of technology designed to improve the human condition. Indeed, the surrounding states, would themselves have benfitted tremendously, had they not been caught in the vice grip of bad governance, encapsulated in ancient religious dogma. These states, nost notably, Egypt, Iran, Yemen and to a lesser extent, Lebanon, cannot and will not be able to provide adequately for their teeming millions anytime in the forseeable future. There is no hope for the bulk of their wretched masses, outside of meagre remittances afforded them by the relative few who have been lucky to emigrate to the west. These people willonly be free to exploit their own considerable talents, when their contries are free from leaders like Nasarallah and Assad. They have a long, long wait.

The smell of sour grapes has even reached us in California ...