Last Wednesday Dan Senor, a neoconservative investor, “geopolitical expert,” and writer, came to speak at the University of Rochester. The topic of his speech? “Israel’s Economic Miracle,” coincidentally the subtitle of his new book. Given Senor’s past, the fact that the university’s president, Joel Seligman, would be introducing him provoked the ire of what fragments remain of this campus’ left-wing organizations.
While the University of Rochester’s Simon Graduate School of Business technically invited Senor to speak, the event was heavily assisted and publicized by a student association, Israel Council. This club is typical of the right-wing Zionist groups that pervade undergraduate campuses around the country. Prior to the event, Israel Council’s spokespeople repeatedly emphasized that their members do not necessarily agree with Dan Senor’s political positions. An oft-repeated cliché begged the student body to understand the difference between a talk on Israel’s economic opportunities and an endorsement of his views.
At the same time, Dan Senor’s talk happens to be during Israel Peace Week (and is in fact the capstone event), a publicity stunt designed to whitewash Israel’s image. This “week dedicated to peace” is complete with members handing out fliers produced by StandWithUs (a wonderful institution that is in no way racist) and an embarrassing video of students and professors dispelling “myths” about Israel (apparently most of the bad stuff we hear about Israel “is just totally crap, to be honest”). The fact that Senor’s cousin attends the university only furthered suspicions that a little more than pure coincidence was afoot here.
Senor lauded the Israeli government’s sponsorship of millions of Jewish migrants. To a certain extent he is correct. Being Jewish is enough to settle in the State of Israel. However, he goes on to characterize the only two traits that all Israelis share—a “common prayer book and history of persecution”—supposedly a testament to Israel’s commitment to pluralism, but completely overlooking one in five Israelis who are Arab. As if to show further proof of Israel’s industrious and liberal atmosphere, Senor mentions the large number of Israelis who work in China, casually avoiding any mention of an Israeli company where Chinese workers must sign a contract stipulating they won’t marry or have sexual relations with Israelis.
While the imaginary society he constructs would be crucial to the free flow of ideas, Senor lays the credit for building a class of entrepreneurs at the feet of the IDF. More specifically, the Israeli army’s command systems function with the minimum structure necessary to maintain order. This is supposed to provide rank and file soldiers with chances to practice their reactions to new situations and allow them to take responsibility for their own actions. We all know exactly how much liability they are under, but what Senor fails to take into consideration are the real world implications of setting up teenage recruits to “practice” with human lives. Does he think that storming an apartment in Hebron and murdering an old man in his sleep is an experience necessary to further one’s entrepreneurial spirit? How comfortable is Israel Council with hosting Dan Senor—a man who bases Israel’s “economic success” on war profiteering—during Israel Peace Week? His justification for Israel’s “economic miracle” hinges on two crucial aspects—an ostensibly open and heterogeneous society and its military structure—that do not incorporate reality.
Senor then mentioned the “campaign of delegitimization” that is terrorizing Israeli society, but I struggle to ascertain what is legitimate about an economic system in which success is based upon the continued existence of an organization that is maintained by 3.1 billion American dollars each year.
Of course, this aid is due to Israel’s existing “in a constant state of war since its founding” and hence brings us to yet another reason to study this “economic miracle” that has somehow flourished despite being “surrounded by enemies.” Senor bemoans the troubles Israelis must go through in order to sell their products: travelling thousands of miles away, all because of an unwarranted Arab boycott on Israeli goods. It would be insulting to assume that Senor is so misinformed as to be unaware that, for example in Egypt, the boycott is administered by civil society, not the government. Translation: Israeli goods have no market because people have a principled objection to the Zionist project. On the other hand, it is equally peculiar that Senor (a figure who was invited to speak on Israeli economics and was praised for his expertise) would forget such a basic theoretical implication of economics: no one has a right to sell products. Rather, goods are produced to satisfy wants. If no one wants the good, producers’ rights are hardly being infringed upon.
This expansion of geopolitical scope gave Dan Senor the opportunity to analyze the recent events in Egypt, all with the direct encouragement of President Seligman. Drawing on the considerable public speaking education he received from the Carlyle Group, Senor expressed his solidarity with the protesters, and chastised the US government for its “one-dimensional caricatures” of Egyptians as either in the Mubarak camp or for the “dangerous” Muslim Brotherhood. He seemed remarkably puzzled as to how our government missed the existence of such a large secular group of protesters. What Senor’s explications fail to illuminate is that adding one additional point to an axis does not endow it with extra dimension. This level of jejune analysis is strange in light of Senor’s “extensive travels throughout the Arab world” (concerning this one faculty member remarked, “yeah he’s travelled there…at the head of a column of tanks”). Characterizations of Egyptians into disjoint pro-Mubarak, evil Muslim Brotherhood Islamist, or secularist groupings is doing State Department math (2+1=3 threats to Empire). President Joel Seligman’s appraisal: “a splendid answer.”
As evidenced by his rigid support of government ideology, it should be no surprise that Senor holds Salam Fayyad, US-government favorite, in high esteem. The disputed Fatah prime minister is well known by Palestinians mainly for increasing their misery while enjoying trips to Europe and a mansion in Ramallah. Fayyad has done his best to quash any meaningful resistance to colonial domination, even going so far as to congratulate Israel on its creation. Despite this, the university’s guest pundit guilelessly raved about Salam Fayyad’s economic know-how and progress in Ramallah, a progress that seems to enrich only the Palestinian elite and is heavily financed by international subsidies.
Dan Senor’s arguments and positions betray a complete lack of basic economic and political knowledge—perplexing in view of his extensive education and experience. Without mentioning this, our university’s president introduced Senor as “a man who has written a brilliant book.” In fact, President Seligman plugs The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle as “one of the most fascinating books on innovation.” Perhaps the innovations Seligman refers to are the bold initiatives to dispossess an entire people; to terrorize Gazans by sonic booms and haphazard shellings; to humiliate and torture anyone who dares raise a fist against the occupation. Senor’s book may be about innovation, but there is nothing innovative about such blatant factual misrepresentations and ethical fallacies. He is a gift to the Israeli military, which recently spent 1.6 million dollars on “new media warriors” to propagandize every aspect of Zionism.
Israel Council has attempted to frame the issue in terms of academic freedom or the First Amendment. They have used President Seligman’s prior positions on such topics as a justification for Senor’s invitation. However, Dan Senor’s arguments hinge on unmitigated academic dishonesty. The University of Rochester is a research institution that prides itself on integrity. There is a difference between respecting freedom of speech and inviting a guest whose research is misinformed at best, and fraudulent at worst. Senor’s words and ideas are based on unabashed falsifications of the record and hackneyed arguments. They are in no way worthy of President Seligman’s enthusiastic introduction. Freedom of speech is a negative liberty. No one is attempting to silence Dan Senor, but there was no justification for bringing him to this campus and advertising his latest work to boot.
Considering the difficulty students had in finding out Senor’s history, it seems possible that President Seligman was not aware of Senor’s views and prior actions. When a figure made unsavory comments in the past that elicited negative reactions from the Rochester community, our president eventually made a statement condemning the figure’s views, noting explicitly: any kind of stereotyping “is inconsistent with [the University of Rochester’s] core values and would be inappropriate when applied to any race, any religion, any nationality, or either gender.” Hopefully, Senor’s talk will inspire the same reaction. If not, the prospects for upholding this university’s “core values” in the future are dim.
Boian Boianov is an undergraduate at the University of Rochester and has volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement in the Occupied West Bank.
What, no unicorns or rainbows?
“but I struggle to ascertain what is legitimate about an economic system in which success is based upon the continued existence of an organization that is maintained by 3.1 billion American dollars each year”
Israel’s economy is not maintained by American money. Israel has a GDP of $206 billion dollars and has one of the most advanced economies in the world.
link to en.wikipedia.org
“Translation: Israeli goods have no market because people have a principled objection to the Zionist project.”
Yeah, it’s real principled. It’s called: We hate any entity that is not run by Arabs in the Middle East. It ain’t about human rights, because if it was, Arabs wouldn’t buy Chinese goods either or for that matter, goods made by Saudi Arabia.
70% of israel’s exports go to europe and BDS is coming.
Take away the free water and the free land it steals from Palestine and one the liability side add the costs of taking all the settlers home and see what Israel’s balance sheet looks like. There are loads of contingent liabilities about to be called.
Ever read Shir Hever’s “The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation”? I think you’d find it quite interesting.
Thanks for the heads up. It looks really interesting.
I like the Eyal Weizman books on the architecture of the occupation.
“Researchers and scholars should be more careful when discussing the Israeli financial dependence on the US, noting that such dependency has decreased to a large extent in the past years compared to the Israeli GNP and per capita income. What remains, however, is Israel’s vital dependence on the American support in other aspects, such as trade, economic cooperation, and military support; which helps cover up the deficit in the Israeli trade balance, opens up opportunities of technological and military development, and provides huge consumer markets for the Israeli exports.”
For the elaborated & time-lined details, see link to alzaytouna.net
Israel brings in 4-5 billion per year from its arms sales; Israel reverse engineers the cutting edge military and associated arms and security technology the US gives to it for free (–most aid to Israel these days is not humanitarian, but military aid), and then, in addition to having great quantities of arms of quality equal to the USA’s best, makes a slight change in some aspect of such gifts, and sells the “new Israeli military products” as its own. What is it, the third largest arms dealer now?
And let’s not forget that the US makes being on good terms with Israel the US litmus test for gaining any military or economic or trade advantage agreement with the US. All countries know this, and hence, by proxy, Israel wields the power of the world’s only superpower, even though it’s the size of NJ.
Then it’s the only advanced economy that relief on US aid and loan guarantees.
Let’s see how Israel gets through peak oil.
The US has made various commitments to Israel to assure it gets the oil it needs; the one involving Egypt is only one of many.
Israel is peripheral and the US is at the core. When oil hits USD 300+ a barrel the core isn’t going to give a shit about the periphery.
It should be quite clear by now that J-Street is by no means “Pro-Israel” This group seeks to destroy the State of Israel much like other neo-imperialist organizations.
You’re batting a thousand for blatant contradictions today. So now organizations which seek to end colonial projects are “neo-imperialist?” What does that even mean, anyway? Can you rephrase that in such a way as to not require made-up terminology?
One can be “Pro-Israel” without being pro Likud.
“Israel’s economy is not maintained by American money. Israel has a GDP of $206 billion dollars and has one of the most advanced economies in the world.”
Says the person who soesn’t really need to drink, can quit at any time.
Fine, don’t need it, why not do the magnanimous thing and say “no thanks, you all need it more than us, we’re doing great, you’re broke and borrowing the money to give to us. “
“Fine, don’t need it, why not do the magnanimous thing and say “no thanks, you all need it more than us, we’re doing great, you’re broke and borrowing the money to give to us. “”
I’m all for cutting it off. It’s just silly to say that the Israeli economy depends on it.
So… why are Israelis getting $3 billion in cash from the US government on our proverbial credit card, engorging the debt and deficit even further, if they don’t need it? Do you have an answer for that hophmi?
And up front so it can recop the interest? Mind you, the money Israel receives is much more than 3 billion. The loan guarantees (loans it doesn’t repay) are at least as much again.
Not to get into a tit-for-tat, but it’s not silly. It’s a LOT of money and if you all didn’t depend on it, you all wouldn’t just say “we don’t need it”, you’d stop taking it.
Talk is cheap.
They need it, and they’ll continue to take it and spit in our face.
The last Vice Pres humiliation should have had the media asking the question, “is this an ally of ours”? Did any of that occur?
We don’t get the compreshensive story the relationship, just snipped portions of the story for evening digestion.
Hophmi, if Israel is really such a good pal of the USA, then why won’t it
tell the USA, “Naw, you keep your aid, we don’t need it, and you do.” Further, Israel still needs a myriad of forms of USA aid to survive in the style it is accustomed to–Israel’s vital dependence on the American support in other aspects, such as trade, economic cooperation, and military support; which helps cover up the deficit in the Israeli trade balance, opens up opportunities of technological and military development, and provides huge consumer markets for the Israeli exports. See the url I referenced responding to your earlier comment here.
I’m all for cutting it off. It’s just silly to say that the Israeli economy depends on it.
Its actually simplistic to say they don’t. Any analysis of the US’s contribution to the Israeli economy needs to take into account not only the direct aid, the forgiven loan guarantees, the tax-free status of Israeli bond investment, and other charitable donations to Israel, but it also need to take into account the fiscal multiplier effect .
With a removal of just the 3 billion in aid, (which is, according to Hophmi’s figures, 1.5 % of Israeli GDP) and the fiscal multiplier effect, we could easily be talking about 3-5 percent of Israel’s GDP, a loss of which could result in a serious recession in Israel . Israel’s economy may be able to eventually ride out the shock, but it would indeed be a shock because at this point Israel has definitely come to depend on it.
I mean this in a non-political way, but I don’t think the fiscal multiplier is relevant here. The idea behind the fiscal multiplier is that increased government spending will stimulate increased demand. So the theory is that if the government pumps money into the system via a stimulus package, people will spend more, ultimately increasing GDP/GNP. The greater the multplier, the more successful the policy. The theory is really about domestic fiscal policy, not international aid.
Reread the second sentence of the explanation of fiscal multiplier, hophmi.
More generally, the exogenous spending multiplier is the ratio of a change in national income to any autonomous change in spending (private investment spending, consumer spending, government spending, or spending by foreigners on the country’s exports) that causes it.
It is not limited to a solely domestic spending increase, nor is it limited to a government policy.
So the theory is that if the government pumps money into the system via a stimulus package, people will spend more, ultimately increasing GDP/GNP.
The theory is that if anyone – foreign or domestic, public or private- pumps more money into the system, independent (autonomous, exogenous) of that system, it will have a multiplier effect.
In an economic model, an exogenous change is one that comes from outside the model and is unexplained by the model. …Put another way, an exogenous change involves an alteration of a variable that is autonomous, i.e., unaffected by the workings of the model.
link to en.wikipedia.org
US aid to Israel is, economically speaking, exogenous to the Israeli economy.
I just realized that my earlier post seems to have lost the link to the blockquoted cite:
link to en.wikipedia.org
My apologies.
You have a disgustingly narrow way of reading the multplier effect, hophmi–you’ve have not digested the combination of comments on this thread yet. Here’s a bit more to integrate with those comments–from IfAmericansOnly Knew:
“Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”
- John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”
* The source for US military aid to Israel during Fiscal Year 2011 is the Congressional Research Service’s “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” written by Jeremy M. Sharp, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs, updated September 16, 2010. According to this report, the Obama Administration requested $3 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) for Israel for the fiscal year 2011.
Over the last 20 years, the U.S. has been slowly phasing out economic aid to Israel and gradually replacing it with increased military aid. Beginning in 2007, the U.S. has increased military aid by $150 million each year. By FY2012, we will be sending Israel $3.09 billion a year (or an average of $8.5 million a day) and will continue to provide military aid at that level through 2018. U.S. tax dollars are subsidizing one of the most powerful foreign militaries. According to the CRS report, “[current U.S. military aid] grants to Israel represent 18.2% of the overall Israeli defense budget.”
Contrary to ordinary U.S. policy, Israel has been and continues to be allowed to use approximately 25% of this military aid to purchase equipment from Israeli manufacturers. According to CRS, “no other recipient of U.S. military assistance has been granted this benefit.” Thanks in part to this indirect U.S. subsidy, Israel’s arms industry has become one of the strongest in the world. “Between 2001 an 2008, it was the 7th largest arms supplier to the world with sales worth a total of 9.9 billion.”
In addition to military aid, the United States continues to provide Israel with additional aid and benefits. The numbers are not yet available for FY2009, but are likely to be significant.
By all accounts the United States has given more money to Israel than to any other country. The Congressional Research Service’s conservative estimate of total cumulative US aid to Israel (not adjusted for inflation) from 1949 through 2010 is $109.001 billion.
A November 2008 Washington Report article “A Conservative Estimate of Total Direct U.S. Aid to Israel: $114 Billion,” by Shirl McArthur, puts the cumulative total even higher.
According to McArthur, “[T]he indirect or consequential costs to the American taxpayer as a result of Washington’s blind support for Israel exceed by many times the amount of direct U.S. aid to Israel. Some of these ‘indirect or consequential’ costs would include the costs to U.S. manufacturers of the Arab boycott, the costs to U.S. companies and consumers of the Arab oil embargo and consequent soaring oil prices as a result of U.S. support for Israel in the 1973 war, and the costs of U.S. unilateral economic sanctions on Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria. (For a discussion of these larger costs, see ‘The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion,’ by the late Thomas R. Stauffer, June 2003 Washington Report, p. 20.)”
I should also add that the US aid to Israel comes without the short or long term negative effects on the Israeli economy that can happen when the US government initiates a domestic stimulus program. The short term possible negatives on the domestic front are an increase in interest rates since the US government, by borrowing, increases the demand for money, thus possibly increasing interest rates. The longer term effects have to do with the continual deficit spending over the long term.
Again, US spending and borrowing, while they could have negative economic repercussions domestically, both short and long term, have neither of these possible negative repercussions on the Israeli economy. However, if the Israeli government initiated a domestic stimulus program, the Israeli economy could be subject to both of these potential negatives.
“Senor lays the credit for building a class of entrepreneurs at the feet of the IDF….”
Gee, kinda rude of him not to mention the Mossad here. After all unless I’m mistaken our FBI has said that Israel seems to run one of the most aggressive if not indeed the most aggressive program of industrial espionage going against the U.S., thus probably run by the Mossad. And if they’re running same against the U.S., one can only wonder at the size of the program directed against others too.
Senor might also be wrong to be calling it a “class of entrepreneurs” as well given the possibility the class he’s talking about would almost certain seem to contain a goodly number of what amounts to plagiarists.
” geopolitical expert” my ass. anyone following the provisional authority in iraq know senor was the top pr hack for the war. he was in charge of designing the cute news stories and funneling them to the small hometown paper across the country about painiting schools and such. started out @ fox news.
why does israel have free reign to run their propaganda campaign for a whole week on campuses all across the nation? does china get a week too? or france?
Considering the difficulty students had in finding out Senor’s history,
excuse me? he’s very well known. save the right rightweb homepage link as well as sourcewatch. then they’ll be no more excuse for not knowing who famous rightwing neocon hacks are in the future.
good report btw.
Or Iran? (tee hee)
I can think of a whole list of political/economic/military “innovations” from Israel:
- Innovative urban planning that siphons all natural resources to one sector of the population and away from the other and brings private homes down on their owners’ heads (what would be call that, “destruction for construction?” “destruction for the public good?”)
- Innovative wall construction methods that destroy the livelihoods of entire families and towns, not to mention orchards of ancient fruit trees and other crops
- Innovative border crossing technologies (!) – here, we have such a long list, but we could start with the “no human contact” steel corridors that hauntingly “sterilize” the Gaza crossings
- Innovative taxation policies that allow governments to tax individuals from occupied areas (???) and then hang on to the funds raised as blackmail punishment over the hapless authority that is supposed to administer that area
- Innovative political management strategies that successfully detail democratic election results by imprisoning enough legitimately chosen lawmakers to destroy the possibility of legislating
- Innovative weapons – here the list is soooo long. A few of the most noteworthy recent designs: Drones that enable 19-year-olds to kill from a distance without ever seeing or knowing what damage they inflicted; weapons delivery systems that shower entire civilian populations with white phosphorus, ensuring a generation of deadly maladies will continue to spring forth, damaging DNA with god knows what type of grotesque long-term consequences; and on, and on, and on….
Any others?
any others? innovation in ‘longterm ethnic cleansing human laboratory’ , ‘slo mo ethnic cleansing coupled w/well greased hasbara to make it look like it’s in a constant state of reaction’ or something like that.
“Tactics to portray and conduct aggressive, offensive maneuvers as innocent, reactive, self-protective defense…?” They have definitely created and mastered this art to perfection – until folks figure out the formula, and then it gets old real quick.
You know, thinking about it, this event is like a microcosm of all that is wrong with our political system today… for starters, why is a former spokesperson for the US government being featured as part of “Israel Week” to begin with? Isn’t that just a little screwed up? But in today’s world, where Israel and the US government appear to have morphed into one and the same entity (USrael?), we even forget to notice that this is odd.
Not to mention the fact, as annie pointed out above, that Israel Week even is allowed on a university campus…. I wonder if the talk allowed a free and spirited debate afterwards, eh? My bet is that the answer is no, despite this taking place in a university campus (supposed to be the epidome of free speech) in a country that was founded to allow for free speech…
bijou,,, astounding comment. thinking about it is like a microchasm
Anyone interested in learning about Israel’s “economic miracle” should read Grant Smith’s Spy Trade: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy
boian boianov, while the 1.6 million dollar figure for the ‘new media warriors’ is impressive as Jillian Kestler-D’Amours writing for Electronic Intifada points out in your link, i think you could be mistaking the source of funds for senor’s efforts. the 1.6 mil is ” to train more than a hundred Israeli “media warriors,” who would use social media tools to disseminate Israeli propaganda to audiences around the world.” ie: training bloggers and social network people, facebook, twitter etc.
i think it is more likely the funds for senor come out of the larger effort alex writes about here.
something tells me 6 million is the lowball. i would not be surprised if the culmative figure of all the groups in israel, US, israel project, the goi and more amounts to at least 20 million. minimum.
“the only two traits that all Israelis share—a “common prayer book and history of persecution”
How many of the American immigrants to Israel, and how many of the Israelis who were born there, have suffered any persecution at all?
“—supposedly a testament to Israel’s commitment to pluralism, but completely overlooking one in five Israelis who are Arab. ”
Persecution for them, but not the common prayer book.
If this story is true, here’s another source of Israel’s “economic miracle”. Supplying mercenaries for Ghaddafi.
link to presstv.ir
Israel piece week. Israel piece month. Israel piece year. Israel piece era.
Israel preys for piece.