Start-up Nation

9. Alon Tal, Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 219.

10. Alon Tal, “National Report of Israel, Years 2003–2005, to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD),” July 2006, http://www.unccd.int/cop/reports/otheraffected/national/2006/israel-eng.pdf.

11. Dina Kraft, “From Far Beneath the Israeli Desert, Water Sustains a Fertile Enterprise,” New York Times, January 2, 2007.

12. Information for this passage comes from Web sites of the Weizmann Institute, Yatir Forest Research Group, http://www.weizman.ac.il/ESER/People/Yakir/YATIR/Yatir.htm, and the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael/Jewish National Fund, http://www.kkl.org.il/kkl/english/main_subject/globalwarming/israeli%20research%20has%20worldwide%20implications.x.

13. Reut Institute, “Generating a Socio-economic Leapfrog,” February 14, 2008, http://reut-institute.org/data/uploads/PDFVer/20080218%20-%20%20Hausman%27s%20main%20issues-%20 English.pdf.

14. Reut Institute, “Israel 15 Vision,” http://www.reut-institute.org/event.aspx?EventId=6.

15. Information in this passage is from Yakir Plessner, The Political Economy of Israel: From Ideology to Stagnation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 11–31.

16. Ibid., p. 288.

17. David Rosenberg, “Inflation—the Rise and Fall,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site, January 2001, http://www.mfa.gov.il.

18. CNNMoney.com, “Best Places to Do Business in the Wired World,” http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0708/gallery.roadwarriorsspecial.biz2/11.html.

19. Orna Yefet, “McDonalds,” Yediot Ahronot, October 29, 2006.

CHAPTER 7.

Immigration: The Google Guys  Challenge

1. Interview with Shlomo Molla, member of Knesset, Kadima Party, March 2009.

2. This covert rescue effort was aided by the Central Intelligence Agency, local mercenaries, and even Sudanese security officials. It was kept a secret largely for political reasons—in order to shield Sudan from any blowback from the Arab countries that would criticize the government for ostensibly aiding Israel. When the story of the airlift broke prematurely, the Arab countries pressured Sudan to stop the airlift, which it did. This left one thousand Ethiopian Jews stranded until U.S.-led Operation Joshua evacuated them to Israel a few months later.

3. Leon Wieseltier, “Brothers and Keepers: Black Jews and the Meaning of Zionism.”

4. Joel Brinkley, “Ethiopian Jews and Israelis Exult as Airlift Is Completed,” New York Times, May 26, 1991.

5. David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, The Google Story (New York: Delacorte, 2005), p. 15.

6. Interview with Natan Sharansky, chairman and distinguished fellow, Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, Shalem Center, and founder of Yisrael B’Aliya, May 2008.

7. Interview with David McWilliams, Irish economist and author of The Pope’s Children, March 2009.

8. Interview with Erel Margalit, founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), May 2008.

9. Interview with Reuven Agassi, December 2008.

10. While the new law was already rigid, the U.S. State Department directed consular officers overseas to become even stricter in their application of the “public charge” provision of immigration law. A public charge is someone unable to support himself or his family. At the beginning of the Great Depression, in response to a public outcry for tougher immigration laws, overseas consuls were told to expand the interpretation of the “public charge clause” to prohibit admission to immigrants who just might become public charges. The designation became a completely speculative process.

11. David Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938–1941 (New York: Pantheon, 1985), p. x.

12. Some scholars now believe that the lack of a safe haven for Jews seeking to leave Germany and other soon-to-be-occupied Nazi territories became an important factor in Nazi plans to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. “The overall picture clearly shows that the original [Nazi] policy was to force the Jews to leave,” says David Wyman. “The shift to extermination came only after the emigration method had failed, a failure in large part due to lack of countries open to refugees.” From Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938–1941 (New York: Pantheon, 1985), p. 35.