Friday, September 29, 2006

Who Are You Rooting For?

For anyone who has trouble picking sides in the ongoing Middle East Conflict, let's step back from the conflict itself and look at some facts about the two sides. What do the two sides do with their relative resources? (From the Zionist Youngster):


Whatever wealth they have is the result of their good fortune (of having oil under their ground) and not of their efforts. Israel, poor in such natural resources, prospers by the brains and the sweat of its people ... This setting up of industry, science and culture by the Zionists predates the independence of Israel by decades, whereas the invented nation calling themselves “Palestinians” have been engaged in nothing but internecine warfare (of the violent kind), the setting up of terrorist training camps, and the maintenance of a poisonous education system ever since gaining land of their own in 1993.Such is the difference between Israel and its enemies ...


Yes, but let's look a bit more at the difference. In 2002, the United Nations Development Program released its report on development in the 22 states of the Arab World. Get a load of these statistics:


  • No Arab country spends more than 0.2 percent of its gross national product on scientific research, and most of that money goes toward salaries. By contrast, the United States spends more than 10 times that amount.
  • No more than 10,000 books were translated into Arabic over the entire past millennium, equivalent to the number translated into Spanish each year.
  • Only 370 industrial patents were issued to people in Arab countries between 1980 and 2000. In South Korea during that same period, 16,000 industrial patents were issued.


Is the answer, then, that Jews are smart, and Arabs are stupid?


Go read the rest at The Astute Bloggers.

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