Israel’s Contributions to the World

Helen Davis and Douglas Davis’s book, beautifully constructed and written, provides a remarkable compilation of the people, products and processes that Israel has contributed to the technologies and systems of the twenty-first century world, working in the smallest of countries in the harshest of conditions.

The groundwork for all Israel’s extraordinary innovation was laid by Israel’s founders, who understood that Israel had virtually no raw materials and recognized at an early stage in the life of the new state the urgent need to develop Israel’s natural “brain” resources.

Today, more than one hundred thousand students are enrolled in Israel’s universities, with about 21 percent of all undergraduate students and 50 percent of all doctoral candidates specializing in the sciences or medicines. . . .

Proportionately, Israel has more university graduates — and particularly more engineers — than any other country on earth (135 per thousand engineers, compared to 85 per thousand in the United States). . .  The consequence is that Israel has the largest concentration of high-tech companies outside Silicon Valley.

The book contains chapter after chapter of Israeli contributions, such as these advancements in the high-tech super-highway:

Chances are that your computer has been thoroughly checked by Israel’s Orbotech software systems and that it is run on Pentium MMX or Centrino technology designed at Intel’s laboratories in Israel.  Most of the technology for the Microsoft Windows NT operating system was developed at Microsoft’s R&D facility in Israel, while IBM’s Haifa research Laboratory has developed cutting-edge storage and retrieval systems and verification technologies.  And all this is protected by firewall technology developed by Israel’s Check Point Software. . . .

And if you have just accessed your voicemail, sent text messages or transmitted pictures through your mobile phone, you were using technologies developed — again in Israel — by Comverse.

The chapters on medical technology, anti-terrorism databases (used by the FBI), desert agriculture, early education systems, protection of endangered species, and other areas are astounding.  Amazing accomplishments. 

Choose life.