There are more Israeli companies on the Nasdaq than any other country except the United States.

Israeli companies excel in computer development, medical technology and mostly currently green technologies. For Israel becoming oil independent is more than an economic objective, it is a matter of national security. The same objective is quickly becoming true for the United States.

While there are many cultural and political similarities between the two nations there is one less obvious, but more critical similarity: both are nations of immigrants.

While the Palestinian refugees have been showered with sympathy and aid (largely by the United States and Israel), the world has ignored the equal number of Jewish refugees who were expelled from the surrounding Arab nations, having billions of dollars of their property and wealth confiscated. Iraq was a Jewish population center since the destruction of the first Temple, a thousand years before there was a Muslim anywhere, but they were expelled after the 1948 War of Israeli Independence. Israel absorbed these refugees and continues to absorb them from Ethiopia, Russia and other nations.

The spirit that drove these people to create a new life from scratch is the same spirit that drives Israel’s entreprenurial activity. A Russian scientist that immigrated to the United States, had a son with a gift of mathematics that started one of America’s biggest successes, Google. Sergey Brin was born in Russia, but he succeeded in the United States.

The United States and Israel are filled with such success stories with a disproportionate amount having immigrant roots. The Palestinian refugees continue to generate poverty and hatred in spite of the huge oil profits and vast land mass that the Arab countires have that they refuse to deploy to help their brethren.

It is important that as we seek solutions to our current immigrant problems that we do not lose that spirit that has been critical to our success.

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