The Israel Test
by George Gilder
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Book Summary Information
Author: George GilderEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-07-22
ISBN: 0980076358
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Richard Vigilante Books
Book Reviews of The Israel Test
Book Review: A Compelling Economic Critique of Anti-semitism
Summary: 4 Stars
In his satirical National Brotherhood Week, Tom Lehrer sings "Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics, And the Catholics hate the Protestants, And the Hindus hate the Moslems, And everybody hates the Jews.
Why does everybody hate the Jews? Perhaps Shakespeare had the answer in Shylock, the ultimate capitalist entrepreneur. "I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?" So says Shylock, the Merchant of Venice. Venice's greatness was due to its willingness to admit the Jews, kicked out of Spain and reviled around the world. Everybody hates the Jews, says Gilder, because they are the world's greatest and most creative inventors and entrepreneurs.
From page one of Gilder's book: "The real issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous "fairness," between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it." Israel defines a line of demarcation. On the one side...are those who see capitalism as a zero-sum game in which success comes at the expense of the poor and the environment...On the other side are those who see the genius and the good fortune of some as a source of wealth and opportunity for all...The enviers hate Israel.
Gilder makes the point that the stateless Jews were vilified just as many other entrepreneurial ethnic minorities around the world: the Kikuyu in Kenya, the Ibo and Yoruba in Nigeria, the Lebanese in Ghana, the Chinese in Indonesia, and Koreans in US black ghettos. I am not sure, however, that Gilder is correct about this. Anti-Semitism in Europe, leading up to the Holocaust, was based on the extreme hatred of the Jews promulgated by the Catholic Church for reasons having to do with religion, not economics. However, Gilder quotes strategically from Hitler's Mein Kampf: The Jew's "commercial cunning...made him superior in this field to the Aryans [and turned] finance and trade [into] his complete monopoly...The Jew...organized capitalist methods of exploitation to their ultimate degree of efficiency."
The Israel Test is a "what side are you on?" book. Gilder challenges the reader to choose between excellence and mindless leveling. He closes Chapter One with "Which side are you on?, and Chapter three with "Are you an exponent of excellence and accomplishment or of a leveling creed of troglodytic frenzy and hatred?" His chapter on the economic growth of Israel after it shed its socialist culture (Zionism and socialism were intimately linked in the birth of Israel), beginning in 1985 with the influx of Russian Jewish anti-Communists and American entrepreneurs, is enlightening and basically correct. His chapter on the role of European Jews who fled from Hitler to form an important part of the scientific backbone of the United States in World War II is quite excellent. Gilder's personal statement at the end of the book is tender and charming, a refreshing contrast to Gilder's tendency to talk like a right-wing no-nothing talk show host.
I suspect that Gilder is correct in attributing left-wing criticism of Israel to left-liberal ambivalence concerning market competition and innovation. However, I believe he is wrong concerning Arab and Muslim hatred of Israel. This hatred is clearly religious and ethnic. However, Gilder's message is much more important for the Arab countries than it is for us Americans. The hatred of competition, scientific learning, and the entrepreneurial spirit in the Arab countries (which is extremely strong, accounting for the virtual economic stagnation of virtually every Arab country) is not based on European left-right political philosophies, but rather on the intensely family-oriented, indeed patriarchal, structure of these societies. In the forefront of liberation in these countries, I believe, will be women fighting for gender equality and urban youth wanting a piece of the Western education and entertainment action.
Which side am I on? The answer is: both. Gilder is right to glorify (yes, glorify) the benefits of market competition and the ethic of innovation that it supports. Even European social democracy, I believe, is excessively bureaucratic and hostile to innovation; Europe will be eclipsed by China, India, and the US in the coming decades unless it sheds it corporatism. Similarly, Third World countries who stress leveling as opposed to excellence (even if they have lots of oil) will remain mired in poverty. Gilder is wrong, however, in ignoring poverty and the plight of the losers in the competitive struggle. In the good society, there will not be poverty. No poverty, period. The point is to implement policies that permit all citizens to develop their personal capacities, not just those who come from comfortable families. The idea this will just happen through market competition is not in the least plausible. The crazy right just doesn't seem to understand this simple point.
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