Start-up Nation (34 page)

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.

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.

13
. In 1939, the British government created a ceiling of 10,000 Jewish immigrants per year into Palestine, with an additional
allotment of 25,000 possible entries. It is true that in 1945, President Harry Truman requested a U.S. government investigation
of treatment of Jewish displaced persons, many of whom were in facilities overseen by the U.S. Army. “The resulting report
chronicled shocking mistreatment of the already abused refugees and recommended that the gates of Palestine be opened wide
for resettlement,” writes Leonard Dinnerstein in
America and the Survivors of the Holocaust
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). After several unsuccessful attempts to persuade Great Britain to admit the Jews
into Palestine, Truman asked Congress to pass a law to bring a number of these refugees to the States.

While Truman’s bill became law in 1948, the year of Israel’s founding, a group of legislators, led by Nevada senator Pat McCarran,
manipulated the drafting of the bill’s language so that it actually had the effect of discriminating against Eastern European
Jews. Ultimately, historian Leonard Dinnerstein estimates, only about 16 percent of those issued visas as displaced persons
between July 1948 and June 1952 were Jewish. “Thus McCarran’s numerous tricks and ploys were effective,” notes Dinnerstein.
“Jews who might otherwise have chosen the United States as their place of resettlement went to Israel.”

14
. The document can be found at
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary .org/jsource/History/Dec_of_Indep.html
.

15
. Interview with David McWilliams, Irish economist and author of
The Pope’s Children
, March 2009.

16
. This is not to suggest that there are not ethnic tensions among this very diverse country. Deep friction erupted between European
Holocaust refugees and Jews from the Arab world as far back as the state’s founding. Sammy Smooha, today a world-renowned
sociologist at the University of Haifa, was, like Reuven Agassi, an Iraqi Jewish immigrant who spent part of his childhood
in a transit tent. “We were told not to speak Arabic, but we didn’t know Hebrew. Everything was strange. My father went from
being a railroad official in Baghdad to an unskilled nobody. We suffered a terrible loss of identity. Looking back, I’d call
it cultural repression. Behind their lofty ideals of ‘one people,’ they [the Jews of European origin] were acting superior,
paternalistic.” Quoted in Donna Rosenthal,
The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land
(New York: Free Press, 2005), p. 116.

1
. Fred Vogelstein, “The Cisco Kid Rides Again,” Fortune, July 26, 2004;
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/07/26/377145/index.htm
; and interview with Michael Laor, founder of Cisco Systems Development Center in Israel, February
2009.

2
. Marguerite Reardon, “Cisco Router Makes Guinness World Records,” July 1, 2004,
CNET
News
,
http://news.cnet.com/Cisco-router -makes-Guinness-World-Records/2100-1033_3-5254291.html
?tag=nefd .top; retrieved January
2009.

3
. Vogelstein, “The Cisco Kid Rides Again.”

4
. Marguerite Reardon, “Cisco Sees Momentum in Sales of Key Router,”
TechRepublic
, December 6, 2004,
http://articles.techrepublic
.com.com/5100-22_11-5479086.html
; and Cisco, press release, “Growth of Video Service Delivery Drives Sales of Cisco CRS-1,
the World’s Most Powerful Routing Platform, to Double in Nine Months,” April 1, 2008,
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_040108c.html
.

5
. Interview with Yoav Samet, Cisco’s corporate business development manager in Israel, Central/Eastern Europe, and Russia/
CIS
, January 2009.

6
. Interview with Yoav Samet.

7
. Richard Devane, “The Dynamics of Diaspora Networks: Lessons of Experience,” in
Diaspora Networks and the International Migration
Skills
, edited by Yevgeny Kuznetsov (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Publications, 2006), pp. 59–67. The quote is from p. 60.

8
. Jenny Johnston, “The New Argonauts: An Interview with AnnaLee Saxenian,” July 2006,
GBN
Global Business Network,
http://thenewar gonauts.com/GBNinterview.pdf
?aid=37652.

9
. The information in this passage is drawn from Anthony David,
The Sky Is the Limit: Al Schwimmer, the Founder of the Israeli
Aircraft Industry
(Tel Aviv: Schocken Books, 2008; in Hebrew); and the interview with Shimon Peres. Regarding the accounts
of Peres and Schwimmer flying over the Arctic tundra and Schwimmer’s meeting with Ben-Gurion in the United States, see also
Shimon Peres,
David’s Sling
(New York: Random House, 1970).

1
. Interview with Yoelle Maarek, former director, Google’s R & D Center in Haifa, Israel, January 2009.

2
. Joel Leyden, “Microsoft Bill Gates Takes Google, Terrorism War to Israel,” Israel News Agency, 2006,
http://www.israelnewsagency.com/microsoftgoogleisraelseo581030.html
;
retrieved November 2008.

3
. Quote from a transcript of a documentary film interview conducted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
in 2007, provided to the authors.

4
. Dan Senor is an investor in Vringo.

5
. Interview with Alice Schroeder, author of
The Snowball
, 2008.

6
. Uzi Rubin, “Hizballah’s Rocket Campaign Against Northern Israel: A Preliminary Report,” Jerusalem Issue Brief, vol. 6, no.
10 (August 31, 2006),
http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief006-10.htm
.

7
. Interview with Eitan Wertheimer, chairman of the board of Iscar, January 2009.

8
. Dov Frohman with Robert Howard,
Leadership the Hard Way: Why Leadership Can’t Be Taught—and How You Can Learn It Anyway
(San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), pp. 1–16. All quotes from Frohman in this passage come from this book.

9
. Interviews in this passage with senior Intel executive were on background, December 2008.

10
. Interview with Eitan Wertheimer.

1
. Jennifer Friedlin, “Woman on a Mission,”
Jerusalem Post
, April 20, 1997.

2
. Interview with Orna Berry, partner in Gemini Israel Funds, and chairperson of several Gemini portfolio companies, January
2009.

3
. Interview with Jon Medved,
CEO
and board member, Vringo, May 2008.

4
. Interview with Yigal Erlich, founder, chairman, and managing partner of the Yozma Group, May 2008.

5
. Gil Avnimelech and Morris Tuebal, “Venture Capital Policy in Israel: A Comparative Analysis and Lessons for Other Countries,”
research paper, Hebrew University School of Business Administration and School of Economics, October 2002, p. 17.

6
. The information about BIRD’s founding is from an interview with Ed Mlavsky, chairman and founding partner of Gemini Israel
Funds, December 2008.

7
.
BIRD
(Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation), “
BIRD
Foundation to Invest $9 Million in 12 Advanced Development Projects in Life Sciences, Energy, Communications, Software and
Nanotechnology,”
http://www.birdf.com/_Uploads/255BOG08PREng.pdf
.

8
. Dan Breznitz,
Innovation of the State
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 60.

9
. Ed Mlavsky in a PowerPoint slide presentation to Wharton
MBA
students, 2008.

10
. Interview with Jon Medved.

11
. Interview with Yigal Erlich.

12
. Ibid.

13
. Interview with Orna Berry.

14
. Yossi Sela, managing partner, Gemini Venture Funds,
http://www.gemini.co.il/?p=TeamMember&CategoryID=161&MemberId=197
.

15
. Interview with Erel Margalit.

16
. David McWilliams, “Ireland Inc. Gets Innovated,”
Sunday Business Post On-Line
, December 21, 2008,
http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=DAVID+McWilliams-qqqs=commentandanalysis-qqqid=38312-qqqx=1.asp
; retrieved January 2009.

17
. Interview with Tal Keinan, cofounder of KCPS, May and December 2008.

18
. Interview with Ron Dermer, former economic attaché, Embassy of Israel in United States, and senior adviser to Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, September 2008.

19
. Interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, December 2008.

Epigraph: Quoted in Julie Ball, “Israel’s Booming Hi-Tech Industry,”
BBC News
, October 6, 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7654780.stm
; retrieved January 2009.

1
. John Kao,
Innovation Nation
(New York: Free Press, 2007).

2
. Michael Bar-Zohar,
Shimon Peres: The Biography
(New York: Random House, 2007). p. 223. Also Reuters, “Peres Biography: Israel,
France Had Secret Pact to Produce Nuclear Weapons,” May 30, 2007.

3
. Michael M. Laskier, “Israel and Algeria amid French Colonialism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1954–1978,”
Israel Studies
,
June 2, 2001, pp. 1–32,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/israel_studies/v006/6.2laskier.html
; retrieved September 2008.

4
. De Gaulle quoted in Alexis Berg and Dominique Vidal, “De Gaulle’s Lonely Predictions,”
Le Monde Diplomatique
, June 2007,
http://monde
diplo.com/2007/06/10degaulle
; retrieved September, 2008.

5
. Quoted in Berg and Vidal, “De Gaulle’s Lonely Predictions.”

6
. “Israel’s Fugitive Flotilla,”
Time
, January 12, 1970,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942140,00.html
.

7
. Stewart Wilson,
Combat Aircraft Since 1945
(Fyshwick, Australia: Aerospace Publications, 2000), p. 77.

8
. Ruud Deurenberg, “Israel Aircraft Industries and Lavi,”
Jewish Virtual Library
, January 26, 2009,
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/lavi.html
.