Netanyahu turned around the country back in the mid-90s, when he was elected PM for the first time. Caroline Glick wrote a great article about it. He was under tremendous, continuous attacks from their Left pols and the Media. Avalanches of accusations of all kinds of nonsense, lots of hatred. Glick was making a comparison with the way Donald Trump was treated as President.
It was so bad that he did not run for re-election. At that time, he was a 1 term PM. BUT - along the way, he made important deals with the unions, changed the tax system - and created a strong pro-business atmosphere. Among the ~1 million of Russian Jews there were a great number of highly educated, accomplished people. Also, as the laws wrt business changed, lots of American businesspeople became interested - and made investments AND brought lots of business knowledge and experience.
As a result, within just a few years, Israel changed from a socialist economic backwater, exporting lots of oranges and cheap souvenirs - to a high tech powerhouse, especially in computer sciences and Biotech. Don’t know what’s the situation currently - but for many years, they had the highest number of new companies - IPO’s - second only to the US.
(Some of this info, actually, comes from articles and books by George Gilder).
Anyway, N has been elected again. The guy is anti-socialist and quite remarkable. No wonder Obama is no admirer. |
