 |
Build the economy in Israel, Fostering trade with Israel, Fostering investment in Jewish Businesses
"by HASHKEM your New Jewish Agency"
|
|
The phenomenon of extensive investment in Israel by multinational corporations presents a renewal of a problem of immediate Jewish concern, especially to Israelis. It goes back well before the founding of the state and it is not specifically an Israeli concern. Jews start businesses, build industries and, in the end, sell to non-Jews and the business or industry ceases to be a Jewish community asset.
Dodge Brothers Motors was an independent car manufacturer until sometime in the 1920’s. It was started and built up by 5 Jewish brothers. The original Dodge emblem was a Jewish star on a purple background in a circle with wings. Around the circle it said “Dodge Bros.”. The 5 brothers went out to a speakeasy one night during Prohibition and were served tainted liquor. Within a week all 5 were dead. The estate had no one who knew how to run a motor company and did not know what to do with it. In the end, it was sold to Chrysler Motors. Chrysler Motors never hired a Jew in an executive capacity until the late 1950’s, some 35 years later. What happened in this story is very typical of the phenomenon, albeit the way in which it happened is very bizarre. Jews, who obviously had a lot of Jewish pride, built a business which was bought by non-Jews and never benefited the Jewish people again. No donations to Jewish caused or Jewish philanthropies and another door of opportunity closed to Jews.
Another example from a different context: “MiG” is the name of a famous series of fighter aircraft. The name “MiG” is for Mikoyan-Gurevich, two aerospace engineers, both geniuses. Mikoyan was an Armenian. Gurevich was a Jew. Together, they created a Russian airplane and an entire aerospace industry. Who has MiG today? Not the Armenians and not the Jews. The Russians have it all. For the Armenians, there is compensation, theoretically, in Soviet development projects in Armenia , which the Armenians did not build, but which are left in the hands of the Armenians. These things may or may not come out even. But what are the Jews left with? A few Jewish communal buildings and some Yiddish street signs in Birobidzhan. That’s all.
We Jews have no national economy except in Israel and it's being sold, at this very moment, to multinationals. Japanese companies have quietly bought many Israeli companies purely for the technology, dismantled the company property and sent it to Japan . Intel is aggressively and voraciously buying companies, especially high tech start-ups. This is not to say that Intel is sinister, necessarily, or that what the Japanese are doing is wrong. The point is that decisions of deep concern to the Israeli economy will be made for Israel , not by Israel or even by Israelis.
In fact, it would be small exaggeration at most to say that the goal of every Israeli start-up is to go to America and be sold on the American market. The pattern is overwhelmingly regular, nearly universal: the Israeli entrepreneur creates a Delaware corporation, which is sold the Israeli technology and eventually goes IPO or sells to an American corporation. The transaction is in the form of an exchange of shares between two Delaware corporations in which the Israeli entrepreneurs are left with a small minority share of the company, typically less than 5%, and a miniscule fraction of the venture capital company. The management team brought in by the venture capital company takes total control of the company. Any money that changes hands goes into the Delaware bank account of the Israeli-owned Delaware corporation and the Israeli entrepreneurs who developed the technology are kept on in the technical department to develop new technology. Nothing remains in Israel ; nothing comes back to Israel . Sell-out of Israeli business is worse than in the Diaspora. In the Diaspora, the seller and his family remain and continue, fully part of the Jewish community. But in a sale of an Israeli business, everything goes to America : the people, the technology, the business, the money. Everything.
Here is a precedent to consider. After the fall of Communism, Bulgaria plunged fully into the new capitalist era: decontrol, privatization of industry and foreign investment. Foreign companies came into Bulgaria , bought up the most viable industries and moved them out of Bulgaria , much the same as described above, or simply closed them in order to eliminate the competition from Bulgaria . They nearly bankrupted Bulgaria and set her back decades developmentally. What is Bulgaria to do now? The answer globalization gives is that Bulgaria should get more foreign investment to develop the Bulgarian economy as a collection of subsidiaries of multinational conglomerates. What are Bulgarians to do? Bulgarians should be free to move to follow the market. That is to say, they should be free to cease being Bulgarians in their own country, which will eventually be transformed, in the multinational corporate image. For Israelis, that means the solution is to cease being a free people in our own land and to go back into exile among the nations. For us, that means national suicide. It should mean that for Bulgarians also.
In fact, it should mean that for everyone. Consider, for example, fishing societies and the impact of the global corporate economy on their future. Cultures built around economies of small fishermen living in great intimacy with the sea must look with inquietude upon fleets of giant fishing ships, much akin to factories, which can quickly over-fish local stocks and move on to distant waters, leaving massive social dislocation in their wake. Coastal societies face the radical alteration or even destruction of ocean resources upon which their national livelihood and traditional ways of life depend. Their lives can be altered just as radically and as quickly in that manner as by undersea mining or drilling with its attendant pollution, noise and a massive operation suddenly requiring great numbers of service industries on shore, turning the local society into a satellite of the global company.
It may be for just such reasons that Norway voted against membership in the European Community; precisely because it would open its coasts to massive, long-distance trawlers of some of the member states of the community and radically alter Norway and its whole culture and way of life.
It was indeed for similar reasons that the government of Nova Scotia denied permission to explore for oil off the shores of that province, and contested the power of the Canadian Federal Government to grant the permission subsequently (which power was upheld in the Canadian Supreme Court).
The culture of Nova Scotia is one rooted in independent, small fishermen who go out in the morning and return with the day's catch. If a foreign power were to conquer Nova Scotia and forcibly collectivize the fishing industry, transferring families from small coastal villages into large cities, and its fishermen into manufacturing and onto those massive trawlers, transforming small fishermen into industrial workers, what should the world call it but cultural genocide? This would be so even if it were to increase efficiency, free manpower for other more productive work, increase the wealth of the society and provide more food for the world (all of which is doubtful). We should be loath to call it "progress" when accomplished by global corporations.
It is US policy all over the world for the multinational corporations to take control of local economies and, through that, control national policy. It represents the globalization of the manner in which conglomerates subordinate local governments in America : compliance with corporate goals is obtained, in part, by rotating personnel between executive positions in the company and governmental posts. Another strategy for obtaining governmental compliance is the threat of cutback or closure of local facilities in favor of corporate divisions or subsidiaries in other, more “friendly” locations. The implications for Israeli independence are clear and the damage is present and on going.
It cannot be expected, however, that a Jewish businessman, who has built up a business and wants to cash it out, should limit his market for the company to nationalistic Jews only. That would be demanding far too much. The strategic interest of the Jewish people is not the responsibility of the individual businessman alone. What is needed is a mechanism for forming a capital pool, in Jewish hands, to buy control of important businesses in order to keep them in nationalist Jewish hands. It could be in the form of a holding company or a mutual fund but it would not operate purely for profit, since businesses would not be for sale to the highest bidder; only “in the family”. That's legal and honorable, as long as it's clear and up front.
One who believes, with Charles Wilson, that “What’s good for General Motors is good for America ” will be comfortable with globalization: What’s good for General Motors and Siemens and British Petroleum and Mitsubishi, etc. is good for the whole world. Even if one is comfortable with that proposition, however, we know that what applies to “everyone” does not necessarily include the Jews. Jewish survival and Israeli independence cannot depend on the good will of the nations of the world.
To carry out such an ambitious undertaking requires major backers willing to finance it, to serve on the board and to be active in its promotion. We seek such backers and we wish to sign on to carry out the purpose.
Professor J.P. Golbert, J.D. Aryeh Zelasko
"HASHKEM YISRAEL-WAKE UP ISRAEL"
AND TAKE CONTROL OF OUR DESTINY
Copyright © HASHKEM, A California Corporation 2007
Page last updated 05 Tammuz 5767 - 20 June 2007
|
