Why I admire Israel - from a Syrian...

Now, this is the type of leadership that Syria deserves...

It is said that approximately one third of all scientific Nobel prize winners are Jewish. The ratio is mind boggling. One third comes from a universe of 15 millions Jews and the remainder two-thirds from the much larger pool of 6 billion-plus people. Arabs (mostly Egyptians) have two or three Nobel Peace and Literature Prizes (From a pool of 350 million people) but no Arab has ever won a Nobel in sciences be it chemistry, physics, or medicine. Any argument here as to why Israel is so important to the region?

The assertion made today by the likes of the ignorant Ahmadinajead, who aspires to wipe Israel off the map, and the violent Hamas, some members of which covet throwing the Jews to the sea, reminds me of the story of two factories built side-by-side. One is very successful and its employees take a good paycheck and the other is not so successful and its employees are economically deprived. The manager of the not-so-successful factory spends all his time striving to destroy the successful factory when he in fact should be spending his time learning and imitating the successful factory for his people to luxuriate in similar prosperity. If some of the Palestinians are not willing to learn (Many do want to imitate the success of the factory next door but are not given the chance to express their views or to be elevated to positions of power), we Syrians want to learn and imitate.

James A. Baldwin said: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” To me, any dispute over shared lands is secondary to bringing prosperity to my people.