Non­fic­tion

The Israel Test

George Gilder
  • Review
By – October 3, 2011

For the belea­guered sup­port­er of Israel, tired of the ever-ris­ing water­line of attack, this book is a wel­come lev­ee. And, as Gilder is about as un-estab­lish­ment Amer­i­can as they come, he pro­duces a book that Jews will find com­fort­ing. In fact, no Jew could have writ­ten such a book as unabashed­ly pos­i­tive as this one about Jews or Israel. 

Gilder’s bona fides are sol­id — he was the pro­tégé of David Rock­e­feller, hav­ing lost his Army Air Force father in World War II. He has a long his­to­ry in invest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, and as a writer on t he mod­ern infor­ma­tion econ­o­my. But, The Israel Test is not sim­ply an encomi­um to the tech­no­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic vital­i­ty of Israel as Sil­i­con Valley’s most effec­tive off­shore invest­ment. The book is noth­ing less than a stark line drawn in the sand: Sup­port Israel and find your­self on the right side of the 500 year lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic march to ever greater free­dom and abun­dance; attack Israel and join the burqa-demand­ing know-noth­ings look­ing to hur­tle the world back into a cramped medieval past. 

Most of the book is made up of pro­files of promi­nent Jew­ish and Israeli thinkers and entre­pre­neurs. And, if you’re look­ing for a brief his­to­ry of Israel’s eco­nom­ic mir­a­cle, you’ll find it here. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the book’s the­sis, as impor­tant as it is rare, is not proven as much as it is argued from its self-evidence.

Jeff Bogursky reads a lot, writes a lit­tle and talks quite a bit. He is a media exec­u­tive and expert in dig­i­tal media.

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