Like others from time to time, a writer recently asked in an op-ed, “Why does CT have $95 million invested in Israel?” The answer is obvious: Israel is the “Start-up nation” whose companies, listed by the writer in his op-ed, bring high returns for the benefit of Connecticut.
Take, for example, Zim Integrated Shipping, that last year produced a 23% return on investment, which Simply Wall St. called: “[A] great return…even better than the shipping industry average of 11%.”
Or look at Cellebrite Digital Intelligence, whose “annual recurring revenue [is] up 26% year-over-year.”
Or, Matrix IT, which has an ROE [Return on Equity] of 22% instead of the industry average of 16% that, according to Simply Wall St., “has contributed to the impressive growth seen in earnings.”
Or, Elbit Systems Ltd., whose “investors will be pleased with their favorable 81% return over the last three years.”
It’s no surprise, therefore, that the Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development said in 2022 after a Connecticut economic development mission to Israel that he is “optimistic about the future of the Connecticut-Israel economic relationship.” Retired public employees, like teachers and firefighters for instance, who depend on Connecticut pensions similarly recognize the benefit of Connecticut’s relationship with Israel.
The writer who asked the question, however, seems to think that people’s economic future should be dictated not by financial reality but by the political prejudices of Israel-haters. To support his position, he cites anti-Israel reports from notorious Israel-bashers like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Jewish Voice for Peace.
NGO-Monitor exposed Amnesty International as publishing scurrilous accusations which were never based on first-hand research, claims that were “fundamentally flawed, using lies, distortions, omissions, and egregious double standards to construct a fraudulent and libelous narrative of Israeli cruelty.”
Human Rights Watch was condemned as being biased against Israel by no less an authority than one of its founders, Robert Bernstein, who accused the organization of focusing on Israel while largely ignoring human rights abuses by Middle Eastern “authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records.”
The so-called Jewish Voice for Peace (which is neither Jewish nor for peace) has been listed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) among the ten top anti-Israel groups that are “the worst of the worst,” fixated on “delegitimizing Israel.” The writer admits that he’s a member.
I advise the writer next time to cite some unbiased sources. If he expects to be believed, his accusations should be credible. For example, he needs to explain how Israel can be an apartheid state when Muslim Druze and Circassian citizens serve at the forefront of Israeli defense.
Druze Major General Ghassan Alian commands Government Activities in the Territories. Arabs, who comprise about one-fifth of Israel’s citizens, receive nearly half of all medical licenses. The allegation of apartheid is not only untrue but almost silly.
The writer does have a point, though, in describing the dreadful conditions in Gaza both for Palestinian civilians and for the Israeli fighting men and women who were dragged into this awful war by Hamas’ savage atrocities. He makes a brief obligatory reference to these atrocities and then dismisses them. Instead, he equates the victims of the atrocities with the victims of war, and that’s where he makes a huge moral error.
The Palestinian civilians are the accidental casualties of war, and despite the fact that they’re an enemy population, Israel has been doing its best to safeguard them as much as possible by warning them of military action, handing out maps and directions to relatively safer areas, and providing humanitarian aid to the enemy’s civilian population for the first time in all military history.
The Israeli civilians murdered by Hamas, however, were not accidental. These slaughtered Jewish families were deliberately targeted, as recorded and filmed by Hamas. These Jewish young girls and men were deliberately raped and mutilated and murdered. These Jewish babies were deliberately burned to death. There is no equation possible here, no matter how hard the writer tries to disregard this deliberate savagery.
What’s conspicuously missing in the op-ed is the condemnation of Hamas for refusing to live peacefully with Israel, for insisting on destroying Israel and world Jewry (see the Hamas Charter), for stealing humanitarian aid from Gazan civilians, for brainwashing Palestinian children into becoming suicide bombers and child soldiers, for starting this war, and for refusing to end it by surrendering and thus saving their people.
Mark Fishman of New Haven is President of PRIMER-Connecticut, Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting.