I always found it a little odd that Israel could claim at the same time that

a) Israel is a great destination for FDI
b) Israel is in constant threat from its neighbours, particularly Iran who will nuke Israel once it obtains nuclear capabilities.

Why would I want to invest in Israel if its leaders claim that Iran will get a nuke any day and attack Israel? As a rational investor I wouldn't want my money going up in a mushroom cloud. One of a or b has to be false or exaggerated.... i'm going to venture on b.

Anyway, it's now official - there's no actual shortage of Holocaust survivors:

Extracts from The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein of the City University of New York, published by Verso in 2000:

'The Israeli Prime Minister's office recently put the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million.' (page 83)

'If 135,000 former Jewish slave laborers are still alive today, some 600,000 must have survived the war. That's at least a half-million more than standard estimates.. If Jews only constituted 20% of the surviving camp population and, as the Holocaust industry implies, 600,000 Jewish inmates survived the war, then fully 3 million inmates in total must have survived. By the Holocaust industry's reckoning, concentration camp conditions couldn't have been that harsh at all; in fact, one must suppose a remarkably high fertility and remarkably low mortality rate.. If, as the Holocaust industry suggests, many hundreds of thousands of Jews survived, the Final Solution couldn't have been so efficient after all ­ exactly what Holocaust deniers argue.' (pp127-8).

'Both my father and my mother were survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps.. One of my father's lifelong friends was a former inmate with him in Auschwitz, a seemingly incorruptible left-wing idealist who on principle refused German compensation after the war. Eventually he became a director of the Israeli Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem. Reluctantly and with genuine disappointment, my father finally admitted that even this man had been corrupted by the Holocaust industry, tailoring his beliefs for power and profit. As the rendering of the Holocaust assumed ever more absurd forms, my mother liked to quote (with intentional irony) Henry Ford: "History is bunk." (p7).

'The Holocaust proved to be the perfect weapon for deflecting criticism of Israel' (p30).

'Much of the literature on Hitler's Final Solution is worthless as scholarship. Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not sheer fraud.' (p 55).

'Given the nonsense that is turned out daily by the Holocaust industry, the wonder is that there are so few skeptics'. (p 68).

'Annual Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust are a national event. All 50 states sponsor commemorations, often in state legislative chambers.. Seven major Holocaust museums dot the American landscape. The centerpiece of this memorialization is the United States Holocaust museum in Washington.. (This) museum's annual budget is $50 million, of which $30 million is federally subsidized.' (p72). (This is in spite of the fact that, as he points out on page 32, per capita Jewish income in the US is almost double that of non-Jews). 'With a reelection campaign looming, Jimmy Carter initiated the (US Holocaust Museum) project to placate Jewish contributors and voters, galled by the president's recognition of the "legitimate rights" of Palestinians.' (p 73).

To conclude:
'The Holocaust may yet turn out to be the "greatest robbery in the history of mankind".. The Holocaust industry has clearly gone berserk.'(p 138-9).
'Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a 'victim' state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable benefits accrue to this specious victimhood ­ in particular, immunity to criticism, however justified. " (p3).

And the only answer in that neighborhood, given the history of the islamic caliphate, the nations there,and in Europe, and Jews on earth back to at LEAST 480 BC (Persia)...(just see Delaney above for a glimpse of why)

DETERRENCE.

It goes like this... a quiet, private, sincere bone chilling message to the heads of certain states ..'if we are attacked in a massive manner IN ANY WAY, say scores of conventional warheads, or worse, the FIRST piece of real estate to be removed from earth will be MECCA, then we have this list of cities...and so sorry, yours is on it'

Now it may be that Tehran CANNOT be deterred, as they cannot be deterred from developing a nuclear weapon.

Therefore for all the reasons listed in this article, SAY GOOD BYE TO TEHRAN.

A progressive-socialist govt in the US's anger at, and withholding resupply from Israel is a very poor second to removing the MULLAHS of Iran (the real target..not Arak etc), and therefore perhaps even Hizballah and HAMAS (in the end) from the future.

Besides, Russia, a nation DEVOID of moral imperative in foreign affairs will have to sell those Kilos, SU-35's and PAK-FA's to SOMEONE after Iran is no longer a viable market, won't they?

Hizballah, according to its own accounts already has missiles that can reach Tel Aviv. As for the idea that Hizballah has the run of ALL of Lebanon to launch its missiles, should really check in with that nations other ethnic groups before claiming that they're going to allow the Shia proxy army of Iran to conduct a war in "Their house".

Second, Israel's strength is in technology, not "tourism, health care tourism, and retail. Israel is currently holds the most foreign owned companies listed on NASDAQ. That's not a flash in the pan, but a locale on par with Silicon Valley.

As for tourism in the Gulf, someone should remind Mr. Bremmer that this past week, tourists were arrested for allegedly risque tweets, while a British couple were arrested for making out on the beach in Dubai. Meanwhile, Yemen is in the middle of a civil war and drought, and we'll pass on the idea of taking an idillic vacation in Saudia Arabia.

But economics is key, and here, it is Israel with the development of intellectual capital. Maybe China and India are rising rivals, but the Gulf? Ian needs to bring more than opinion to change that reality.

Of course Mr. Bremmer's threats rest on the idea that an Iranian proxy army, not even the national army of Lebanon, is going to dictate economic reality for Israel. Egypt, maybe. Ongoing war with Syria, also maybe. But the idea that Hizballah's military capabilities are going to break the economic back of Israel is based on the reasoning that the IDF won't turn Hizballah's strongholds into rubble.

There was an article in Foreign Affairs about six years ago claiming that the Palestinian suicide bomber was on par to a nuclear attack. It claimed that Israel had no way to fight this Palestinian military strategy. The reality was far different, it just required a change in the military mindset to realize that the IDF was quite capable of inflicting far greater damage, provided Israel was willing to use it. There is a great difference between having the capability vs. the will to use one's military in defense of one's own country.

It not so obvious that migration is one of the biggest frats for Israel.

I think, migration of the educated people from Israel has started long ago and the largest waive was sometime between 1995-1999 - right after the last large wave of migration TO Israel. And people that migrated that time were 2 types: 1. those who did not manage to integrate and came back to countries they immigrated from. 2. people who immigrated "though" Israel (to USA, Australia and so on). Now immigration is much harder because of deeper level of integration to the society (less moving from and to other countries, children raised in Israel). Nevertheless, I absolutely agree with the idea that it CAN be the biggest problems of Israel and current policy of Israel government is one of the risk factors.

For example, many immigrants from Russia came back because in the middle of 1990s Russian economy offered more life opportunities for its citizens (in the beginning of the 1990 Russia unlike USSR did not take the citizenship from those who wanted to go and live in Israel so they had a chance to come back). Now the number of people with Israel + Russian citizenships in Moscow counted in thousands! A few years ago it was a night club for Israel citizens in Moscow (people had to show Israel passport in order to get in).

So the process of moving population from and out of Israel is complicated. I'd say it's like fishermen net: people can penetrate both ways and it depends on economy who stays in the country. If investment is growing larger number of educated people are staying in Israel.
It's really sad that intellectual and scientific potential of Israel is not the factor of the attraction for foreign investment because of security problems. It will definitely damage the development of the state.

It is an interesting perspective although not just relevant for Israel.

Greece for example has a similar problem and by far graver. And if one claims that it is due to the economic crisis, well, Switzerland has it too.

I am tempted to say that this is a phenomenon that plights small nations in
an era of globalization. The educated elites feel suffocated in small
countries and want to move to larger metropoles, such as Paris, London, New York or Singapore.

The issue of "brain drain" is an international problem and needs a more systematic approach.