“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned lies & statistics.”

Mark Twain in his autobiography attributed the saying to Britain Jewish Prime Minister Benjemin Disraeli as an example why he didn’t like dealing with figures.

It was the same Mark Twain that in 1869 visited the Holy Land before the Jewish people return to the land, and he wrote while riding North to South in Israel:

“There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for 30 miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles, hereabouts, and not see 10 human beings.”

The first modern Jewish immigration back to Israel was just 13 years later in 1882, and those early 25,000 settlers brought new life to this old baran territory. What we now call Palestines are mostly work immigrant that can after, as part of the new economic activity initiated by Jews.

Today 140 years later, Israel has a GDP that ranked 4th by the Economist amongst developed countries in 2022, with more than 20% of its population being Israeli Arabs that enjoy this prosperity. I have worked with many of them in the Israeli Hi-Tech industry and also with Palestinian contractors from the West Bank. All good productive smart people.

So, how can a small violent minority perform such atrocities against Jews?
This question is not a new one, my grandfather asked himself the same question in 1940 when he and his family were sent by Nazi Germany to work camps.

My interpretation is twofold one:

1) Moral prejudice – Jews wrongly believe that moral codes contributed to the world by the Old Testament are universal and are followed surrounding cultures. This is the famous conformation bias, which is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.

2) Underestimating tribal law – This type of economic thinking is common in the US and democratic countries, why shouldn’t the Iraqis or the Afgan people chose democracy, prosperity and freedom over corrupted misogamist violent tribal law? Because in non-homogenous tribal society, one care first for family and tribe in order to survive. It took Europe a thousand years to get out of this paradigm, so why expect the Middle East to change so quickly?

So, first we have a lie about the Palestinians population origin. Then we have the Damned lie assuming that Palestinian problem would be solved by “fare deal” that will distribute the land and ignore the tribal law in this violent Neiborhood. And finally we have the statistics that the Jews after each disaster are becoming more prosperous: “But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel.” (Exodus chapter 1 verse 12).

Remember the “buy low sell high law”? Proven history, it’s a good time to invest in Israel’s economy.