David Brooks on the Israeli Tech Miracle

David Brooks' column today on the Israeli hi-tech cluster is -- and here's a surprise -- the number-one most e-mailed article on the Times' website. My prediction is that it will stay there until Rosh HaShanah, when it will be replaced by a Joan Nathan article about gefilte fish in Yemen. (I've had Joan's non-Yemeni gefilte fish, and Corby Kummer has, too. It's excellent gefilte fish.)

In any case, I strongly recommend the Brooks' column, not only because he quotes perspicacious experts, but because he frames Zionism in a completely different way than the news pages do. And he also writes smartly about the competition between tribal Zionism and worldly Zionism:

Israel's technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world.