The other day Israel announced and Egypt denied that the two countries were planning to launch a joint project in the business of solar powered energy. Apparently what started the uproar was that some Israelis had traveled to Egypt to discuss political matters unrelated to energy with their Egyptian counterparts when the Israelis unexpectedly proposed the idea of a joint project. The Egyptians said they will think about it and stopped there which is the polite way to say no in the language of international diplomacy.
Because the Israelis had a larger plan in mind, they were eager to see the Egyptians reconsider the matter. To pressure them, they asserted as soon as they got home, that the Egyptians had said yes to the project; and this is when the latter flatly denied the assertion. It is not exactly clear which audience or audiences the Israelis had in mind when they mounted this piece of theatre but what is unmistakable about the episode is that the Israelis were both its author and the intended beneficiaries as evidenced by the fact that the theatrics contained two of their best recognized signatures.
The first signature is to the effect that the apparent intent of the plan is to rob the Egyptians and their European partners of the knowledge they have accumulated on the science and technology of solar energy which the Israelis desperately need at this time. And the second signature is to the effect that the Israelis are trying to portray the robbery as being a gift they will give to the Egyptians because they are the magnanimous Jews who are also the scientifically and technologically advanced party.
The reality being the exact opposite of that, we need to be reminded of the elements of the true story. Mindful of the fact that the oil and natural gas they now have in abundance will someday be depleted the Arab countries from Morocco to the Gulf States have been quietly developing the hard and soft infrastructures pertaining to the generation of renewable energy. For several decades now they have been setting up centers of research and development both on their own and in cooperation with their European partners. They have done basic research, have explored the applications, have built the prototypes and have erected the units that currently produce electricity on a commercial scale. In short, the Arabs have made great strides in the domain of generating electricity by converting solar and wind power to electrical power. In fact, some of these countries have already added a substantial amount of renewable kilowatts to their power grid which places them ahead of most other countries in this field.
In addition to that, at least one country, Egypt, has made impressive advances in cooperation with a Canadian partner in the field of biofuel production. Teams from both countries worked together on building a commercial plant in Egypt that now produces various fuels for the local market and for export. The jointly owned company is doing so well that its shares have almost tripled on the Toronto Stock Exchange in a matter of weeks despite the slump that the other stocks have experienced during that same period of time. Furthermore, an Egyptian conglomerate in the business of making cables and the business of generating electricity operating in several countries has bought some of the solar businesses that were about to shut down in Spain when that country’s economy tanked due to the economic crisis that hit the world in 2008 and 2009.
All of these developments, quietly taking place in the background, made it inevitable for the next shoe to drop. Realizing that all the necessary ingredients were in place in North Africa for launching a massive solar project to generate electricity in the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert, a private German firm organized a European consortium and proposed the erection of a trillion dollar project to feed North Africa and Europe with electricity. The consortium presented the idea to all the interested parties in Europe, in North Africa and everywhere a potential investor may be found, and no one said no to the project. As of now it remains on track for realization.
And this is what attracted the attention of the Israelis who never generated a single kilowatt-hour of solar powered electricity on a commercial scale. This is what made them say they will contribute know-how in an area where they have exactly zero expertise. But having nothing to contribute and seeing much that they want to steal, they have shown once again that the only know-how they have in abundance is a verbal diarrhea that stinks so badly, people can smell it with their ears as well as their noses. These guys just don’t know when or where to stop; and the only thing they are able to accomplish is invite a rejection of what they stand for, at which time they turn around and call such response a manifestation of anti-Semitism.
But do the Israelis really understand how the rest of the world regards them when they behave in that manner? Of course they do but when it comes to robbing someone and making it look like they did the victim a favor by robbing them, they remain a shameless people full of hubris and whatever else. The reality is that the technology for generating renewable energy has been developing outside of North America and the Western countries where the Israelis used to steal technology and pretend to have developed it themselves. They did this for decades with all sorts of discoveries and inventions, and nobody did as much as slap them on the wrist. But now that the science and technology they need is being developed where they cannot steal it, the Israelis are becoming desperate. They do not know how to give and take in a civilized manner with people who do not tolerate their antics and so they find themselves in the awkward position of seeing but not touching.
To better understand why the Israelis behave the way they do when it comes to these matters, you may want to get a hold of a discussion paper written by Dr. Amit Mor under the title: “Israel’s Energy Challenges”. When you read this paper you get the sense that the man who is Israeli got his facts correct but that a good part of his conclusion is muddied because he began with a frame of mind that was clouded at the outset. The figures that he quotes are substantiated by checking various other sources, and the conclusion he reaches to the effect that the energy situation in Israel is dire can be verified but what is muddied about his discussion is that he shows little or no understanding about Israel’s economy even though he works for the power authority which is owned by the government of Israel.
Right at the start Mor makes it clear that he wishes to speak of the Israeli economy in terms of the European standard of industrial development having no idea that to compare the two is like comparing a ping pong ball with a golf ball. The first is an empty shell of consumption with little production behind it while the second is a solid mass of a diversified economy -- and the twain shall never meet to quote Rudyard Kipling. But after lamenting that very little research in the field of renewable energy and no commercial development is done in Israel, Amit Mor makes this observation: “Much of the research and training in renewable energy is funded by universities. Most of the remaining research and development has been self-financed for firms that have been successful abroad or partially financed through small ventures.”
This is what should have told Dr. Mor why Israel is lagging behind in renewable energy and this is what tells us why the Israeli officials behave like thieves wearing the white coat of a scientist and the halo of a saint. The fact is that Israel has had a bitter experience in this field once before, and like they say: once bitten twice shy. What happened was that rooftop solar water heaters were developed in a few places around the world and were imported lock, stock, barrel and stolen technology into Israel to be produced at a cost that exceeded their benefit. The Israeli politicians who are in charge of the economy understood the cost/benefit analysis of the thing, and they refused to throw good money after bad so they shied away from encouraging anymore work in the field of renewable energy given the thin state of Israel’s technological and industrial base. These people have learned the hard way that because Israel cannot yet make the nuts and bolts that hold a water heater together at a reasonable cost, they can only import the parts from abroad, assemble them locally and pretend to have conceived and produced the whole thing in Israel -- which is how they behave with regard to everything they boast they can do better than anyone else.
Having an economy with a shell as thin as a ping pong ball yet wishing to live like Europeans who have economies as solid as a golf ball, the Israelis found themselves dancing on the balls of a dilemma. What to do now? The answer they came up with was to be themselves once again. It is how they lived for thousands of years and it is how they shall live as far as the eye can see. To this end, they initiated the first step which was to prepare a plan that will rob the Egyptians of the science and technology the latter have developed. And the next step would have been to make it look like it was Israeli science and technology transferred to Egypt in the first place. And to avoid the mistake they made with the water heaters where they lost their shirt trying to bathe in a water they could not afford to warm up with stolen technology and imported parts, the Israelis fantasized about the Egyptians doing the work on Egyptian soil and doing it right as they basked in the false pretense of having done it by themselves.
And as always, the fantasy became reality in their heads which is what caused the uproar about an agreement that never was. So far the Egyptians are maintaining their no response but who knows; the Israelis might grow up someday and learn to talk like civilized human beings at which time the Egyptians may allow them to join a project with the potential to do them some good. We’ll see; 4000 years of stupidity is a very long time and maybe -- just maybe – these guys have learned to say to themselves enough is enough.