SYRIAN REFORM PARTY EXPRESSES ADMIRATION FOR ISRAELI ECONOMY

Syrian Muslim: Why I Admire Israel - Farid Ghadry (Reform Party of Syria)

• As a businessman and an advocate of the free economic system of governance, Israel to me represents an astounding economic success in the midst of so many Arab failures. Israel has, in less than 60 years, built an economy ten times that of Syria with one-fifth the population.
• I do not know of any Western investment company that has bought shares in Arab public companies except for the lucrative cellular business, which are unmanageable without Western know-how and equipment. It will certainly not happen to any of the countries surrounding Israel any time soon (with maybe the exception of Jordan) as long as self-empowerment is absent.
• The assertion made today by the likes of the ignorant Ahmadinejad, who aspires to wipe Israel off the map, and the violent Hamas, some members of which covet throwing the Jews into the sea, reminds me of the story of two factories built side-by-side. One is very successful and its employees take a good paycheck and the other is not so successful and its employees are economically deprived. The manager of the not-so-successful factory spends all his time striving to destroy the successful factory when he in fact should be spending his time learning and imitating the successful factory for his people to luxuriate in similar prosperity.
• If some of the Palestinians are not willing to learn, we Syrians want to learn and imitate.