Israeli miracle? Thus spoke Dan Senor

Dan Senor, the former spokesperson of the American occupation apparatus in Iraq, is now suddenly (with no training in Middle East studies, unless you count a semester in Israel in business administration as Middle East studies) a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has a new book on the "economic miracle" of Israel, and he has a speaking and writing style as riveting as the style of the phone book. Let me tell you: if you throw since the 1960s, 50$ billion (in the value of the dollar then) from Germany and some $100 billion from the US, Somalia would be a global empire by now. Spare me this miracle business please. But my favorite moment of Senor is when Saddam was captured. He came to the podium and clearly was planning for this. He knew he had to say something either witty or profound, so he settled on this: Ehhhhh, today. Ehhhhhhhhha, it is evil. Ehhhhhhhhhh, banal. He thought he was channeling Arendt. Fortunately for Arendt, she was dead to be able to watch him.

PS This is still on my mind. And if Israel is such an economic miracle, why does it beg and plead annually so that its more than $3 billion from the US is not reduced by one penny?