Well,
I don't seem to be the only one who has some anger or resentment inside, now am I? I think I have a rather decent idea about Israel since I've lived there for three years, visit three times a year at present and am married to an Israeli while having a son in Haifa. Furthermore, what you boldly state as a fact of reality in your seven points seems to be a collection of half-truths that bear no close scrutiny and cannot be verified by tangible links to the outside world. But I'll answer your points individually:
1) American model of management.
I spent 17 years (1996-present) working for both HP and Symantec. In that time I have been managed by Americans, Canadians, French, Italian, German, British and Swedish people inside an American transnational corporation. So I know exactly the style of management of the Americans. If you think that Israel is run like the United States, you simply don't know what you're talking about. The mentality is so vastly different you can't even begin to imagine. Everyday things like process and procedure, management style, style of interactions to the jokes you can crack in a coffee corner, it's all different. So no, I fundamentally disagree with that point.
Medical insurance has nothing to do with it. Israel, like Europe, has mandatory health insurance for every citizen, as far as I knew. This has now been approved by the US Supreme Court too, and funnily enough while the Netherlands is allowing market forces to enter the medical system, the US is taking a small step in the other direction. Having said all that, it has no bearing whatsoever on what we were discussing really.
2) You are not the only ones who started a country and then had war. Actually, the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish was the beginning of the nation state in many ways. In 1579, we were under Spanish rule and there was a lot of turmoil in Europe. The Unie van Utrecht was signed by the Northern provinces, which were at the time autonomous countries (Hence "Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden"). It took 80 years of armed struggle, terrorism on our behalf, piracy and politicking until we had independence in 1648. We thought out of the box back then too, flooding half the country when certain land forces wanted to invade, selling arms to the Spanish to finance our own revolt against the same Spanish, using Turfschepen as a means of infiltration, I can go on. You seem to want to underestimate our capacity for ruthlessness, random violence, stubbornness and resilience. Fact of the matter is that many European nations can teach you people a thing or two about war. We've had 2000 years of it. Continuously.
Israel's current lack of peace is, in my view, largely its own doing, and this could turn into a long and completely pointless discussion, because I have hardly ever met an Israeli that has a clear notion of race, history and the situation in the Middle East. Very emotional views are always thrown in, and it never goes anywhere. Having sad that, we're not here to discuss the Middle East. We're here to discuss Customer Service and "Thinking out of the Box".
3) There is also a hardened layer of procedure in Israel. And sometimes you have to stick to those procedures come hell or high water, sometimes they are negotiable and sometimes you can get out of it with a wink, a smile and some combinot. In Israel, as in the Netherlands, you can get different outcomes if you know how to massage the system and more importantly the people. Having said that, my Israeli Residence permit was stamped into my passport in a hair salon by a bride who happened to be a friend of my ex. I had never even seen the inside of the ministry of the Interior in Haifa for more than three minutes. The Russians that were sitting there in droves all looked like they were camping there. That is a sign of wanton corruption and completely arbitrary disregard for the rules that, while it benefited me, should not be allowed to exist. So the inflexibility of the procedures in this country to me mean there is less arbitrary rule and less corruption.
The Netherlands ranks seven on the WW Corruption Perception Index, while Israel is not doing so well at number 36. It's not doing very badly, don't get me wrong. But there is a difference in approach that apparently does not give people a positive view of Israel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
4) You make this into a pissing contest. You seem to want to impress upon me the glory of your research and the pointlessness of my own country. Apart from the fact that the patriots that are stationed in Haifa are a Dutch project, we also develop the odd weapon system. Actually, Philips might ring a bell. I have yet to see Israeli companies with the reach of Philips, Ahold and Shell. Then there's the fact that Eindhoven is one of the most high-tech areas in Europe or the world. We have ASML, which provides chip factories and does so at a rate that's higher than the combined forces of Canon and Nikon...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding, then we have the Eindhoven university winning robot-soccer world championships four years in a row in its investigations of AI and robotics. They competed against 2300 competitors from 40 countries. These are all verifiable facts, I encourage you to investigate them.
Now as for water management, having too much water is just as big a problem as having too little water. I doubt you fully understand the system of dikes, floodplains, pumping stations, canals and trenches, bridges and sluices that will keep you dry and won't let the potatoes rot in the field, but let me assure you it's not a trivial thing to manage. The Agricultural University of Wageningen is at spot 75 of the world's best universities, with the highest ranking Dutch university coming in at 68 (Uni of Utrecht). The first Israeli institute on that list is Jerusalem at number 125. We have twelve entries in the Top 200 of institutions, and Israel has two. Given the fact that you are seven million people and we're sixteen, we're doing quite a bit better in the institutions per capita department, I would say. So you have a big mouth about expertise, but I sincerely doubt you can back that up with external statistics about market share, accredited institutions or suchlike.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/top-400.html
Israel always claims to be the pinnacle of high tech, and yet Google, Intel, ASML, HP, IBM, Dell, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Sony, Philips, Samsung, Canon, Siemens, Cisco, EMC, Boeing, SAAB (airspace), Bosch, BMW, Nokia and Apple are really not Israeli companies. How do you explain the excellence of your workforce against the seemingly complete lack of multinational success?
5) The monarchy of the Netherlands as we know it dates back until 1815, but our Constitution came about somewhere in 1851. So no, we did not enjoy a stable nation for 800 years. The Dutch revolt against the Spanish was coordinated amongst semi-autonomous areas such as Gelderland, Utrecht, Zeeland, Holland, etc etc, and resulted in a loose republic that got conquered by Napoleon. It was only after Napoleon that the Nation State of the Netherlands formed. Actually, if you read Shlomo Sand's history of the Jewish people, he demonstrates that most current na
